Tonycurzonprice's Favorite Links on privacy from Diigo

FT.com / World - UK businessman wins Facebook libel case

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:53:01 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

“It is one thing for the News of the World to be ordered to pay Max Mosley £60,000,” said Ashley Hurst, a media lawyer who acted on the case. “It is quite another for a private individual to be ordered to pay an ex-school friend £22,000, plus costs. That’s a big hit.”

Tags: privacy networks montpelerin

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

One Subpoena Is All It Takes to Reveal Your Online Life - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:52:15 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

One Subpoena Is All It Takes to Reveal Your Online Life

Tags: montpelerin privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

Increasingly, Internet's Data Trail Leads to Court - New York Times

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:50:01 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

"The big story is the privacy law that protects your e-mail does not protect your Google search terms," said Orin S. Kerr, a professor at the George Washington University Law School and a former lawyer in the computer crime section of the Justice Department.

Other lawyers argue that the law that provides protection for e-mail content, or even the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches, could be applied to data about Web searching, but the issue has not been tested in court.

The break in the St. Louis murders came in 2002, when a reporter received an anonymous letter with a map generated by Microsoft's MSN service — marked with the location where a body could be found.

The F.B.I. subpoenaed Microsoft for records of anyone who had searched for maps of that area in the days before the letter was sent. Microsoft discovered that only one user had searched for precisely that area and provided the user's Internet Protocol address. That address, in turn was provided by a unit of WorldCom, which identified the user as Maury Troy Travis, a 36-year-old waiter. (Mr. Travis was arrested and hanged himself in jail without ever admitting guilt.)

While requests for search data have been few, computer experts expect them to increase.

"It is rare that those links will be a slam-dunk that will make a case," said John Curran, a former cybercrime investigator for the F.B.I. "But when you are putting together a larger case, you are trying to connect the dots, and it is the little things that actually help."

Tags: montpelerin privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

ONLamp.com -- The Long View of Identity

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:46:06 -0000

When we go online to a forum on some topic that interests us, nobody knows us from Adam. We feel anonymous, and we possibly share personal information on that basis.

In fact, identifying us is pretty easy. It's just that nobody bothers to try, unless a record company decides to make an example of us for uploading MP3 files or the Chinese government decides to call us in for questioning about some posts containing the word "democracy." Consider that:

* Your ISP or system administrator knows your IP address at every moment. Many governments have passed laws or (as in the U.S.) are considering laws that would require the ISP to store this data about you for a long period of time.
* Everything you've ever put online (including sophomoric postings to ancient newsgroups) is still there, and it's searchable.
* Many people can be singled out through a combination of a few pieces of data (such as zip code, age, etc.) that they freely surrender to web sites.

Our identity situation is the worst of both worlds: people with bad intentions can find our data, but we are isolated from the people with whom we'd like to form communities. This once again raises the tension between holistic identity and compartmentalized identity.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

An example of how someone determined to stay in hiding can succeed for a long time appears, by coincidence, in the most recent Atlantic Monthly (July/August 2006). A cheerleader for al-Zarqawi's Iraqi insurgency posted terror training videos and other propaganda anonymously for years, despite coordinated efforts on several continents to track him down. I'm not sure that what he did would be illegal in the U.S., but it certainly was in the U.K., where he was finally located.

Stefan Brand. Brand admitted to feeling near despair sometimes, because we could easily move into a society where RFIDs are embedded in our bodies and every move is tracked. "I'm afraid that, despite all our best efforts, our technical solutions may drive us into totalitarianism." There were many responses that tried to assuage this fear, but no one could banish it.

Perhaps our best hope was cited by Berkman Center fellow Mary Rundle, who said that we must maintain multiple sources of power that can constrain each other, so that "power cannot be used to amass more power."

Tags: montpelerin identity privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

ONLamp.com -- The Long View of Identity

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:37:32 -0000

We can layer all sorts of powerful features and describe all manner of personal attributes in an identity, and develop ever more sophisticated protocols for exchanging the data securely, but all identities come down ultimately to the authorities we entrust with them. This means that identity management is not really the management of individual identities, but the management of institutions we trust.

As you tussle out the policy issues around online identity, keep one idea in mind: your identity is an entry in the database of the authority that authenticates you. Feel better? Whether you do or not, at least you will be guided down the right policy-making paths.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Our credit ratings are a function of the companies that maintain the ratings; were the companies to go out of business and lose the expertise needed to maintain their databases, we'd lose our credit ratings. The same goes for online identities; they persist only as long as the institutions that offer them.

I don't really believe Equifax will go away (without some other responsible authority taking over its databases), so a more pertinent worry is that the government will take ownership of data that companies have promised--or at least, users have assumed--would be confidential. This fear reflects the reality that our online identities are owned by the authorities that grant them. We also fear that companies will mine our data and use it for purposes we haven't authorized.

Contractual: the authority promises the user not to misuse the data stored with the authority.
Technical: the software used to store and transmit user data encrypts and digitally signs it in such a way that is hidden from everyone except the sites at the endpoints with a need to know.

Tags: montpelerin identity privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

ONLamp.com -- The Long View of Identity

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:28:14 -0000

# People exercising free speech rights could be identified by repressive regimes.
# The user-friendly tools promoted by companies in the identity space will encourage users to send out more data without thinking adequately about the risks.
# The authorities responsible for passing the data between users can track it, if it's not adequately protected by technical measures.

Tags: montpelerin identity privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

BBC NEWS | Magazine | 'I was falsely branded a paedophile'

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:36:59 -0000

real-case of privacy violation leading to ruined life

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

With ID fraud on the rise, the assumption is you'll lose money which can be claimed back. But Simon Bunce lost his job, and his father cut off contact, when he was arrested after an ID fraudster used his credit card details on a child porn website.

Tags: montpelerin privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

The Facebook Initiative – Bill Gates's greatest invention | The Register

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:49:26 -0000

"I envision a day when people meet each other and their filters immediately identify their likes and dislikes. Then, the users can talk about what they have in common rather than bickering or wasting time on irrelevant issues."

Next up for Gates is a system that will display text-based ads in Zuckerberg's eyes. So, for example, when he's talking to his mom, an ad in his right eye will display "I want a Nintendo Wii", while an ad in the left eye will display "Kiss me on the right cheek if you want tulips for Mother's Day or the left cheek if you want waffles".

Looking ahead, the eye displays could help negotiate discussions between friends by putting up information about the brand of clothes you're wearing or music you recently stole online. "Isn't this green sweater nice? Ask me where I bought it. Shake my right hand for an e-coupon."

Gates explains that, "People shouldn't have to dedicate brain cells to telling their peers about their favorite bands or movies. That's the type of stuff that can be handled in software."

Tags: montpelerin privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

Disk encryption may not be secure enough, new research finds | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:00:52 -0000

many of us who use encrypted file-systems believe that if our computers are lost or stolen, our data will be secure. But if a thief (or nosy border guard, or FBI agent) nabs my laptop locked with a screen saver or in sleep mode with the RAM intact, the paper shows that encryption provides no protection.

Tags: encryption privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

Microsoft's Bid for Yahoo!: The Long View

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:11:10 -0000

The other important characteristic of the winners, of course, is that they tap into a data stream that really matters. Owning network effects around consumer photos, for instance, is much less powerful than owning network effects around paid search. So one of the key questions we have to ask ourselves going forward is this: what are the major data subsystems of the future Internet Operating System. Location, identity (and social graph), search (and not just web search but also product search, in which Amazon has a very strong position) come to mind. In a lot of ways, finding the data associated with the old vectors who, what, when, where, and how is a good place to start.

Tags: montpelerin privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

About Facebook

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:32:45 -0000

About Facebook

Ari Melber

Tags: facebook montpelerin privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

Facebook - Why Not Let Sleeping Dogs Lie?

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:23:02 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The second problem hasn’t been resolved, though. Facebook is allowing advertisers to use user images and names in their ads. So if one of your friends adds a third party application, you may see an advertisement that shows their picture, prints their name and says that they’ve added the application.

Tags: advertising commercialisation facebook montpelerin privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

BBC Reith Lectures - The Philosophy of Trust

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:45:15 -0000

The increased use of CCTV surveillance cameras has been, we are assured, for public safety. But what does this surveillance of our personal movement say about trust in our society? Do we need such a level of transparency to ensure public safety? Surely, as Onora O’Neill argues, increased surveillance lowers the level of trust, and increases suspicion - the antithesis of trust. Do we have the right to go about our private business without this level of suspicion? The implication is that we are no longer trustworthy, guilty before the act. If you have something to hide, then you must be guilty. Where does privacy sit in this transparent society? Is privacy a fundamental human right?

Tags: montpelerin privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

Free phone 4 Ads

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:03:35 -0000

Privacy hawks could have a field day with this one. Many people, if they stop to think about it, will find this idea chilling, even if it is just a computer that is doing the surveillance. Others will be willing to give up anything for a free call, and that is Pudding Media’s target. Consumers who object to the surveillance aspect of the service don’t need to use it, right? But what about the people on the other end of the line? It doesn’t seem like they ever consent to their phone conversations being monitored (or monetized).

Tags: ads montpelerin privacy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice