Privacy Groups Propose Do-Not-Track List - Advertising Age - Digital

Privacy Groups Propose Do-Not-Track List - Advertising Age - Digital

Here's an idea, an online do-not-call registry. Privacy groups going head-to-head with online marketers. Bet I know who will win.

One of the proudest days of my life

This photo was taken on March 6, 2005 after John Harmsen, myself, and Russell Noye completed a bike ride from Kalgoorlie to Perth - that's 600 kilometres - in 19 hours, 6 minutes. We averaged 32.8 kph. Russ and John are just as tough as old boots.

Official Google Blog: Google search privacy: Plain and simple

Official Google Blog: Google search privacy: Plain and simple

Search queries saved in logs: Misspelled search terms, prompts for "did you mean".

IP address: Search results returned to the correct computer. Can tell which provider and general location.

Cookies: Small file stored on computer. Reminds of preferences from last time. Search results per pages and language preference

Log of visit: Receipt of visit. Search term, IP address, cookie ID, browser version, operating system, date and time of search.

Some parts of IP address and cookie will be deleted after 18 months.

Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power: Chapter 9

Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power: Chapter 9: "Information, Policy, and Power in the Informational State Introduction"

http://www.uwm.edu/%7Ebraman/bramanpdfs/028_Braman_Chapt9.pdf

War in the age of digital machines: Manuel de Landa

De Landa proposes the concept of the Panspectron (p. 206). Whilst referring to Bentham's Panopticon, which is he points out, a powerful tool for political and societal control through the perception of continuous surveillance, he suggest the Panspectron gathers all the available information about all subjects all of the time. Through a systems of filters and key word matching matters of interest are identified and this results in the subject being brought into focus.

Put this in a modern context and we have the system of robots (bots) employed by search engines that continually search the internet, reporting their findings of information and information linkages back to central points. Data is then analysed through a system of algorithms, such as Google's Page Rank system and this results in the searches we use today. It's only when someone searches (employees the Panspectron's keywords and filters) does the relevant data appear.

Google Public Policy Blog: Data retention: the right balance between privacy and security

A quick post to a piece on the Google Public Policy blog from Peter Fleischer about Google and the EU policy on data retention. Will probably be worth coming back to this one.

Google Public Policy Blog: Data retention: the right balance between privacy and security:

"Citizens should have a right to privacy online. And governments have an obligation to keep their citizens safe. Finding the right balance between privacy and security is a delicate balancing act. Europe’s recent experience with data retention holds interesting lessons for everyone concerned with this balance."

Thesis for my next essay

Are individual privacy rights at greater risk as a result of Google's privacy practices?

Eric Scmidt calls for new global privacy regulations

I found this on Peter Fleischer's blog. It's Eric Scmidt, CEO of Google, urging the nations of the world to adopt new privacy regulations. Although it sounds good in theory, the cynic in me believes that it's a diversionary tactic to take attention away from the Google/DoubleClick deal. The comment by Anne Cavoukian tends to reinforce this thought. Ms Cavoukian suggests Google adopts a set of privacy standards her organisation has already developed.

Why Google wants to get to know you - more

Google wants to get to know you - more. Although widely critised for their privacy policies, including a stinging rebuke from Privacy International, Google is mounting a PR campaign of epic proportions to convince web surfers, legislators, and the public in general that the world will be a better place by the search giant knowing even more details about our lives.

As as has been reported here previously, Google is currently in negotiations with the FTC and EEC to seek approval for their USD$3.1 billion (yes, that is a lot of money)
purchase of online advertising agency DoubleClick. Their strategy is simple. Google already dominates the search advertising market with their USD$10.6 billion dollar revenue stream continuing to grow on the back of their highly successful Adsense advertising programme - Adsense places advertisements onto web pages based on the page's content. But as much as that is an ingenious, and clearly lucrative marketing strategy, Google knows little about the interests of web surfers in general. And that's where the powerplay of the DoubleClick purchase begins. Doubleclick is the master of the online advertising world; there's hardly a major brand who hasn't used the company to design an online campaign. And the reason for their success is that they're clever, very clever. Utilising an intricate system of advertisements, cookies, and other tricks of the trade, DoubleClick can track the movements of web surfers as they travel from site to site. From this tracking, surveillance, and recording, DoubleClick has amassed profiles of consumers to the point where they are now able to deliver tailored web advertising to a web surfer based on their surfing habits. And it is this asset that has Google so interested. By combining there immense power in search, with DoubleClick's strength in digital advertising, Google will have completed an amazing metamorphosis from garage-incubated hatchling, to online privacy monster in just 10 short years.

Clearly, there are significant concerns about the power Google will have at its disposal, particularly as that power translates into potential breaches of individual privacy. After all, Google/DoubleClick will have the resources, based on the combination of search and browsing history, to predict and influence consumer behaviour in ways never before imagined. And it is these threats that have privacy advocacy groups clambering to be heard, and it is these capabilities that are seeing competitors, such as Yahoo and Microsoft running to the government accusing Google of being variously anti-competitive and a risk to individual privacy.

Google know there's a lot at stake here. Knowing that better targeted advertising means more effective advertising, and more effective advertising means bigger advertising revenues, Google continues to pursue this deal vigorously. With some pundits expecting them to gain the required approvals for the deal, we could soon find that the "Do No Evil" enterprise knows much more about us than we might expect.



This post was originally on one of my class blogs.

Free analytical research report anyone?

Over the next few days I'll be writing an analytical research report examining an issue or practice that has come to my attention in the process of completing one of my class projects, which involved preparing a business plan for an Internet media business. It's supposed to give me better research skills and the opportunity to critically evaluate my findings. Basically that's the brief, but the real story is the lecturer is quite OK on us researching and writing about any half decent business issue.

You know what the trouble is here? I have no idea what the issue is. I might do something about web 2.0, the insignificance economy, modularisation of information or...I don't know.

Any ideas? If you want me to write a free paper about something of concern in your business now is your chance to say so.

First Monday

Just submitted an essay on the social trends behind the Twitter phenomena to First Monday. I hope it gets published but I'm not holding my breath. It's probably too short and not deep enough. One thing is certain though, if I don't submit it, it won't get published.

Getting a job

So it's rolling toward the end of semester and the end of the year. Time to start looking for a holiday job, but what to do? I thought I'll phone my brother being as how he's got heaps of contacts in the mining industry. What better way than to go up north in the blazing heat and work on the mines to earn a quid. But, you know, it's not so easy. Here I am with an MBA, close to 18 years of management experience, 22 years of real estate marketing, and two thirds my way through a Master of Internet Studies and I have no idea what I'm going to do next. Funny huh?! I kind of imagined I'd experience this transitional stage between careers, a stage where I know what I want to leave behind but don't know what I want to do next.

There are days when academia appeals, and there are plenty of moments when I get the sense I have something to offer government administrators when it comes to the web and the possibilities there. I just love the web and life in general - it's just all so exciting.

I'm really not sure what's going to be next. Any ideas?

Blog ethics by Rebecca Blood

In Rebecca Blood's Weblog Ethics, Blood proposes guidelines for the development of a personal blogging policy. It's worth noting that these same policies could also be used as the spine for a corporate blogging policy, after all ethics are ethics.

For the record, Blood's proposed list includes:

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe is true
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it
3. Publicly correct any misinformation
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry
5. Disclose any conflict of interest
6. Note questionable and biased sources.

These are practical and sensible steps and make for sound and reliable blogging on which people can rely. Thanks to Rebecca for putting things so succinctly.

Anti-employer blogging

Here is the PDF to the previous post: Author Konrad Lee

Anti-employer blogging

ANTI-EMPLOYER BLOGGING: EMPLOYEE BREACH OF THE DUTY OF LOYALTY AND THE PROCEDURE FOR ALLOWING DISCOVERY OF A BLOGGER'S IDENTITY BEFORE SERVICE OF PROCESS IS EFFECTED

This article from the Duke Law and Technology Review suggests that law reform is needed in the area of discovering the identity of employees who create anonymous anti-employer blogs. They suggest that employees owe their employers a duty of loyalty and that the current legal process involved in identifying such a blogger is too cumbersome.

Unpacking “Privacy” for a Networked World

Unpacking “Privacy” for a Networked World: Leysia Palen and Paul Dourish

Drawing on the theories of Altman who, they propose that privacy is a constant process of the negotiation of boundaries. This, they see, is different to other notions of privacy which are created through a notion of personal withdrawal. Altman, they suggest, proposes that privacy is not static but people operate on a spectrum of "openness" and "closedness" and this depends on the context and the desirability of the ends that are being sought.

They posit three boundaries that are in constant tension: Disclosure (what is disclosed), Identity (details about the person/organisation), and Temporality (associated with time).

They argue that to live in the modern world requires us to disclose something of ourselves to the public and they point out that some people utilise disclosure as a way of limiting access of others to the self and they do this through the creation of online personae that determines the information they chose to release.

"Active participation in the networked world requires disclosure of information simply to be a part of it. To purchase goods, we make ourselves visible in public space;
in exchange for the convenience of shopping on-line, we choose to disclose personal identity information for transactional purposes."

They point out that defining the boundaries of the self online is difficult indeed and involves technologies that are poor at assisting this process. The permanence of information, the uncertainty that is created in the creation of the "other" and the inability to know what others are doing with the personal information we send makes this a problematic boundary creation process.

We act to manage our current privacy in accord with our past experiences and the future concerns or benefits we foresee as a result of our actions today.

They conclude by reinforcing that privacy is not static but rather a "dynamic response to circumstances" and the ongoing negotiation of boundaries. It is a balancing of tensions.

Valuating Privacy

In this research article Huberman, Adar, and Fine propose that individuals have a price or value on the data which they are willing to reveal, and this price is connected with the perceived desirability of the personal trait in the group to which they are seeking to reveal their information. They propose that their is a direct correlation between the perceived desirability of the trait and the price which people place on the data. Where the trait has a low perceived desirability the price demanded for this data will be high.

As an example they asked participants to value their weight and they demonstrated a linear relationship between a person's weight and the price they put on giving up this information. They also noted that a person's attitude to privacy affected the price they charged with those who were concerned most about privacy demanding a higher price for personal data than those who cared little for privacy.

Their research suggests therefore, that self-publication increases as the payoff increases. This helps explain why people tend to reveal much about themselves in apparently "closed" groups as a way to achieve group acceptance or popularity.

It seems the law of supply and demand are alive and well when it comes to privacy.

Blogging as Social Activity...

Have only had a chance to skim read Blogging as Social Activity, or,
Would You Let 900 Million People Read Your Diary?, however it will be worth coming back to for a more in depth look. It's a detailed study on why people blog and covers some aspects about blogging and privacy.

Bloggers' Expectations of Privacy and Accountability: An Initial Survey

Here's a few notes on an article relating to privacy concerns and practices in blogging, with references at the bottom of the post.

Ongoing authorship. People look for and expect a consistent author and voice of a blog.

Archival/permanent nature of posts are exaggerated by RSS feeds which create broadcast copies of blog posts which cannot be later deleted. Most bloggers edit past posts to some degree or another, but are also aware of the difficulty in erasing a blog post completely. This appears to be contradictory behaviour in that once a blog post is out there, it's out there. Editing is not much use. Most bloggers are unconcerned that their blog posts are permanently archived, and show signs of being ambivalent about privacy, until such time as they have an unpleasant experience.

Frequency and brevity of blogging with corresponding reduction in quality. Often people post to blogs things which haven't been thought through and this can be dangerous.

Most blogs are of the personal journal type. Only 3% are knowledge blogs. Existence of an audience important in helping people 'think' on a blog.This is a knowledge blog.

Women and teenagers account for over half the blogs and these were generally personal journals. Many blogs contain accurate personal information.

People who blog about their employers tend to anonymise their company out of fear of repercussions including the loss of jobs and other negative consequences. It is still unclear both ethically or legally where privacy boundaries sit in relation to the blogging activities of employees and this may be a useful avenue for future research. Companies are urged to have detailed and specific blogging policies in relation to what they see as being acceptable free speech and what is considered to be off-limits. Many companies are yet to fully articulate a blogging policy; despite having company blogs that are updated by employees (Microsoft). Groove Networks and Sun Microsystems are two companies with clearly defined blog policies.

People tend to construct their own policy on identification of themselves, their employer, other individuals, and other companies and products based on a variety of personal values.

"Authors in this study were willing to publish the names of friends and companies/products when they deemed the contents of an entry to be either positive or innocuous. This tendency mirrors results from a previous study showing that people are inclined to value privacy less the more socially desirable a piece of information is (Huberman, Adar, & Fine, 2004)."

Some bloggers perceive they 'know' their audience from reading track-backs and comments, however this only represents the 'core' audience of readers and not the wider audience. This lack of broader perception can lead to bloggers posting comments that their core audience want to read about; and this can lead to posts that reveal personal information that is not suited to the public arena of a blog.

Viegas, F. B. (2005). Bloggers' expectations of privacy and accountability: An initial survey. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(3), article 12. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue3/viegas.html

Choices: Drive? or Bike?

We recently sold my car to my nephew and I plan to just use a bike as transport until at least the end of the year. As I'm full time at Uni I figure that I don't have to worry about helmet hair, it takes me only a few minutes longer to get to school, I don't need to worry about parking, and I'm doing my bit for the environment. Besides that, I don't have to worry about paying car insurance, rego, or fuel and servicing costs. All up, my bank balance is better off, I'm better off, and the world is better off by me not having a car. We're getting on fine without it too.

Who knows, I might decide this is a permanent arrangement.

A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States

I'm currently writing a piece on how micro-blogging (we can include in that mix the mini-updates of moods and feelings on MySpace and Facebook) encourages increased levels of self-disclosure and, therefore, increased risks to privacy. It appears that those at particular risks are you people who, as the quotes below suggest, treat their online profiles as intimate journals rather than as the public spaces they in fact are. Whilst clearly this suggests risks to young people, it also hints at a generational shift in attitudes with regard the ownership of information and the boundaries between what young people consider public and private.

A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States:

"Students may think that their Facebook or MySpace journal entries are private but they are actually public diaries."

"Herein lies the privacy paradox. Adults are concerned about invasion of privacy, while teens freely give up personal information. This occurs because often teens are not aware of the public nature of the Internet."

The panspectron: Panopticon improved?

Tactical memory: The politics of openness in the construction of memory by Sandra Braman
In this at times meandering article from First Monday, it is proposed that, whilst the Panopticon was, and still is, a powerful way to imagine spaces of discipline, it is the Panspectron that turns today's environment of open information into an always-on surveillance machine. The article suggests that openness of information leads to all of the world's information being gathered and analysed all of the time; and it is not until a query is made that a subject is brought into being.

This concept gives us pause for reflection in that whilst intuitively, open information appears to be a noble end in and of itself, as we consider the ways this information can be used as a tool of mass surveillance, participation in this information love-in appears much less appealing. This is particularly the case when we consider that the gathering and analysing of information is being conducted by both government and big business, neither of whom have a great track record in the protection of libertarian values.

Best I being careful what I write.

Our attitudes to privacy: on Google and Jaiku

Over at Loose Wire Blog, Jeremy Wagstaff lists all the possible private information that Google may know about us as a result of their acquisition of Jaiku, the micro-blogging platform. It's a significant list and one that gives us pause for concern. However it may say much about attitudinal shifts in values that users of online services of all kinds, are giving away information that was previously considered private.

Privacy is all about self-disclosure and the control of access of others to our inner-self. It's very possible that many of us no longer consider our mobile phone number, address, or the suburb in which we live, private information. After all these pieces of information are relatively easy to find out. Maybe we've made the assessment and believe that the rewards outweigh the risks. Or perhaps the Internet has seduced us into believing that we are far safer and far more protected than we really are. I suspect that the answer is a combination of both.

It never ceases to amaze me to see how much private information people are willing to give away on social networking sites such as Facebook. With Google's purchase of Jaiku, they have all the ingredients of a powerful social network, much more powerful in my opinion than the others. The combination of search, gmail, maps, and now Jaiku provide Google with a unique and incredibly deep, understanding of who we are, what we're doing, what interests us, and what we're planning. And if Google complete the DoubleClick deal, who knows, perhaps the machine will tell us that we need a new pair of sneakers before we had a chance to give it a thought.

Speaking of which, mine are getting a bit old.

vod:pod

Here's a new way of blogging (well not new really, but it's kind of new) that's video on demand meets, pod-casting, meets blogging. Yet another mash-up/web 2.0 widget that morphs video onto a blog. Kind of cool so I thought I'd share it. I might use it one day, or not. Who knows?!

Ways to use Twitter

Love it or hate it, Twitter is getting the buzz, and as usual, there are any number of ways to use the service as a marketing tool.

MediaShift . Point of Presence::Your Guide to Micro-Blogging and Twitter | PBS: "Media companies such as the BBC, The New York Times and Al Jazeera are trying out Twitter as a way to send headlines and links to stories. The campaigns for presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama also have Twitter profiles, with thousands of “friends” and “followers” who check out updates."

Despite that I'm doing Internet studies, there are very few of my friends and associates on Twitter or Jaiku. I wonder if it's a cultural thing or will Australia catch on to this technology in time.

Micro-blogging and privacy

My final essays are due soon and I'm writing one of them on how micro-blogging is leading to increased levels of self disclosure and what how this may affect individual privacy. My initial thoughts are that yes, people are disclosing more about themselves and they do this to achieve various personal and economic gains. But as a counterpoint, some people may be unaware of what the collection of their micro-blogs may in fact say about them, and they may be unaware that their posts are virtually permanent, are more public than they may be intended, and may give away information that was not intended for the actual audience.

For example, someone may post that they're "at the beach" and this may give a burglar notice that their house is unwatched. The same post may inadvertently tip off a boss that a person is having a day off when they were booked on sick leave. There are any number of unintended consequences of this micro-blogging phenomena.

So I think I'll include in my essay individual conceptions of private and public spaces and how this is blurred on the Internet, and the the all-pervasiveness of surveillance that can be achieved through monitoring micro-blogging sites including Facebook and MySpace. Is there anything else worth including?

Matt Cutts disagrees with Privacy International

Matt Cutts, head of Google's web spam team is not taking Privacy International's accusation of poor privacy practices lying down. In a fiery and enthusiastic post on his private blog, Cutts claims that PI simply walked past companies that were handling privacy poorly, and focussed instead on a company that is doing something positive about the issue. However, Cutts tends to justify his position by pointing to companies that have done worse than Google as opposed to defending the accusations on their own merits, He cites, for example, the release by AOL of millions of raw search queries that lead to the identification of an AOL user. If this is the case, AOL indeed has some improvements to make, but their sloppiness does not make Google a model corporate citizen. And simply because Google is helping out young software programmers with real world experience, does not change the fact that Google's software necessarily relies on significant and ongoing surveillance that must surely become more comprehensive as new and more personalised services are added.

Undoubtedly PI may have erred on the heavy-handed side when making their assessment of Google. In fact, their report stated that their findings would be seen as controversial. But Google is a big corporation and, rather then being thin-skinned and sensitive, would do well to take on board the concerns expressed in the report and work toward being extra-diligent in the handling of customers' private information.

Emergent Democracy

I'm in the process of considering what I'll write my next essay on, what will be the incisive thesis question. I've done some work on Twitter and why this (and by extension other micr-blogging platforms) are so important, especially to students in Australia, where the penetration of Twitter appears to be much less than in the US and Japan.

I'm reading a piece from Joichi Ito who comments on the Clay Shirky's Power Laws saying that the top ranking blogs may end up being mass media sites and almost impossible to topple from the number one spot. But he also points out that blogs tend to form scale-free networks, with some blogs actings as both nodes and hubs thus linking networks together. I've seen this discussed somewhere else before and it made some sense in that, people tend to act as connectors to their own group of friends and sometimes become the connectors between groups of friends. It helps to explain why some blogs become immensely popular among groups of like-minded people and are linked to regularly (the hubs).

Not sure if this has helped me work out what my thesis statement question is going to be, but at least I've written something.

1 Emergent Democracy

Cousins arrested

It's seems little more than sad that Ben Cousins, a champion footballer, and from what I've seen first hand, a nice bloke, has been arrested by police today. Just why he's been arrested is not clear at this stage, but his involvement with prominent Perth identities and a self-confessed problem with substances, would hint at what may have been at the bottom of things.

I for one feel sorry for him. It would seem that his football career is possibly now over and that could potentially leave him with even more problems. I've said here before that the West Coast Eagles would have been best to trade him to another club, and they're very possibly wishing they did just that.

No guessing what's going to lead the news tonight and what will be all over the front page of the West tomorrow.

Cousins arrested: "WA Police has arrested Ben Cousins after pulling him over in his car, at 10.30am Perth time and searching it in the Perth inner city suburb of Northbridge."

Sex, lies and videotape: turmoil at the Vatican | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

This is how not to carry out ethnographic research. If he was really conducting research, surely he would have tried to get the consent of the subject first. Oh, that's right, that's what he was trying to do, just the wrong consent. What is it with priests and the Catholic church anyway?

Sex, lies and videotape: turmoil at the Vatican | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited: "But he told the Corriere della Sera newspaper that he 'wanted to carry out a study, probably for publication'. He said he was a registered psychologist and psychotherapist and his aim had been 'to study how priests are ensnared'."

On Google and DoubleClick

Google wants to get to know you - more. Although widely critised for their privacy policies, including a stinging rebuke from Privacy International, Google is mounting a PR campaign of epic proportions to convince web surfers, legislators, and the public in general that the world will be a better place by the search giant knowing even more details about our lives.

As as has been reported here previously, Google is currently in negotiations with the FTC and EEC to seek approval for their USD$3.1 billion (yes, that is a lot of money)
purchase of online advertising agency DoubleClick. Their strategy is simple. Google already dominates the search advertising market with their USD$10.6 billion dollar revenue stream continuing to grow on the back of their highly successful Adsense advertising programme - Adsense places advertisements onto web pages based on the page's content. But as much as that is an ingenious, and clearly lucrative marketing strategy, Google knows little about the interests of web surfers in general. And that's where the powerplay of the DoubleClick purchase begins. Doubleclick is the master of the online advertising world; there's hardly a major brand who hasn't used the company to design an online campaign. And the reason for their success is that they're clever, very clever. Utilising an intricate system of advertisements, cookies, and other tricks of the trade, DoubleClick can track the movements of web surfers as they travel from site to site. From this tracking, surveillance, and recording, DoubleClick has amassed profiles of consumers to the point where they are now able to deliver tailored web advertising to a web surfer based on their surfing habits. And it is this asset that has Google so interested. By combining there immense power in search, with DoubleClick's strength in digital advertising, Google will have completed an amazing metamorphosis from garage-incubated hatchling, to online privacy monster in just 10 short years.

Clearly, there are significant concerns about the power Google will have at its disposal, particularly as that power translates into potential breaches of individual privacy. After all, Google/DoubleClick will have the resources, based on the combination of search and browsing history, to predict and influence consumer behaviour in ways never before imagined. And it is these threats that have privacy advocacy groups clambering to be heard, and it is these capabilities that are seeing competitors, such as Yahoo and Microsoft running to the government accusing Google of being variously anti-competitive and a risk to individual privacy.

Google know there's a lot at stake here. Knowing that better targeted advertising means more effective advertising, and more effective advertising means bigger advertising revenues, Google continues to pursue this deal vigorously. With some pundits expecting them to gain the required approvals for the deal, we could soon find that the "Do No Evil" enterprise knows much more about us than we might expect.

Three ways to build an online media business to $50m in revenue « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog

Three ways to build an online media business to $50m in revenue « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog: "Here are three ways to get to $50m in revenue as an online media business; indulge me in some math:"

History of Social Network Sites

Jade

This one's for you. It's an in-depth look at social networking sites by prolific blogger, Danah Boyd. Danah's an addictive writer and her blog is worth visiting.


History of Social Network Sites: "Authors: danah boyd and Nicole Ellison Version: September 4, 2007 Social Network Sites: Definition and Conception"

Feminism, democracy and the right to privacy: Annabelle Lever

Feminism.pdf (application/pdf Object)

PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE IN COMPUTER SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK

PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE IN COMPUTER SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK: "The source of our anxiety is not the principle of formal institutional surveillance and control over us -- that is implicit in our acceptance of life in a modern capitalist nation. Rather, we are upset by the technological possibilities for a vastly expanded exercise of corporate and government ability to keep track of us."

Google privacy concerns compounded by cookie vulnerability

Competition is a wonderful thing. It encourages innovation, keeps prices in check, and it brings to our world new and exciting products that create benefits to humanity. But competition and innovation don't always work for everyone, and all too often the consequences of rapid product development are unnecessary risks to society. And it is this backdrop that provides an interesting, if not fascinating, twist to a new battle between Internet search giant Google and software behemoth Microsoft.

It seems hardly surprising that Microsoft has announced plans to counter the threat posed by Google documents and spreadsheets. Google's entry into the office productivity market is clever strategy. For years now, Microsoft has been the leader in this lucrative marketplace, holding what many believe to be an unassailable monopoly. Previous attempts to establish a breach-head into the office applications market by various competitors has met with little or no success. Microsoft, for example, have no doubt kept a close watch on Open Office, a suite of office productivity applications which, despite receiving rave critical reviews and being totally free, has caused an insignificant number of customers to shift their allegiance. With this in mind, Google's announcement of their release of Google Docs could easily have been taken lightly by Microsoft; and it appeared for some time that is exactly what happened. After all, Docs was released as a beta version in September 2006 and Microsoft's response has been almost 12 months in the making. But Microsoft knows that Google is Google. With a big brand, lots of customers, and huge developer resources at their disposal, the search giant can make things happen. Which is precisely why Microsoft has responded to Google's web-only offering by creating Office Live Workspace, a program that works with Microsoft Office products allowing people to view, store, and share Office documents online. To many people, this product is a welcome innovation. Mobile workers, students, and travelers will undoubtedly benefit from the increased flexibility that Internet based storage provides, without the arduous task of migrating their Office documents to Google Docs. So what then could be the downside in such rapid development of Internet based software?

The risk to consumers comes from a security threat from Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks which are instigated when a line of code, placed on a malicious but otherwise normal web page, captures a person's cookie details and potentially gives the hacker access to user names and passwords. A recent report on Google Blogoscoped reveals how such an attack, created in a controlled environment, allowed a 'hacker' limited access to another person's Google account - including Google Docs. Whilst Google are aware of the problem and continue to issue security warnings to webmasters, the fact that a person's Google Docs area was potentially compromised gives web surfers reason to be concerned. It may also give Microsoft the opportunity to take the high ground on security, and some degree of comfort in their decision to respond slower than usual to a competitive threat.

Indeed competition is a wonderful thing - usually. But it appears that Google's rush to innovate, to steal a march on a competitor, to bring a product to the market quickly, has shown the dark side of innovation. It's the dark side where privacy is not paramount and where security is not treated with the highest priority. Unless Google places the privacy and well-being of their customers first, the future for the Internet will be cause for grave concerns.

Another reading on privacy

Market Institutions: "CAUGHT IN THE WWWEB: PATTERNS OF CONTROL OVER PERSONAL INFORMATION FLOW IN THE E-COMMERCE ENVIRONMENT"

Privacy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Privacy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): "Privacy First published Tue May 14, 2002; substantive revision Mon Sep 18, 2006 The term “privacy” is used frequently in ordinary language as well as in philosophical, political and legal discussions, yet there is no single definition or analysis or meaning of the term."

Surveillance technologies in the work place: ETHICOMP 2004

ETHICOMP 2004:

"Surveillance-capable technologies in the workplace: some evidence of the views of the next generation of computer professionals"

Google-DoubleClick deal seen winning approval | CNET News.com

Google-DoubleClick deal seen winning approval | CNET News.com:

"Antitrust experts predict that Google's purchase of advertising company DoubleClick for $3.1 billion will be approved by U.S. regulators despite vehement opposition from competitors Microsoft and Yahoo."

EU privacy body to take months on Google probe | CNET News.com

EU privacy body to take months on Google probe | CNET News.com: "The European Union's data watchdog will take another few months to decide whether Google or other Web search engines may be violating EU privacy laws, a participant in the watchdog's meeting said on Wednesday."

I'm writing an essay on the broader context of privacy and how we voluntarily give up our private information in exchange for services and other commercial benefit. Do you believe search engines are invading our privacy? Should their activities be curtailed?

PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE IN COMPUTER SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK

PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE IN COMPUTER SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK:

"Whenever individuals are being informally watched or listened to, they are somewhat inhibited by what they imagine others' reactions to be. This is how informal social control works in groups. We tend to try not to upset the people around us, especially if they have the means to retaliate in some way. Gossip and other private communications are an ordinary part of both group and organizational office politics. In informal conversation it's one person's word against another's as to what was said and by whom. A private comment can be publicly denied. However, once a conversation gets recorded (for example in a paper memo or in an e-mail message) it assumes a more formal existence. As people begin to suspect they'll be held accountable for their spontaneous utterances, their freedom to express themselves is inhibited. While this may be an improvement in the case of malicious gossip, it also destroys the backstage area where so much of group work is actually done."

This may give us a clue as to why so many organisations are keen for people to blog. Once a blog post is published, it is almost impossible to delete any trace of it from the net, and when people know their comments are "permanent" and they believe they are being read and watched, they tend to normalise their behaviour. Blogs, while being a powerful tool for democracy may also become a Deleuzian "society of control."

Warren and Brandeis, "The Right to Privacy"

Warren and Brandeis, "The Right to Privacy": "These considerations lead to the conclusion that the protection afforded to thoughts, sentiments, and emotions, expressed through the medium of writing or of the arts, so far as it consists in preventing publication, is merely an instance of the enforcement of the more general right of the individual to be let alone."

This is a seminal article setting out the right of the individual to be left alone, as opposed to privacy from interference from government.

Now this is what I call clever

Having spent most of my growing up years on the back of a horse I can say that this is as magical as it is impressive.

Announcement from Jaiku

"Wonderful Jaiku users,

Exciting news, Jaiku is joining Google!

While its too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you'll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together.

In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now. But fear not! All our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will continue to be able to invite your friends to Jaiku.

We have put together a quick Q&A about the acquisition at http://jaiku.com/help/google

Jyri Engestrom and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku Founders"

I wonder if the boys at Twitter will be pissed off it wasn't them that was bought, or happy they didn't fall into the clutches of the do-no-evil empire

Google moves to turn YouTube clips into advertising cash | Technology | The Guardian

Google moves to turn YouTube clips into advertising cash | Technology | The Guardian: "Google has begun allowing advertisers to 'embed' clips from YouTube into their promotional messages, a sign of the search company's strategy to make money from its video streaming arm."

You can bet that this move will really get Adsense moving. Would you pay extra for an Adsense ad that allowed you to include a video clip? I'm thinking that it would produce a much better click through rate. Your thoughts?

Reconstructing the Internet: How Social Justice Activists Contest Technical Design in Cyberspace - M/C Journal

M/C Journal: "Reconstructing the Internet: How Social Justice Activists Contest Technical Design in Cyberspace": "Reconstructing the Internet: How Social Justice Activists Contest Technical Design in Cyberspace"

For Google, advertising and phones go together | CNET News.com

For Google, advertising and phones go together | CNET News.com:

"Google wants to extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile Internet, a small market today, but one that is expected to grow rapidly. It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile phone makers to offer phones based on its software, according to people briefed on the project. The cost of those phones may be partly subsidized by advertising that appears on their screens."

MySpace and Facebook plan to use personal data for "targeted advertising" - EFF

EFF: DeepLinks:

"Luckily for the advertising industry, modern web users have begun voluntarily providing all their personal details on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Users of these sites happily upload all sorts of personal information about what books and music they like, where they shop, who their friends are, and where they live. While users of these sites may imagine that they control the information on their profile pages, advertisers are salivating at the thought of all that personal data just waiting to be processed, analyzed, and turned into profit."

Google Associate General Counsel to Speak at EFF Bootcamp and Google to Offer Scholarships

EFF: DeepLinks:

"Google Associate General Counsel Alex Macgillivray has agreed to attend the EFF Compliance Bootcamp on October 10 and to explain why Google thinks it is important that Web 2.0 companies learn the information we're teaching."

Google-DoubleClick debate raises broader issues

CDT | Headlines: "The debate over the pending merger between Google and Internet advertising giant DoubleClick raises a host of broader questions about the online advertising industry at large and the structures that are in place to protect Internet users' privacy. In a statement to the Senate panel that is holding a hearing about the merger today, CDT identifies how the evolution of the Internet advertising marketplace has outpaced the industry self-regulatory effort intended to mitigate privacy intrusions. The statement highlights how new approaches, and a new national consumer privacy law, are needed to ensure that consumers are adequately protected."

Zotero - The Next-Generation Research Tool

Worth checking out.

Zotero - The Next-Generation Research Tool:

"Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself."

Using socail software for business communication: Lauren Pressley

This is essay states:

"The literature indicates that the strength of social software can also be its
weakness: it’s so open with very little control."

Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs: Personal Publication and Public Attention

Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs: Personal Publication and Public Attention: "In the educational system, the system legitimizes itself through creating tools for self-criticism. In this manner, criticism, rather than destabilising the hegemony disseminated through the educational system, reinforces it (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990b, p. 61). This study of reproduction appears to trap a scholar in an unbreakable trap, where the authority the scholar wields in her own study of the meaning of society is supplied through the doxa of the society within which study ensues. The fact that this structure permits criticism legitimates it, the same way as the criticism of the democratic government in the political sphere of Habermas legitimates the government it criticises."

Chaser's war on APEC

Blogging policy and employee rights

This is an excellent article , available from Proquest (subscription required, sorry) which outlines a number of issues surrounding policy and how these interact with employee rights

IBM blogging policy

The IBM blogging policy is very detailed and explains much about the company's engagement strategy.

Sun blogging policy

The official Sun policy on blogging. It's pretty cruisy, although reading between the lines it hits hard.

Recruiting: Blogging Is A Legally Protected Activity, No Really

StlRecruiting: Blogging Is A Legally Protected Activity, No Really: "If, however, you have a wild streak ..., or perhaps if you have been ... fired for blogging, it's something your lawyer ought to be thinking about. And if you're a company, let me stress this again - why haven't you talked to a a lawyer about your employee blogging policies?"

Develop a corporate blogging policy / Neil McIntyre

Develop a corporate blogging policy / Neil McIntyre: "There are few golden examples of corporate blogging policies that provide employees useful and necessary guidance on what they can blog about and how they should do it as it relates to company information."

Rheingold's Tomorrow: Why Censoring Cyberspace is Dangerous & Futile

Rheingold's Tomorrow: Why Censoring Cyberspace is Dangerous & Futile: "Don't be fooled when some politician uses 'pornography and pedophiles on the Internet' as an excuse to cripple the most valuable technology America has going for it. Heavy-handed attempts to impose restrictions on the unruly but incredibly creative anarchy of the Net could kill the spirit of cooperative knowledge-sharing that makes the Net valuable to millions."

Blog profile: Brands, bridges and bushfires

Blog profile: Brands, bridges and bushfires: "As recent US cases indicate, some enterprises have sought to crimp comment made by employees on a personal basis - an issue that we have explored in discussing online free speech. Those efforts reflect community and judicial acceptance of limits on employee statements in newspapers, private newsletters and other fora. They are based on assumptions that staff have some obligations to the particular enterprise, whether the blog bears that organisation's logo or not."

Whilst free speech is desirable in an organisation, there are practical limits.

Forbes.com - Attack of the blogs

Forbes.com - Magazine Article: "Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo."

If you're thinking that it's ok to not keep yourself up-to-date about what people are saying about your business, you probably want to read this article.

Rebecca Blood :: Weblogs: A History And Perspective

Rebecca Blood :: Weblogs: A History And Perspective: "Blogger, Pitas, and all the rest have given people with little or no knowledge of HTML the ability to publish on the web: to pontificate, remember, dream, and argue in public, as easily as they send an instant message."

Rebecca Blood :: Weblogs: A History And Perspective

Rebecca Blood :: Weblogs: A History And Perspective: "While weblogs had always included a mix of links, commentary, and personal notes, in the post-Blogger explosion increasing numbers of weblogs eschewed this focus on the web-at-large in favor of a sort of short-form journal. These blogs, often updated several times a day, were instead a record of the blogger's thoughts: something noticed on the way to work, notes about the weekend, a quick reflection on some subject or another."

Open Business speaks with Tim O'Reilly

OpenBusiness spoke with Tim O’Reilly about the evolution of the Web and its most current trends, which are commonly labeled as Web 2.0. In September 2005, Tim wrote a seminal piece that presented many of the aspects of Web 2.0 and now surrounds much of the buzz around a new generation of internet applications. In the interview, he re-emphasizes the most important points of this development, talks about the evolutionary relationship between open & free and shares his vision of bionic systems that combine human and computational intelligence.

Read the full interview...OpenBusiness » Blog Archive » People Inside & Web 2.0: An Interview with Tim O’Reilly

Lessig on corruption in US politics

Social commentator and author, Lawrence Lessig, says in this video what many of us have believed for some time now, that, whilst there are many genuine people in politics, all too often, the need to raise funds for campaigns to stay in office is causing many decisions to be made for the wrong reason - money. It's worth watching.

Latest killer app has us all a-Twitter - web - Technology - smh.com.au

Latest killer app has us all a-Twitter - web - Technology - smh.com.au