Tuesday, May 10, 2011

You shouldn't read this if you've got nothing to hide...

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=22784

Chapter 1 of Nothing to Hide available online

May 10, 2011 by Dissent

Daniel Solove writes:

I’ve posted Chapter 1 of my new book, NOTHING TO HIDE: THE FALSE TRADEOFF BETWEEN PRIVACY AND SECURITY (Yale University Press, May 2011) on SSRN. The book is about some of the common arguments made in the debate between privacy and security. Chapter 1 is here



Do they? I hadn't noticed.

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=22769

How Teens Understand Privacy

May 9, 2011 by Dissent

Danah Boyd writes:

In the fall, Alice Marwick and I went into the field to understand teens’ privacy attitudes and practices. We’ve blogged some of our thinking since then but we’re currently working on turning our thinking into a full-length article. We are lucky enough to be able to workshop our ideas at an upcoming scholarly meeting (PLSC), but we also wanted to share our work-in-progress with the public since we both know that there are all sorts of folks out there who have a lot of knowledge about this domain but with whom we don’t have the privilege of regularly interacting.

“Social Privacy in Networked Publics: Teens’ Attitudes, Practices, and Strategies”

by danah boyd and Alice Marwick

[...]


(Related)

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/05/10/0039249/Who-Owns-Your-Social-Identity?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Who Owns Your Social Identity?

"Who actually owns your username on a website? What rights do you have to use it? An IEEE Spectrum podcast reports: 'What happens if Facebook or Twitter or, say, your blog hosting service, makes you take a different user name? Sound impossible? It's happened. Last week, a software researcher named Danah Boyd woke up to find her entire blog had disappeared, and in fact, had been renamed, because her hosting service had given her blog's name to someone else.' And as important as they are, what protects our accounts are the terms of service agreements. If you read them — and who does? — you'd learn, probably to no surprise, that they protect the provider a lot more than they protect you." [After all, they paid the lawyers who wrote them... Bob]



Can you remain anonymous in a world of ubiquitous surveillance?

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/05/iphone-udid/

Anonymous IDs on iPhones, iPads Can Reveal Your Identity

The unique string of numbers and letters assigned to your iPhone can potentially expose your real-life identity.

Security researcher Aldo Cortesi last week published his discovery of a flaw in the unique device identifier (UDID) stored on each iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

While this device identifier is well-known, it’s not supposed to be connected to a person’s actual identity. But Cortesi discovered that some apps can link the identifier to the phone owner’s Facebook profile, which effectively puts a face behind that string of numbers and letters.

“It’s like a permanent, unalterable tracking cookie that can’t be changed and that the user is not aware of,” Cortesi told Wired.com. “The UDID idea has got such deep flaws because it literally identifies the device.”



It's not confusion, it's obfuscation! (We can charge more for that...)

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/05/10/0155218/Confusion-Surrounds-UK-Cookie-Guidelines?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Confusion Surrounds UK Cookie Guidelines

"The Information Commissioner's Office has, with just over two weeks to go, given its interpretation on what websites must do to comply with new EU regulations concerning the use of cookies. The law, which will come into force on 26 May 2011, comes from an amendment to the EU's Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive. It requires UK businesses and organizations running websites in the UK to get informed consent from visitors to their websites in order to store and retrieve information on users' computers. The most controversial area, third-party cookies, remains problematic. If a website owner allows another party to set cookies via their site (and it is a very common practice for internet advertisers) then the waters are still muddy. And embarrassingly for the Commission — it's current site would not be compliant with its new guidelines as it simply states what they do and does not seek users' consent."



No need to go to court, just pay us our Greenmail (closest word I could find) and we'll drop the suit.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/05/10/0048246/23000-File-Sharers-Targeted-In-Latest-Lawsuit?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

23,000 File Sharers Targeted In Latest Lawsuit

"Subpoenas are expected to go out to ISPs this week in what could be the biggest BitTorrent downloading case in US history. At least 23,000 file sharers are being targeted by the US Copyright Group for downloading The Expendables. The Copyright Group appears to have adopted Righthaven's strategy in blanket-suing large numbers of defendants and offering an option to quickly settle online for a moderate payment. The IP addresses of defendants have allegedly been collected by paid snoops capturing lists of all peers who were downloading or seeding Sylvester Stallone's flick last year. I am curious to see how this will tie into the BitTorrent case ruling made earlier this month indicating that an IP address does not uniquely identify the person behind it."


(Related) Competition is good... usually.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/nude-nuns-brouhaha/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

Two Firms Battle for Right to Sue Nude Nuns Downloaders


(Related)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20061280-261.html

Unlicensed Google Music arrives Tuesday



I'm just trying to understand the “social world”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/09/ap/tech/main20061100.shtml

Facebook sharing sending readers to big news sites

Facebook is playing a role in what news gets read online as people use the Internet's most popular hangout to share and recommend content.

That's according to a study released Monday by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Facebook funneled an average of 3 percent of traffic to 21 major news sites that allowed the data to be tracked. The report is based on an analysis of Internet traffic data compiled by the research firm Nielsen Co. during the first nine months of last year.

That's still small compared with Google Inc.'s media clout. Pew says Google's dominant search engine supplies about 30 percent of traffic to the top news site.

[Pew study: http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/navigating_news_online


(Related) Are you ready to have your life reviewed by your peers everyone?

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37531/page1/

Facebook Could Be Planning a Visual Dashboard of Your Life

Ever wondered just how much coffee you drank last year, or which movies you saw, and when? New Web and mobile apps make it possible to track, and visualize, this personal information graphically, and the trend could be set to expand dramatically.

This is because Facebook recently acquired one of the leading personal-data-tracking mobile apps and hired its creators. The social-networking giant could be gearing up to offer users ways to chart the minutiae of their lives with personalized infographics.

Nick Felton and Ryan Case, two New York-based designers, have pioneered turning the mundane contours of an everyday life into a kind of visual narrative. Each year, Felton publishes an "annual report" on his own life: an infographic that charts out his habits and lifestyle in great detail.


(Related) “Our 'Terms of Service' say we can ignore our 'Terms of Service' if we want to...”

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-20061298-238.html

Survey: 7.5M Facebook users below minimum age

A survey published in the June issue of Consumer Reports (available now) found that "of the 20 million minors who actively use Facebook," 7.5 million were younger than 13 and more than five million were younger than 10. Facebook's terms of service require that users be at least 13.

The report tracks with other studies including a 2010 study by McAfee that found 37 percent of 10 to 12 year olds are on Facebook and a study (PDF) released in April from the London School of Economics EU Kids Online project that found that 38 percent of 9- to 12-year-old European children used social-networking sites, with one in five using Facebook, "rising to over 4 in 10 in some countries."


(Related)

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/09/attention-dear-sophie-inspired-parents-you-cant-actually-create-a-google-account-for-your-kid/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Attention ‘Dear Sophie’-Inspired Parents, You Can’t Actually Create A Google Account For Your Kid



Now Microsoft can be a Phone Company and a major Social Network provider. (No need to Text while driving if you can talk instead?)

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/skype_acquired_by_microsoft_3_fears_3_hopes.php

Skype Acquired by Microsoft: 3 Fears & 3 Hopes

In a shocking late-night turn of events it was revealed Monday that Microsoft has acquired Skype for more than $8 billion. (Confirmed by Microsoft this morning here.) It's a bold move that raises a lot of issues. ReadWriteWeb's Founding Editor Richard MacManus argued that the companies together could make big waves in two key parts of the future: mobile and the connected home.



I tell you, it's growing! We can't stop it from growing! And the worst part? It's hungry!

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/05/09/1959213/Worlds-Servers-Process-957ZB-of-Data-a-Year?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

World's Servers Process 9.57ZB of Data a Year

"Three years ago, the world's 27 million business servers processed 9.57 zettabytes, or 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of information. Researchers at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and the San Diego Supercomputer Center estimate that the total is equivalent to a 5.6-billion-mile-high stack of books stretching from Earth to Neptune and back to Earth, repeated about 20 times. By 2024, business servers worldwide will annually process the digital equivalent of a stack of books extending more than 4.37 light-years to Alpha Centauri, the scientists say. The report, titled 'How Much Information?: 2010 Report on Enterprise Server Information,' (PDF) was released at the SNW conference last month."


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