http://radio.weblogs.com/0100887/categories/identityPrivacy/ Copyright 2002 Jon Udell Thu, 25 Jul 2002 19:16:49 GMT http://backend.userland.com/rss092 7/25/2002; 9:59:32 AM http://radio.weblogs.com/0100887/categories/identityPrivacy/2002/07/25.html#a354 <FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>Yesterday the charmingly middle-named Jennifer 8. Lee wrote a fascinating story for the NY Times, </FONT><A href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/25/technology/circuits/25GOOG.html?ex=1028174400&amp;en=fc6076f3da8abc01&amp;ei=5007&amp;partner=USERLAND"><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>Net Users Try to Elude Google's Grasp</FONT></A><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>. Here are some excerpts: </FONT> <b>...</b> <P><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>Yesterday the charmingly middle-named Jennifer 8. Lee wrote a fascinating story for the NY Times, </FONT><A href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/25/technology/circuits/25GOOG.html?ex=1028174400&amp;en=fc6076f3da8abc01&amp;ei=5007&amp;partner=USERLAND"><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>Net Users Try to Elude Google's Grasp</FONT></A><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>. Here are some excerpts: </FONT></P> <BLOCKQUOTE><I> <P><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>These days, people are seeing their privacy punctured in intimate ways as their personal, professional and online identities become transparent to one another. Twenty-somethings are going to search engines to check out people they meet at parties. Neighbors are profiling neighbors. Amateur genealogists are researching distant family members. Workers are screening co-workers. </FONT></P> <P><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>In other words, it is becoming more difficult to keep one's past hidden, or even to reinvent oneself in the American tradition. "The net result is going to be a return to the village, where everyone knew everyone else," said David Brin, author of a book called "The Transparent Society" (Perseus, 1998). "The anonymity of urban life will be seen as a temporary and rather weird thing." </FONT></P></I></BLOCKQUOTE> <P><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>As always, Brin's visionary book remains the touchstone for this issue. What I find most interesting about this article is a subtle shift in emphasis. A few years ago, there might have been a suggestion that control was possible -- that with the right kind of architecture, individuals could control their cyber-footprints. Now, the sense seems to be -- Palladium notwithstanding -- that such control will not be possible. And the implications of that are starting to sink in: </FONT></P> <BLOCKQUOTE><I> <P><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>Jeanne Achille, the chief executive of a public relations firm called the Devon Group, was horrified that someone had used her name and e-mail address to post racist slurs in a French online discussion group. She has repeatedly had to explain the situation to potential clients who have asked her about the posting. </FONT></P> <P><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>"Whoever did this had to put some thought into it," Ms. Achille said. "Is it perhaps one of our competitors? Is it someone who felt we did something to them and wanted to get back at us? Is it a personal thing? Is it a disgruntled former employee?" </FONT></P><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>The posting has been impossible to remove. "There is no cyberpatrol that you can go to and make all of this go away," Ms. Achille said. "You just have to live with it." </FONT> <P></P></I></BLOCKQUOTE> <P><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>What hasn't yet sunk in, though, is what <I>can</I> be controlled: identity. You can't be an anonymous yet fully connected cyber-citizen. You can, however, certify your identity. What Ms. Achille and others will eventually discover is that you can't hide from Google, but you can own your words. </FONT></P> <P><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>Not co-incidentally, ownership is central to the weblog experience. I own my space, nobody else speaks in it. You own yours, nobody else speaks there. We interact, as Dave Winer likes to say, at a respectful distance. As we do so, we tell our own stories in ways that Google finds authoritative. </FONT></P> 7/14/2002; 3:35:32 PM http://radio.weblogs.com/0100887/categories/identityPrivacy/2002/07/14.html#a339 <FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>Yes, yes, yes! Pardon my euphoria, but I'm really pleased to see such a thoughtful and seasoned observer as John Patrick linking use of voluntary digital IDs to spam control: </FONT> <b>...</b> <P><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>Yes, yes, yes! Pardon my euphoria, but I'm really pleased to see such a thoughtful and seasoned observer as John Patrick linking use of voluntary digital IDs to spam control: </FONT></P> <BLOCKQUOTE> <P><EM><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>Recently I have received a lot of email from friends and family asking why I had been sending out spam. The email said it came "From: John Patrick" but in reality was spam that came from someone else "spoofing" my name in hopes that it would result in higher odds of the email being opened. </FONT></EM></P> <P><EM><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>People are going to demand that their political leaders do something about spam. This will lead to regulation of the Internet. I think most of us feel that Internet regulation can be costly, limit innovation and hurt productivity. I believe that an ingredient of the long-term answer to the problem is authentication. If an email arrives from a person with no digital ID, I want it deleted. If the sender is not "real" I don't want to see their email. If the sender has a digital ID but I have never received mail from them before, then I want to know who issued the digital ID to them and what the subject of the email is. If it is not an offensive topic or something I know I am not interested in and the issuer of the ID is an organization I have heard of then I'll let it into my in-box. This isn't the perfect solution but it could help a great deal. [</FONT><A href="http://patrickweb.com/weblog/stories/2002/06/15/theSpamHasGotToGo.html"><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>John Patrick: The Spam Has Got to Go</FONT></A><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>]</FONT></EM></P></BLOCKQUOTE> <P><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>I've been making this argument for years now (e.g., </FONT><A href="http://www.byte.com/documents/byt20011031s0003/"><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>1</FONT></A><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>, </FONT><A href="http://www.byte.com/documents/byt20000706s0001/"><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>2</FONT></A>, <A href="http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:jSaFifb5SmoC:www.webbuildermag.com/upload/free/features/webbuilder/1999/Udell/1999-06-29.asp">3</A><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>), most recently in my </FONT><A href="http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/webservices/2002/07/09/udell.html"><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>latest O'Reilly Network column</FONT></A><FONT face=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif size=2>, and it's been lonely.&nbsp;Maybe now we'll start to get some triangulation around the issue. The key (pardon the pun) is voluntary use of IDs -- a culture of identity, rather than anonymity.</FONT> </P> 3/5/2002; 11:12:24 PM http://radio.weblogs.com/0100887/categories/identityPrivacy/2002/03/05.html#a110 A story about the privacy of reading lists: <b>...</b> <P dir=ltr>A story about the privacy of reading lists:</P> <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <P>The Village Voice: Nation: by Nat Hentoff: <A href="http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0209/hentoff.php">Big John Wants Your Reading List</A> ....the <A href="http://www.fbi.gov/">FBI</A> , armed with a warrant or subpoena from the <A href="http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/50/1803.html">FISA</A> court, can demand from bookstores and libraries the names of books bought or borrowed by anyone suspected of involvement in "international terrorism" or "clandestine activities."&nbsp; <I>I found the Village Voice link on <A href="http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/categories/privacy/">The Shifted Librarian</A>.</I> [<A href="http://www.PrivacyDigest.com/">Privacy Digest Weblog</A>]</P></BLOCKQUOTE> <P dir=ltr>Privacy Digest picked up on this story by way of Jenny, the Shifted Librarian, who upholds (as she should) the sanctity of library patrons' reading lists.</P> <P dir=ltr>Earlier today, I was&nbsp;helping the self-same Shifted Librarian figure out how to reveal her own reading list on her weblog. (Did you get it working, Jenny?)</P> <P dir=ltr>This might seem contradictory, but I don't see it that way.&nbsp;It would be wrong to force us to reveal our sources. But we may still choose to do so.</P> Privacy Digest Weblog 2/14/2002; 2:11:42 PM http://radio.weblogs.com/0100887/categories/identityPrivacy/2002/02/14.html#a65 <A href="http://www.privacyfoundation.org/privacywatch/report.asp?id=79&amp;action=0">Interview: David Brin's Naked Truth About Privacy</A>&nbsp; [<A href="http://www.PrivacyDigest.com/">Privacy Digest Weblog</A>] <b>...</b> <P><A href="http://www.privacyfoundation.org/privacywatch/report.asp?id=79&amp;action=0">Interview: David Brin's Naked Truth About Privacy</A>&nbsp; [<A href="http://www.PrivacyDigest.com/">Privacy Digest Weblog</A>]</P> <P>Terrific interview with one of the most thoughtful and iconoclastic thinkers on the subject&nbsp;of privacy.&nbsp;Brin's book, <A href="http://www.kithrup.com/brin/privacyarticles.html#ts">The Transparent Society</A>, the first&nbsp;chapter of which&nbsp;of <A href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/fftransparent.html">appeared in Wired</A>, rocked me when read it, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. Some of those thoughts went into <A href="http://www.byte.com/documents/s=359/byt20000811s0001/index6.htm">a column</A>.&nbsp;&nbsp;Looking back on it reminds me what a confusing thicket of issues we're trying to hack our way through.</P> Privacy Digest Weblog