Digital ID Coach

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friends/family, history, records context, digital dossier, disclosure, dossier, records, surveillance

Data Ownership

February 17th, 2009

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Several people have asked about Facebook’s recent changes to their Terms of Service. The controversy was sparked by a post in The Consumerist entitled We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever! That was followed by a comparison by Amanda French, and an analysis by Jacobson Attorneys. Of course, in the fray Facebook’s Zuckerberg also weighed in.

What people were asking about is why they should care. They have ALL of their friends on the service and it has become The Only Way to keep up with their network. So what if Facebook uses a picture; that helps the photographer or artist, doesn’t it? (It’s doubtful that Facebook would give the artists credit for their work because that might distract from the mission of its use.)

A moment from history might be appropriate. Back in 1954, George Orwell wrote a book called 1984. Wikipedia says about this book that “the novel has become famous for its portrayal of pervasive government surveillance and control, and government’s increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual.”

Of note: these days it’s more about the influential power of the 10,000 little brothers to do the same work, like death by a thousand paper cuts. The issue remains as one of self-determination.

For your entertainment, here is the BBC version of Orwell’s book.

Coaching moment: Remember when you were a young teen and wanted to do a lot of exciting things, but your parents wouldn’t let you? They claimed that you didn’t yet have wisdom to act appropriately and might do harm to yourself or others. You probably viewed that as a matter of self determination: you know what’s best for yourself. As you get older, you’re often treated in a similar (and occasionally condescending) way by the marketing and advertising industry: they know what’s best for us. Advertisers make or contract with online services (like Facebook) in order to attract you to their advertisements. The advertisers want nothing more than to sell you stuff–because isn’t that the bottom line of their business, to sell more stuff?

What are your options? Would you rather be part of a system in which you can declare your interests? Let’s say you love looking at new car ads, but don’t want to see truck commercials. Or let’s say you want to know what natural soaps or facial products are available these days. Wouldn’t it be nicer to see the ads for goods and services that are of interest? That would also be a benefit to the advertisers who want you to see things you’re interested in buying.

What do you think? I welcome your comments.

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friends/family, future, records, tools 1984, advertising, advertising industry, Amanda French, BBC, car ads, disclosure, facial products, George Orwell, marketing, surveillance, Terms of Service, TOS

A Transparent Society

January 3rd, 2009

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Back in 1999, David Brin released a book called The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? Many of my friends and I thought that it was perhaps a bit alarmist, but I’ll admit that I had rosy glasses on then. I thought that it was still possible to right the wrongs that technology was imposing and allowing.

Fast forward to September 2007, when Law Professor and privacy activist Michael Geist was giving the closing talk at an International Privacy conference.

There’s no stopping it: we are increasingly living in a transparent society.

Coaching moment: In the book and in the video, both men talk about leaving fingerprints behind and being tracked by surveillance cameras and databases, and the consequent changes that this activity entails. On a personal level, many of us are uncomfortable with this level of involuntary disclosure. It’s as if we suddenly had a digital firefly attached to us.

On one hand, if everything and everyone is being tracked, who will have time to make sense of it all? On the other hand, we are quickly developing the computing power to visualize all kinds of activities and behaviors. It’s only when the tracking is focused on one single person that it becomes troublesome.

What would you do differently if you knew you were always being watched?

UPDATE: There’s an important essay written by noted security expert Bruce Schneier called The Myth of the “Transparent Society” that is a must read for everyone that thinks that increasing transparency is alright. The problem at its core is the imbalance of power between the disclosing and using parties.

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future, records Bruce Schneier, David Brin, fingerprints, Michael Geist, privacy, security, surveillance, tracking, transparency, Transparent Society, watchers, watching

On Managing One’s Identity

December 7th, 2008

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This video, an Introduction to Digital Identity by Stefan Brands is from the Google Tech Talk series. This talk was held about a year ago (Jan. 25, 2007). Its an hour long, so get your drinks and munchies ready. As Google Tech Talks go, this one is not overly technical.

Note: the volume is a bit unstable in this video. It starts out loud, about 5 minutes in goes quiet, and continues to change periodically.

Google Tech Talks
January 25, 2007

ABSTRACT

Identity management is increasingly recognized as a cornerstone of electronic communication and transaction systems. Applications such as electronic commerce, social networking, electronic health record management, government online, and enterprise identity and access management all critically rely on the ability to manage, provision, and authenticate the “identities” of people, devices, processes, and other entities. Three approaches to identity management can be distinguished: silo identity management, federated identity management, and user-centric identity management. Each of these has unique characteristics with regards to security, privacy, …

Coaching moment: In this video, you see an introduction to user-based identity. You’ll also hear that this is where the friction starts to develop as people and corporate interests start to disagree on how to implement the future. If you’d like to have a say in one future or another, learn more about the topics of single sign-on, user-centric or user-driven services, and tools to control your digital domain. Talk with your friends about it so the terms become familiar. The stronger our collective personal voice, the harder it will be to erase our personal interests.

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records, tools digital identity, federation, id management, identity management, identity provider, login, protection, records, security, single sign-on, SSO, surveillance, trusted parties

USACM’s take on Total Info Awareness (2003)

January 25th, 2003

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Perhaps you’ve heard of TIA: the Department of Defense’s Total Information Awareness, a plan to gather all available information, from database everywhere, about every person in the U.S., ostensibly to counter “terrorism through prevention.” Heh. More like “government as a terrorist organization” these days, against their own citizenry.

The USACM, the public policy group of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM, a member-based professional organization), has written a great letter with an offer to help:

Because of serious security, privacy, economic, and personal risks associated with the development of a vast database surveillance system, we recommend a rigorous, independent review of these aspects of TIA. Such a review should include an examination of the technical feasibility and practical reality of the entire program. USACM would be pleased to assist in such an effort.

A good outline of why we should be worried about this Orwellian plan.

Coaching moment: Sometimes the government is doing the surveillance. Once it starts, it’s hard to go back. Note that this article was from 2003. What do you think the government knows about you? Can you correct information if it is wrong? Why might you want to?

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