Why can't people just be glad that we're still buying American? This is not a big deal. Chill out and save your energy for making tinfoil hats. Please.Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.
Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world.
Google is also providing the search features for a Wikipedia-style site, called Intellipedia, on which agents post information about their targets that can be accessed and appended by colleagues, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The contracts are just a number that have been entered into by Google's 'federal government sales team', that aims to expand the company's reach beyond its core consumer and enterprise operations.
Andrew : March 2008 Archives
Much ado is being made of this Times Online article which talks about the CIA buying Google's search technology and using Wikis to sort and share information on potential suspects.
From a tech policy standpoint, all I have to say is: big f-ing deal! so what?
Google sells a product. A damn good product. Wikis are useful for collaborating on sharing information. Thousands of us use them every day. Millions for Google.
If the Federal Government wants to have better tools to process the massive volumes of information, what's to stop them from using the best vendor out there? We should be proud that the best technology is still American, and those free-market junkies should be doing backflips that the "market" produced something so superior it is better than anything that the American intelligence community can come up with.
From the TImes article:
I'll admit it. Arrington and I don't agree on everything. I'm probably a blip on his radar.
On the other hand, I am behind him 110% on his lawsuit against Facebook for misappropriation of his likeness, even if it is an early April Fool's joke.
Why? I'm sick of one company leveraging people's willingness to share information with their friends for profit for lack of a business model to satisfy hungry VCs.
Facebook once had a product. Now they're sacrificing privacy and user respect to give their Chinese investors a ROI. They're even going into CHina despite MarkZ's assertions they wanted to do it the right way w/o becoming another Jerry Yang.
When people trust you with their information, they expect them to not exploit your likeness, especially if you are public figure.
I don't care if this was meant as a joke. It's a serious matter that has failed to be addressed in today's economy and Web 2.0 (god I hate that term) world.
London's Times Online reports on a creepy Facebook app called SNIFF, which tracks your location upon request of...anyone, once you opt-in.
Let's contrast this to Loopt, shall we? Loopt allows you to turn the service off and even spoof your location. This is totally the opposite. Once you're in, you're in. Oh, yeah. They're going to charge you per use!Husbands who are not where they are supposed to be could soon be in danger of being "sniffed" out by a mobile phone service that gives suspicious partners an electronic map showing the location of their spouse.
The Social Network Integrated Friend Finder (Sniff) is a new application, accessed via Facebook or mobile phone, which could bring an end to frantic "Where r u?" text messages.
The service, popular in Scandinavia, promises to provide users with a detailed map of their friends' locations, any time and anywhere. However, there are fears that Sniff could be abused by employers to remove the last vestiges of privacy from staff.
Useful Networks, the American company behind Sniff, promised that only consumers who gave their permission could be electronically tracked by the service, which operates across all mobile carriers. The company plans to charge users about 75p for each location "sniff", with the results for mobile customers sent by return SMS. But "sniffing" could become addictive.
It will be the first Facebook application to apply premium charges to customers' mobile bills. The heaviest users in Sweden are wireless-connected members of the social networking site, who have integrated the application into their personal profile page.
If there was a wrong way to do this, SNIFF has found it. It...stinks.
Later on, I'll get to the CIA/NSA's enlistment of Google to outsource their spying efforts. Don't be evil? Yeah, right?
No, it's not an endorsement. Trust me, folks. On the other hand, David All, GOP New Media guru has pointed me towards an article in the The Washington Times, a publication which I normal ignore but for some reason has a really good take on how Senator McCain doesn't just dismiss bloggers as "bloggers," as in HRC's "The Blogs were going crazy" video.
Although David and I don't agree eye-to-eye on many things (while I'm issue-oriented towards tech, he's very much a total political animal on the GOP side and I respect that) he makes a very important point about the changing nature of media that technology allows for:
"It gave him a microphone when others had already left the building," said David All, one of the Republicans' Web pioneers who runs Slate Card.com and who said Mr. McCain has benefited from Mr. Hynes' ties to bloggers. "That very much symbolizes the role of bloggers: We don't have editors to report to, and there isn't a big meeting with editors every morning. What that comes down to is personal relationships."
Can someone enlighten to me when reporting news ceased to be about personal relationships? If anything, the rise of social media, blogs (god I hate that term) and independent journalism has boosted the necessity of maintaining relationships and *gasp* networking, not just telling someone who you write for and hoping they'll think you're important. These days, everyone is important and you can't afford to give people who want to talk to you the brush-off.
Sure, I could be described as a "liberal blogger" although I prefer to focus on issues and not ideology (remember when I supported Utah's plan for opt-in 'net censorship?) and politicians relationship with the tech industry/new media and the other way around.
David has hit it right on the head. I'll sit down with you and hit "record" and I'll put your words out there for all to hear. Not just one "macaca" moment to be re-played over and over again, but I'll put the whole thing out there. I explain how I do things before I interview people. How do you think I get people to talk to me? They trust me, whether they agree with me or not (The CTO of the MPAA who I questioned earlier in the day thursday sat down for 25 minutes with me to talk because I let him know that I wanted his side totally on the record, not some sound bite) and in turn I give them the respect of reporting their words, not spinning them, not editing them to death, just being honest.
Honestly is the best policy, and that's how you maintain a relationship, and a legacy.
Thanks for the tip off, David.
Shel Israel, who has a far larger of number of Twitter followers, friends, etc, than I do, has a rather straightforward Twitter following policy which he has posted on his blog, Global Neighbourhoods.
Shel has a pretty simple request: he wants to know who the heck you are.
I'll give him props. This is possibly the most brilliant articulation of a philosophy which, as a longtime Internet user, I have adhered to for as long as I have been online (which has been almost half of my life). Despite the warnings from doomsayers to "never give out personal information online," I have always posted under either my real name, my initials (see my Twitter username), or with some kind of link back to my real identity (Andrew Feinberg), location (whether it has been Washington, DC, Madison, WI or Philadelphia, PA) and other information allowing people to know who is behind whatever is being written.
- If I do not know who you are, or what you look like, or where you are coming from I will not follow you.
- With very few exceptions, I will not follow brands, candidates, causes or company names. I wish to talk with humans, not brand icons, neither surveys nor bots. If you are a real person & you are passionate about your work, then I embrace you. If you are a Direct Marketer using Twitter to push you brand into my forehead, I will block you.
- Even if you are a real person, I may not follow you. I need to see that you are talking either about topics or people I care about.
- If you disagree with me, do it under your own name and I will respect you. If you personally insult me, I will block you. If you are consistently unpleasant or just boring, I will unfollow or block you.
- With extremely rare exception, I will not follow anonymous Tweeters.
This has two effects (to begin with):
- When I write or participate in an online community, I know that my words can be linked back to me. This is not self-censorship, but self-respect. I have enough respect for my name (or as Gary Vaynerchuk would say, my legacy) that I am willing to stand by my words and opinions. One of my main questions for social networking privacy or PR reps is how to deal with the "audit trail" you leave behind as you participate on communities or discussions. I think the middle ground that I can agree with many of them on is that honesty is the best policy, and that anonymity should be used when needed. The default should be to stand by your name.
- I am easy to find and I have a reputation to protect. I make it a point to respect people because I never know when someone will want something from me, want to help me, or want me to help them. By putting my name and identity on the line, I allow myself to be more helpful since if someone likes what I do, they can ask me to help them. Case in point: last week, the guys at Mashable wanted some help covering TPS. Although it didn't work out in the end, they were able to get a hold of me because my identity is no secret.
So, if you are going to participate, stand behind your words. Political Candidates have "stand by their ads." Don't you think that Shel has a good policy, and you should "stand by your words?"
I can sympathize with parents and protection advocates who caution against sharing too much. I agree wholeheartedly. On the other hand, there is a point where you can share too little, and I think the conversation needs to move towards the center of that debate.
There's actually much more I want to say about this and inject a policy debate into it, but I want to wait until I finish Adam Theirer's report on internet safety. Being on the "education" side of that debate, I think there is a generation gap on how anonymity and pseudonymity is viewed that must be addressed before we take draconian measures or go off the deep end. I know I keep saying this, but there's more to come. There needs to be, since identity is at the heart of so many privacy issues.
I'm Andrew Feinberg, and I approve this message.
London's Sunday Independent reports that a yet another mobile phone study has found that using one of those helpful little gadgets will kill more people than smoking or asbestos.
I guess if they're right, the answer to "where you at" will be "in the hospital, fool!"Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.
The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.
It draws on growing evidence - exclusively reported in the IoS in October - that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.
But seriously. If I stop using my phone, can I smoke or drink more? We can't all live forever, and I think it might be harder to give up mobile services than nicotine. I don't just crave my phone, I love it. It keeps me connected. So, to express how I feel about my BlackBerry...
...is Rick Astley
Wired News has picked up on something disturbing: "Griefers" on the Epilepsy Foundation's message boards intentionally posting links to animated gifs, videos and javascript designed to trigger seizures.
This may be a first, a 'net based attack which inflicts physical harm. Sadly, the story is a few days late in breaking. I'd love to have seen this brought up in the child protection panel, I can easily see things like this being a "new direction" for cyberbullying and whatnot. Seriously.Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users.
The nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation, which runs the forum, briefly closed the site Sunday to purge the offending messages and to boost security.
"We are seeing people affected," says Ken Lowenberg, senior director of web and print publishing at the Epilepsy Foundation. "It's fortunately only a handful. It's possible that people are just not reporting yet -- people affected by it may not be coming back to the forum so fast."
The incident, possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims, began Saturday, March 22, when attackers used a script to post hundreds of messages embedded with flashing animated gifs.
So, I guess the question is does this meet the legal definition for assault?
...because I'm still getting over my jet lag. We've got some stuff ready to go into the tubes though.
First off, another shout-out to Adam Thierer who has a great review of Jonathan Zittrain's new book over at Tech Liberation Front.
He does a great job of "calling out" Professor Z on something that I was thinking but having trouble wording.
So, my question to Jonathan is--to quote the great philosopher Rodney King--Why can't we all just get along? Isn't a sign of progress that we now have different models that appeal to different types of users? After all, those supposedly "sterile" applications like the iPhone and Tivo are loved by millions. Even calling them "sterile" seems a bit silly to me. After all, those devices have "fostered innovation and disruption" just like PCs and the Net have, just in a different way. Regardless, does Jonathan think all those people would really be better off if they were forced to fend for themselves with completely open iPhones and TiVos? Should the iPhone be shipped to market with no apps loaded on the main screen, forcing everyone to get them for on their own? Should TiVos have no interactive menus out-of-the-box, forcing you to go online and find some homebrew that someone whipped up to give you an open source guide in all its blocky ugliness?
Adam also recently finished penning a report on protecting kids online, and given his participation in a great panel the other day, I'm working on reviewing his book.
More to come...
Back safely ensconced in the Eastern Time Zone, I can finally say a few things and "exhale."
- Do not Red-Eye if you can help it. If you must, follow Andrew Noyes' lead and take VirginAmerica. I know I'm going to check it out.
- Conferences are much more fun to cover when they are focused. I enjoyed the networking and atmosphere at SXSW in general, but in terms of things to write about, the guys at Tech Policy Summit put on a great event. Pretty much every issue that I care about and I try to bring to you, the loyal and stalwart readers, was touched on in some way. I can't wait for next year's. Not only is it in the Bay Area and closer to many of the players, it means I can crash on Alex's floor.
- So far the great wireless experiment has been great. All those photos you can see on Flickr have been uploaded without the use of a single cable, in almost real time. The Eye-Fi isn't without problems, but my set-up has allowed for some cool things. I'll do a better write-up on it this weekend since several people asked about it.
A few shout-outs. Natalie Fonseca and Marc Licciardi at TPS arranged my getting there and helped me out while I was covering their great event, along with Cathy Rought from Dittus Communications, who was invaluable in putting me in touch with some great people to talk to. Mozelle Thompson and Alec Ross were great sports about getting back-to-back questioning in panels, and Jon Taplin was his usual fantastic self.
Special thanks go to my interview subjects, including Jim Williams, Brian Knapp, Prith Banerjee and Gary Fazzino, as well as the incredible Craig Newmark.
Andrew Noyes gave some good placement to our photo coverage at Tech Daily Dose, and Adam Theirer was so impressed with our coverage he didn't even bother to do any blogging himself. Plus, he had possibly the best, brightest green sport jacket I've ever seen yesterday. We have proof!
If I missed you, yell at me appropriately. Back to work.
Charles Cooper looks at Facebook's latest round of venture funding and asks if MarkZ and friends should look behind them...
Go Twitter, Go.
As a Twitter user and a supporter of all things Al3x I can't help but be pulling for 'em.But there's an interesting discussion around a Twitter versus Facebook faceoff looming. In a video post making the rounds, Gary Vaynerchuk riffs about the quickness of Twitter becoming a factor--at least among the early adopter crowd.
"The instant gratification. The world is moving so quickly. That the fact that we can get that response so quickly. Look AOL Instant Messenger--still around and strong, right? So is Twitter taking a lot from Facebook?"
Go Twitter, Go.
Andrew Keen, Author of Cult of the Amateur
Gregg Spiridellis, JibJab CEO
Jonathan Taplin, USC
There is some discussion of a "Copyright tax" to allow more free trade of content and compensate copyright holders.
I've missed a whole bunch of this, but I walked in to hear Jonathan Taplin talk about the DMCA as the "Lawyer's Preservation Act."
Keen thinks there would be a massive user rebellion over the tax. Spiradellis thinks that content is a communications tool, and that they won't pay for "linear content" like TV shows but they will pay for things like e-cards.
Keen: Most blogs suck, the vast majority of content is awful. We have less time and more things to do.
Taplin says that the current content model is monetizing based on directed and CPM, and that may work and may not work.
I'm sorry, but I can't keep up. That's it for TPS 2008. I'll be in DC in the morning, possibly a podcast with Alex tonight.
Even Andrew Noyes has checked out. I'm hanging in there.
"Leading the Way in Broadband Innovation: What Should the US Strategy Be?"
Ambassador Richard Russell, President's office on Science and Technology Policy
Milo Medin - CTO, M2Z Networks
Susan Crawford, Visiting Professor, Yale Law School
Joe Waz, VP of External Affairs and Public Policy, Comcast
Quick hit and run liveblogging:
Crawford - Broadband is not Internet Access. We've failed to have an industrial policy pushing access, we have no competition, and that "Shamu and Godzilla" are battling with bundles. Internet Access is a utility like electricity, sewers, etc.
Waz - Cable is a historical accident: CATV was originally built to bring TV signals to people who couldn't get it. He thinks wireless will lead to competition, and that we're gonna have multiple wireline providers "trying to beat the tar out of each other." Docsis 3.0 is being spurred by Verizon FiOS. Bundles are pushing adoption (cites Triple Play).
Moderator Wildstrom asks if there is a contradiction between the idea of competition and the idea of Internet as a monopoly. Punts to Crawford, who believes that this is a natural monopoly, and that 700mhz as a "third pipe" is a pipe dream (my words, not hers). She believes whoever provides access should be considered a utility. Calls Comcast a bandwidth hog for using their bandwidth for TV.
Medin calls her idea "a travesty."
Russell also disagrees. Two ways to look at problem: a) one heavily regulated carrier or b) multiple providers and have marketplace competing at multiple levels in different ways. Right now? We have the worst of both worlds in competition between cable and telcos, but not alot. All networks, except FiOS are retrofitted to carry the Internet. Hard to hit a Gigabit with Wireless, but some people would rather have ubiquity than higher speeds (like me!).
Russell wants a 4th and 5th pipe somehow, and believes that would drive prices down dramatically.
Crawford says by a utility, she means non-discrimination.
Waz responds to the "bandwidth hog" comment by saying that must-carry is a bandwidth hog. DOCSIS 3.0 will allow more channel bonding. Crawford agrees, but as an Internet provider, TV is still a bandwidth hog (she says).
Wildstrom: Do we need Universal Service for Broadband?
Russell: Universal Service is good, but can be cautionary tale because it could deter new market entrants who aren't getting subsidy.
Wildstrom: No excuse for huge POTS Universal Service fund.
Medin agrees, and says that we should target infrastructure by geographic need.
Crawford has hope for White Spaces, despite her skepticism on wireless.
Russell: Hybrid systems could be a solution for rural areas. The developing world is going wireless. Poorest slums in Kenya are filled with mobile phones, it's the first thing people buy.
Waz: Why are we talking about Net Neutrality instead of fixing "digital divide?" Net Neutrality and FCC involvement is irrelevant. He wants the "fine minds of Palo Alto" on rural access.
Crawford: Why not make rural access open? Why can't we have both?
Medin: Traffic shaping dates back to NSFNet, not new at all. Question w/ management is "what is the goal?"
Crawford is wary of the network operators having too much control...refers to common carrier system. Medin thinks that's crap. His solution to Net Neutrality is to have more networks! "Competition can discipline the system..." Notes that FCC grants tons of waivers to licensees who don't build out.
Russell: what we want to avoid is anticompetitive behavior, and the FCC is doing a good job of being "the cop on the beat..."
Wildstrom: Authors of '96 Telecommunications Act thought they were creating competion. Why did that fail? Was it killed by anticompetitive behavior?
Waz: You don't expect someone to share something they built that would result in their own demise...put a ten year freeze on voice over cable. Government needs to "clear the way"
Crawford agrees that the protracted litigation around '96 Act killed it, but the separation between the content and the provider was a good idea.
Medin: '96 Act was a compromise, engineers don't like compromise. Compromising on engineering leads "crap for policy...cutting the baby in half."
Russell: Remember the '96 Act took 10 years to write, should have been called the '86 Act. Had way too much to do with Long Distance and wrongly believed that competition could exist by everyone sharing the same 80 year old copper wire.
Crawford: The '96 hardly mentions the 'net except for the defunct CDA.
Russell asks Crawford if because of uncertainty on FCC's interpretation of Title I of '96 Act, people aren't writing code. Crawford segues into a Net Neutrality argument, but Medin cuts her off and notes that lots of business are getting funded that depend on networks, and if someone does something egregious, it'll get dealt with by competition. Medin is still arguing for more pipes..."if you don't like Comcast, jump on FiOS."
That's it for this panel...one more to go, let's see if I can survive.
This morning, Jim was on a panel that featured some heated discussions on things like bandwidth consumption by P2P, the role of government in reducing piracy, etc.
Thanks, Jim. Anytime.
Since he ended up on the receiving end of one of my more pointed questions, he approached me after the panel and wanted to sit down and set the record straight. I never turn down the opportunity for a good talk, and Jim was quite happy to discuss a wide range of issues, as well as clarify things he thought I was off the mark on.
Here's the audio.
Thanks, Jim. Anytime.
Talking with Declan McCullough, Ashwin Navin scored a few cool points. He noted that many companies are using BT distribution to distribute legitimate content, and at Declan's prodding, takes issue with the earlier claim that most P2P traffic is pirated.
For the company itself, it's still small. 55 employees, no Washington lobbyists. They want to sell their technology to companies who want to make P2P a higher margin part of their business.
Navin believes that P2P will be adopted by people who need to save money on distributing video, and they're still "working through" the cloud of illegality from Grokster, and that companies like Yahoo can use BT to distribute content.
What does Navin see the role of Congress being? He answers that if Ed Markey called him to ask help in writing a bill, he'd be the wrong guy. He goes back to the fact that they're about the technology. He's not going to hire lobbyists, but will allow Google, etc to work the Government Relations front.
When I asked him if it was irresponsible to allow others to "carry his water" by not hiring lobbyists and letting other companies do the heavy lifting if needed, Navin was actually rather honest in his self-assessment, saying that yes, it could be irresponsible or naive, but the gist of his argument was that he's going to let the product speak for itself, and that it's "breaking down barriers." For instance, kids in China knew who he was when he visited recently. I'm not sure how that fits in, but if he's brave enough to let the software do the talking and not take a proactive approach like say, loopt, (see my interview with Brian Knapp posted earlier) especially in spite of P2P's history, well, more power to him.
Other questions were more technical in nature dealing with the recently settled Comcast issue, and one questioner pointed out the MPAA's idiotic statement that the Comcast settlement was a "step in combatting online piracy," and asked Navin how the agreement would fight privacy. He had no idea.
Navin added that BT plans to work with ISPs, content providers, IETF, and pretty much everyone in the "spirit of openness." He envisions the network as being less asymmetric, and I think that's a pretty optimistic prediction. Other suggestions included hardware-based solutions for bandwidth issues and copyright problems like Akamai's software.
When asked if ISPs could sit on BT streams and identify pirated content, Navin alluded to the fact that if an ISP and a copyright holder had a deal, it is technically feasible for an ISP to watch BT packets.
Jonathan Taplin asked if he's exaggerated the ease that Cable companies could have a symmetrical network. Navin had no idea about the cost and ease (he cites Brian Roberts of Comcast saying it would be done) but emphasizes the importance of open dialogue with ISPs.
Navin did say that identifying infringing torrent content would be quite costly in response to a question from McCullough. What he sees, though, is that rights-holders will embrace content-recognition and P2P technology that will enable new business models, not just takedown notices. In Navin's future, piracy will disappear because the free flow of video we have now will be monetized to the point that it will become a non-issue.
Next, Declan brought up the idea of blanket licenses, and Navin was not adverse to a "Rhapsody-style" license that would not "criminalize the vast majority of people in the United States..."
Good job by both.
Brian Knapp is Chief Privacy Officer for loopt, the "mobile social networking" company recently promoted by Sprint-Nextel and Boost Mobile using those adds with people wearing fat suits floating in swimming pools. Knapp describes loopt as "a mashup of google maps and twitter..." (a thousand web 2.0 marketers heads just exploded, but he's pretty spot on, actually).
We took advantage of some downtime here at TPS to talk about his service, why it's cool, semantic games like "tracking" versus "location sharing", and, most importantly, how entreprenerus and innovators with potentially controversial technologies can get out in front of the doomsayers, horror stories and local news anchors. I'm very impressed by "where he's at" on how tech entrepreneurs can deal with Washington. Finally, a company that has the right idea.
Kara Swisher of AllThingsD.com is moderating a panel called "Personalization and Privacy: Deciding Who Does What with Customer Data"
Left to Right
Jules Polonetsky - SVP and Chief Privacy Officer, AOL
Joanne McNabb, Chief of the California Office of Privacy Protection
Leslie Harris - President and CEO, Center for Democracy and Technology
Polonetsky opens up by alluding to his years in politics, and says straight out that privacy isn't a prime target of employees, not a management issue.
Kara notes that people now post information that "used to make stalkers put in effort" (laugh line) and Leslie Harris of CDT responds that the idea that "people/this generation don't care about privacy" is a myth, and that the more people learn, the more they worry, even after they "opt-in." Her first example is Facebook and the "drunken college picture regret" phenomenon.
Kara: "they have to justify their $15bil valuation...they'd have to get into the drug business..."
Ms McNabb notes that her office is an advisory and educational, not regulatory body. She starts by saying that there is a certain "lull" about the way people interact online, and that they assume they're talking to their friends. They may not realize it's "forever." Harris responds that this isn't transparent, because many of these issues are in privacy policies that consumers don't understand. Swisher asks for a suggestion on how to educate about these policies (which may not protect privacy at all) and Harris suggests a standard of prominent notices that meet "reasonable consumer expectations."
Polonetsky jumps in and says that people don't want to read this stuff, it's not compelling. He points to a study about the best way to communicate (mentions the Elevator Pitch) and they came up with (I am not kidding) A CARTOON PENGUIN!!!
Polonetsky's Penguin reads Anchovy News, and the cookie stays with the Penguin, and when he goes to The Penguin Times, a gigantic Anchovy ad pops up.
The discussion shifts to legislation, and Harris points out that the laws on the books are outdated (despite Polonetsky's protestations that they'd be boring) and that a uniform privacy law is needed.
Swisher asks if there should be a central "privacy control panel" to which McNabb asks "who'd run it?" Answer? SkyNet.
Polonetsky goes back into AOL's development of the buddy list and how he made sure that people always had choices in sharing information with their friends despite concerns that it was a privacy issue. Harris agrees.
Swisher tells a story about how she had all the AOL execs on her buddy list, and when she was at WSJ and got a tip on the merger, she went online and IM'd them all:
"We know."
Her buddies all signed off.
Now the discussion is on DNA testing and databases turning it into a social network. The room is palpably creeped out. Harris notes that this isn't new, that health search engines collect data, too. I didn't think about that, but yeah...ouch. The talk is turning to PHRs and Harris (CDT) is saying that despite polls saying that people want access to their records, they're concerned about privacy, and health data is a big fat red flag for people.
McNabb points out that there's an advisory board developing suggestions/regulations for PHR data standards, and that's happening in other places, too. McNabb sees the desire to regulate privacy is coming from the states, and Harris says that despite their inertia, the Federal government will take up a PHR privacy bill.
Kara is talking about Robert Scoble and data portability, and Facebook. She's telling his story about him wanting to screen-scrape his friend data, I jumped in and passed along the story about Mark Zuckerberg completely dodging Robert's question at the Facebook Developer's Garage at SXSW, and how Facebook denies the feature ever existing.
Now Polonetsky is talking about "quick decisions" on who can use your data. Kara points out that there are several thousand Facebook developers who can access your data, and we don't know who they are. Polonetsky can't speak for Bebo, but he says a big issue is the ability to say "I want control of my data back" and that Facebook needs to incorporate this.
Kara asks about "doomsday scenarios"
Harris: We need to fix systems to people have control of data after they put it somewhere. Scariest situation is the Government coming for profile data.
McNabb is scared by the level of errors that are present and get propagated, and how organizations who rely on that data don't talk to each other and there isn't a way to fix it. There is no one place to go to fix it, lots of data warehouses have it, and people can be denied credit, airport boarding, housing, etc. Harris adds online health information. Now every insurer has it. Apparently this was in a Sandra Bullock movie.
Polonetsky was actually a victim of identity theft while he was the Consumer Affairs Commissioner of NYC, and it took him a whole year to get it cleared out. How can people who have to work all day get these kinds of things taken care of? He's less worried by online profiles than he is by how hard it is to fix this personal kind of theft.
Harris notes that as behavioral advertising markets expand, we're only at the beginning of the conversation and we need to get ahead of it.
Swisher: What is the scariest company or business model?
Harris: Single Sign On and Federal Government
McNabb: Feds
Polonetsky: Advertisers who run ads with hidden code that dump spyware, and then sell you programs to remove it. He's bothered by amoral marketers.
Questioner brings up McNealy's "Get Over It" quote. McNabb asks him if he assumes all his conversations are private.
Swisher laugh line: Google is going to become self-aware like SkyNet.
Another questioner notes that in the EU, privacy is a human right. Asks Polonetsky if AOL has different privacy rules by country, response is that they tend to act globally and generally just have certain features on or off by default. He says that EU is driving the debate. His example? IP addresses. Mentions Google, says this is a healthy debate and that it's good that companies are making tough decisions.
Another questioner asks about the CDT's petition for a FTC "do not track" list. Harris explains it in detail that I can't keep up with, but would require a central list of "ad servers." She doesn't know if it'd work, but it's spurring voluntary changes.
Great panel.
I feel bad because I still haven't written up the SXSW Child Protection panel, but here I am again at a great panel on the same subject.
Moderated by CBS' Larry Magid (who wrote a book on Prodigy that I read when I was 7 years old and using my parents computer), this one features (Left to Right in the above picture) Rachel O'Connell of Bebo, Hemanshu Nigam, Chief Security Officer of MySpace, Joan Irvine, CEO of the Association of Sites Advocating the Protection of Children, and Adam Theirer, Senior Fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation (and one of our loyal, awesome CV readers).
One of the first topic to come up was how many child protection issues come up across borders in Web 2.0. Ms. O'Connell pointed out that the distinction between the online and offline world has blurred significantly in social media, and we need to stay up to speed on how young people use these technologies and make sure they are used in a positive way. She wants to mitigate risk, instead of taking the attitude that risks can be eliminated. Very smart.
One concern she brought up (keep in mind she's from the UK) is cyber-bullying and social exploitation using offline information, and used a triangle metaphor for securing information:
Location - What are the laws and social circumstances?
Users - emotional and mental health support for some
Mitigation of Misuse - get the message across to ill-doers that they are not anonymous.
Magid segued into while Web 1.0 was about protecting kids from bad adults, Web 2.0 has young people as the bad guys. Examples - Cyber Bullying, "Child created child pornography," etc. How do we deal with this?
Nigam (MySpace) said that "we don't want to compete on safety" and are working with everyone. He said that users need to be educated, and in a way that matters to them. Also, they want to educate non-users (parents). Right now, MySpace is running a campaign to get parents to talk to kids about online safety. It drives traffic to experts on these issues, such as their MySpace Safety website, which educates about things like what to post and what not to post (and that it's forever), Cyber bullying, etc.
"Education has to be relevant to the users you are trying to reach" -- Hemanshu Nigam
Adam Thierer pointed out that a vast majority of "solication" is "teen-on-teen" and that we shouldn't be so shocked. Adam suggests developing methods for intervention when it escalates from what used to be in the hallway to being full-fledged bullying and harassment.
Magid revisited the idea of Government regulation, and asked the panel what the role of Government should be in protecting children.
Ms. O'Connell (Bebo) pointed out that Gordon Brown (PM of Great Britain) has commissioned a psychologist to figure out what the real risks are, if the media is exaggerating the risks, and finding out if there is even a need of intervention. Her report came back (possibly today) and said that many of the doomsday scenarios are propagated by media, and that private industry's solutions are working. The role of the government should be to monitor and to possibly set standards for educating certain professionals, like teachers.
"If we are to educate young people...the department of education has a duty of care to...educate teachers...there is a positive role for government..."
Magid again plays devils advocate and asks what the response is to the constant calls for more regulation. Mr. Nigam hits back and says that the most important role the Government can play is to enforce the laws that already exist. Some money quotes/excerpts:
"A crime is a crime is a crime...enforce the laws against the criminals."
"It is easy...to create fear...it is a much more honourable task to inspire dialogue..."
He points out that one law that is needed is mandatory online education, and that only two states have mandatory online education laws.
When Mr. Nigam was questioned by a father about an incident when a "friend" copied his daughter's information and gave it to a predator after his daughter had taken her site down. He claims the FBI believes he should be suing MySpace, and asked what MySpace is doing to prevent this kind of "mirroring" or "identify theft." Nigam noted that MySpace has options to prevent some copying and privacy settings, and that the legal responsibility probably lies with the third party. He also (correctly) stressed that this another example of a need for education. Nigam is totally on top of this. "If someone calls you and tries to kill you, you call the police, not sue the phone company."
Magid wrapped things up by pointing out that there is information that maybe he wouldn't put online himself, and education is definitely a solution.
Great panel. Hopefully more from some of the panelists later.
Another artfully moderated Steve Wildstrom panel.
L-R: Jim Davis (CIO, UCLA), Zahavah Levine (Chief Counsel, Youtube), Vance Ikezoye (CEO, Audible Magic), Jim Williams (SVP/CTO, MPAA)
This panel on the DMCA looked to be an angry one, but turned out to be pretty civil.
Interesting fact, YouTube has proprietary technology for identifying copyrighted works.
Everyone seemed to agree that on the whole, the DMCA has been good, but the trend towards "pre-litigation litgation" has been frustrating, but irrelevant from a consumer standpoint. Interestingly, it has pulled Universities (as ISPs) into the middle, but allowed them to influence a new aspect of education on copyrights and IP.
Wildstrom brought up the anti-circumvention rules, and noted that as a consumer, if he buys a DVD, he wants to watch it how he wants to (not reproduce it), and mentioned the common law right of first sale. If he wants to watch a DVD on his MacBook Air without an optical drive, how can he do that without breaking the DMCA?
Jim Williams from the MPAA said that the problem wasn't DRM or DMCA, but the lack of foresight on the part of those who created the DVD standard over ten years ago. He pointed out that Blu-Ray's encryption (AACS) lets you make "managed copies" and should fix this problem.
DMCA is ten years old. Wildstrom asked what the panel would change in copyright law.
Levine (YouTube) would allow for easier grants of blanket licenses on a mass scale due to the structure of the music rights in the U.S. You need recording rights, the composition rights which is almost impossible and the way the publishing industry developed (performing versus reproducing versus distributing). She noted that a webcaster needs a license for the streamed copy, publishing rights, and a performance license for the streaming. There is also no database of who owns what music. In contrast, Radio broadcasters have compulsory licenses for mechanical royalties, and zero performance royalties. Levine thinks compulsory licenses would be a good idea, and let more musicians get paid.
Williams (MPAA) said they don't want any more compulsory licenses and want to roll back a few by systems by which people can do business depending on the content. He'd also like to see more legal incentive for ISPs to do more about "massive, large-scale infringement" and seemed to call out Jim Davis from UCLA, asking how much of his network was used for P2P sharing. He also claimed that if you filter out copyrighted works, almost all P2P network traffic disappears, and the internet is "clogged with stolen goods....with free riders that are hogging bandwidth and taking it away from legitimate consumers." He also appeared to criticize Richard Lynch from Verizon for screening out Child Porn but not policing P2P traffic for infringing content, and called for ISPs to "unclog the internet." When I challenged him on this comparison, he backed up and said that there were good uses for P2P, and efforts should be made to stop the illegal uses. I'm not sure that I was entirely fair because the issue is one that got me rather annoyed, and my question may have been a bit too pointed (I quoted Joseph Welch. Maybe that was a bit over the line.) Mr Williams later asked if we could speak later on the subject, and I agreed because I want to be fair, so we should have an interview with him up soon. He was very eager to get his message across, and I suspect that we'll have a much more productive conversation outside of a "sound-byte" environment.
Wildstrom noted that many TV shows can't get onto DVD because of problems with music rights (I want the Wonder Years! Now!). This is a problem, and he noted that only a tiny fraction of movies are available because of this. He said that "less would get stolen if more were available legally." Applause line.
With regard to the TV Music problem, after Wildstrom pointed out that rights to a ton of music from the 60's is still in litigation, Vance Ikezoye from Audible Magic chimed in and said that there are efforts in place to develop technology to create and maintain a database of rights ownership, since records of publishing rights are scattered to the winds.
Jim Davis added that a reason that many Universities don't block content is because they can educate rather than enforce, and that a lot of P2P content is both legal and useful. Ms. Levine pointed out that after they remove videos they get lots of angry users who don't understand copyright law, and that citizens aren't being trained in copyright law in a social media age. With their filtering technology, they don't use it to just block videos blindly, because they need to collaborate with content owners to find out who owns what and what rights the owners will give users. Many users of their identification technology let them monetize their content, not blocking it. Very cool, and very Web 2.0
I arrived late to this talk because I was finishing out an interview, but as I walked in Mr. Lynch is noting (correctly) that Verizon's mission is to be "at the forefront of customer demand." This, he says, is the reason behind Verizon's Open Access initiative.
He says that customers want the devices they are going to want, and that the focus is going to be on building the best network possible for those devices, and simply certifying that the device will be compatible on a minimal level.
Lynch said that the requirements are not so different from the model they use to certify devices sold in stores, but without subsidies. The subsidies will not go away, and the consumer will be able to choose. On the other hand, Verizon and their subsidized phones will continue to provide another level of user experience.
When asked by interviewer Steven Wildstrom if this was genuine, or just getting in front of the FCC, he said that while people are cynical and those minds can't be changed, Verizon's ODI initiative has been on the drawing board for over a year, in response to customer demand.
When asked about P2P and Comcast, he said that they recognized that P2P providers and customers can either fight with ISPs, or live together in a productive way. He announced that a large problem is how large a resource simply finding the files is. Lynch said that if he can work with P2P providers to develop search algorithms that work better with networks, both can improve effectiveness and speed...in trials, this concept has increased performance by 60% and it's in the works.
In response to a question, Lynch noted that bring-your-own-phone users would not need contracts.
Moving over to FiOS, Wildstrom asked how it was ging and when it would go rural. Lynch noted that it would be reaching 60% of Verizon households, and that they can project getting it out to more than 60%, but want to hit that customer base over time in order to provide quality service.
He noted that FiOS is "future-proof" because it's a passive fiber service and that they can increase the capacity by improving the electronics, and they'd be able to keep ramping it up as technology improves. Also, he pointed out that FiOS is symmetrical, and that the bottleneck is in terms of their inter-office connectivity, not to the home.
Also, he announced that Verizon would be moving to IPTV for FiOS-TV distribution.
In response to a question about the role of ISPs in combatting botnets, he replied that it's a matter of network control and management. They aren't doing alot and letting the end links to protect themselves.
He also noted that the only thing that Verizon blocks at the network level is Child Pornography. No complaints here.
Newmark opened by talking about all the good things on Craigslist and people in general, and that the percentage of "bad people" out there is very small and disproportionate to the press they get. "People are ok."
Newmark really didn't talk much about Craigslist, and preferred to mention that most of his work is with "customer service" and that he wants to speak up on behalf of people that are doing good things, such as the Sunlight foundation. He pointed out that last night he thanked Howard Berman for his support of the new GI bill.
When asked why he doesn't run Craigislist, he said "frankly, as a manager, I suck...it's important in many aspects of out lives to get out of the way..."
He considers all the attention he gets to be a bit surreal, but is considerably humble and low-key. I note that his business card says "Customer Service Representative and Founder." That's it.
When asked if he had to pick his top two internet issues, here is what he said:
First off, he mentioned the Sunlight Foundation and Larry Lessig and their efforts to change Congress, but also took the time to defend lobbyists, who for the most part are just trying to do their job for their clients, as opposed to those who give the industry a bad name via astroturfing and whatnot, and called for more transparency. He doesn't want to tar the entire Lobbying industry. When asked where he puts telecom lobbyists, he talked about his efforts to deal with them on abuse support issues for customer service, and that alot of these companies are "trying to do the right thing" and that the "big problem...is the lobbyists who have dine astroturf work have confused the discussion and pissed off a lot of people...and it's hard to discuss the issues in a way that can solve problems."
On Net Neutrality, Newmark realized that both sides know they need to do things differently, and that if people on both sides sit down and talk "without people who try to set up arguments" than things could get done. His pet issue is the handling of abusers by ISPs and "how they deal with bad guys." Newmark says that many telecoms and corporations have understaffed abuse departments, that they know it, and want to do more to protect people and help the good guy.
When asked why he just doesn't walk into the CEO's office, he said that he's still trying to learn corporate culture, and by dealing with the workers, he learns things that are more important.
He doesn't have a personal assistant, but has a travel agent. Wow, this guy is humble, and great. (I'm hoping he'll give me a few minutes later today).
If he wasn't doing craiglist, he has no idea what he would do, but he believes the company would do just fine. He'd simply spend his time on his other personal efforts.