Privacy

CFP Social Network Sites

The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC) has announced a call for papers for a special theme issue on Social Network Sites: People, Practice, and Culture. The guest editors are Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison.

Potential questions that submissions might address include, but are not limited to:

  • What strategies do individuals use to craft an online presentation of self in a profile, and for what audiences?
  • What privacy or other concerns emerge from use of these sites? What kinds of policy decisions and educational practices might ameliorate these concerns?
  • Can we predict social, psychological, or other outcomes from profile and network analysis?
  • How can “friends” networks most usefully be visualized? What can we learn from network visualizations?
  • How does the network structure differ among sites, and what are the social and cultural implications of these differences? How does the structure of networks in these sites compare to the networks of other communities?
  • What are the patterns of relationship development in these spaces? Do individuals use these sites to meet new people or to maintain pre-existing, offline connections?
  • What role do race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation play in social network sites?

While all social network sites allow participants to create a profile and publicly articulate their social connections within the system, the line between social network sites and dating sites, MMOGs, media sharing sites, blogging tools, and other social community sites can be blurry. Rather than enforcing a strict definition of what constitutes a social network site, we ask authors to explain how their site of study fits into a rubric of social network sites.

Here are some dates to remember:

  • Abstracts due: November 28, 2006
  • Decisions on abstracts: December 8, 2006
  • Full papers due: February 28, 2007
  • Anticipated publication: October 2007 / January 2008
Posted on by mklang

Today is Annual International Right to Know Day

Privacy International has released a review of the Freedom of Information (FOI) situation in nearly 70 countries around the world, including almost 40 countries from Europe.

The “Freedom of Information Around the World 2006 Global Survey of Access to Government Information Laws”, shows the growth in legislation and practice within this area.

The report also points to many problems that exist, such as poorly drafted laws, lax implementation and an ongoing culture of secrecy in many countries.

The report is being released just prior to the Annual International Right to Know Day on 28 September – thats today…

Events on Annual International Right to Know Day.

Posted on by mklang

Smoke and Fire

Is it true that there is no smoke without fire?

Browzar claims to be privacy enhancing software. Despite the fact that it is little more than an “Internet Explorer shell”, a program that sits on top of Microsoft’s popular browser to change its look and some of its functions. It is a free download and is offered as a “beta”, or test version.
Now Browzar is being accused of being adware (BBC article) – in other words the privacy tool is being accused of collecting and using user data to ensure that advertising can be sent to it’s users.
Browzar denies that it is adware or spyware or anything och that sort. The interesting  thing is not whether the claims are correct or not but what will the effects of such claims be on a company… Obviously accusing a privacy enhancing company of violating users privacy is not a small thing.

Posted on by mklang

Strategic Media Relations

â??beware of Greeks bearing giftsâ??: The phrase comes from Virgil’s poem of the Trojan war (The Aeneid) and represents an interpretation to the phrase spoken by Laocoon attempting to warn the Trojans not to bring the wooden horse into the city, â??Whatever it is, I fear Greeks even when they bring gifts.â?? (Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes). Naturally the Trojans did not listen and they were massacred. More on the story at wikipedia.

So when I received an email recommending a privacy story my paranoia reminded me of Loacoon. The mail began: â??Thought you might be interested in reading and possibly linking to the following story published in the Star-Telegramâ?? â?? the story was on the use of biometrics at Disney Theme parks, written by two students. Interesting but definitely old news. Even I wrote about it ages ago (July 2005)

I have never heard of the Star-Telegram nor of the sender of the email. So I began to dig. The first clue came from the email address @trylonsmr.com this mail comes from an account director at a â??Strategic Media Relationsâ?? company.

Why would someone I do not know, working at a PR firm want to draw my attention to a mildly interesting news story? It was not even a news story really more an information piece. So I checked my logs.

It seems like the PR firm searches for blogs on technorati and then emails them with â??newsâ?? stories. The idea would most probably be to create increased interest in their clients. This is confirmed by the email which includes a paragraph about a cooperation between four schools of journalism.

My problem is that I would probably have linked to the story and I have no real problem linking to the journalism project. But the use of the PR firm sending friendly emails as if they were concerned about privacy issues (which I am) just makes the whole thing â?? sad.

I will not post their story since it is not the story they are interested in â?? they are marketers and spammers. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I realise that this post has been thin on the details but that is because I do not inadvertently want to do what the email attempted to manipulate me into doing.

Posted on by mklang

Blog for Credits

Rainy Saturday mornings are made for being lazy. But unfortunately I am wasting mine by catching up on work. Since the office has moved location at the same time that I am completing my thesis and at the beginning of term real day-to-day work seems to have been pushed aside. But it will not wait. New students are approaching fast!

My main teaching this term will be in two main areas
(1)    A distance-learning course on the theory and philosophy of Free Software.
(2)    A technology ethics course.

Neither of these courses are new but I am re-vamping the technology ethics course in a big way. The main problem is helping students understand that the technology they take for granted also carries with it problems. Admitting to these problems is not the same as the Luddite impulse to abolish technology but it is the first step at improvement. We need to understand what the problem is if we are to be able to address it.

Previous attempts have been a varying degree of success. Even if the students pass the course I still have a sneaking feeling that some of them just donâ??t get â??itâ??. So this term I am trying something new. The students are going to blog!

Apart from the traditional course material, lectures and seminars the students will be required to set up individual blogs where they will be required to write posts relevant to the different themes of the course. Therefore when the course discusses areas such as privacy or intellectual property the students will be required to post their thoughts and/or other material on the subject.

The course starts with an introduction to the technology and social impact of blogs. Then they will have to go out and start their own (new) blogs. We will also be discussing the importance of visibility, ways in which traffic can be increased and the purpose of blogs either as citizen journalism or entertainment.

This will be followed by a section on basic ethics before the course really begins with applying ethics on questions of technology. The course will end as it usually does with an essay.

Hopefully blogging will enable the students to explore the questions we are looking at on their own terms â?? forcing them to evolve from passive consumers of information to active producers. The students will be graded on their essays but also on their blogs (have not decided upon the criteria for this yet).

In Swedish when things go very wrong we say that it all became pancake â?? so right now I hope that the whole thing does not go pancake.

Posted on by mklang

Anti-RFID designs

RFID chips have been around for some time without really taking off. The main discussions have been in specialised privacy or technology discussions. This changed when the plans were launched to add RFID to passports. These plans have raised many concerns from privacy activists. These concerns have only increased now that the planned passports have been demonstrated as not being particularly secure. They have already been both hacked and cloned.

For the security aware: companies are now beginning to offer wallets, or a DIY version made from duct tape. Or why not special designs for clothes. All of which prevent RFID products from being read. The fundamental principal is to create a Faraday Cage effect around the RFID antenna to block the readers.

This is the same principle (as used by the stereotypical crazy-man) of wearing a tin-foil hat to prevent aliens/government from scanning the brain… here is a research article showing the inefficiency of the tin-foil hat.

Background material:

Ari Juels “RFID Security and Privacy: A Research Survey” Research Report, RSA Laboratories, September 2005.

Matt Ward & Rob van Kranenburg “RFID: Frequency, standards, adoption and innovation” JISC Technology and Standards Watch, May 2006.

Ann Cavoukian “Tag, Youâ??re It: Privacy Implications of RadioFrequency Identification (RFID)Technology” Information and Privacy Commissioner Ontario, February 2004.

Posted on by mklang

DNA databases & privacy

Three 12-year olds were arrested in the UK for breaking some branches while climbing a cherry tree. The three children were climbing a cherry tree when the police came and carted them off to the police station. The children had their pictures taken for mug-shots, DNA samples were taken and finally they had their shoes removed before being made to wait in police cells for two hours before being released.

Naturally I believe that trees deserve protection but this is ridiculous. The children now have criminal records which will be stored for five years. Also the DNA samples will not be destroyed after the five years (unless the UK has special rules for minors & DNA).

The word proportionality is very popular right now – it should be applied more often…

(via Daily Mail)

Posted on by mklang

Bush: Sexism, Bad Manners & Power

Incredible! The world seems to be in the process of erupting into more and more violence. Afghanistan is ongoing but rarely reported, Gaza has fallen in the shadow of Lebanon. Iraq shows no sign of stabilising. Not to mention the hotspots in the rest of the world.

So when the world leaders meet in the G8 conference in St Petersburg one expects that the gravity of world affairs will ensure that the world leaders would act with an enhanced level of decorum that maybe could reflect the situation.

What does Bush do? Itâ??s unbelievable!!!

The actions of little George are totally unacceptable even if it was in the privacy of his own office and the victim was the office temp. But Angela Merkel is not the office temp but she is the German Chancellor. The unwelcome actions of George Bush go beyond ugly sexism and condescending male-female relations. The actions are an inexcusable insult on Germany. Actually it could be interpreted as the patronising US attitude towards the rest of the world.

More on this Unfogged, Bild.t, The News Blog, Talking Points Memo.

(via Bitch PhD)

Posted on by mklang

Identity Cards

Sweden was an early adopter of identity cards and individual identity numbers. This has had the effect that few people today actually question the ability of technology to invade privacy. The EU Commission has decided that Europe is to move towards biometric passports within three years. Not surprisingly Sweden has said nothing. The UK on the other hand has been active in the discussion against ID cards with anti-ID card campaigns and organisations (such as NO2ID). An unfavourable report was presented in 2005 by researchers at the London School of Economics.

The UK concerns about privacy seem a bit odd considering the amount of CCTV employed in surveillance â?? it just goes to show that accepting (?) one form of privacy invasion does not mean that people are prepared to accept them all.

In Canada The Globalization of Personal Data Project (GPD) in association with the Surveillance Project at Queen’s University will be holding an interesting workshop: National ID Card Systems to be held in June 7-9 2007. Abstracts due 21 August.

(via Square Lips, Purse Jaw)

Posted on by mklang

Blogging in the private/public divide

Part of blogging is attempting to figure out why we blog? Not all blogs pose this question but it appears often enough* to be recognised as being a common question. This question becomes even more relevant when the blogger takes active risks by blogging.

In an earlier post (blogging revisited 21/1105) I reported about an article concerned with the risks being taken by job-seeking academics who blog. The author of the article wrote that their blogs prevented the potential employer from hiring since they revealed a different side to the applicant than that presented at the formal interview.

A temporary prosecutor in San Francisco blogged about a case he was prosecuting:
Karnow didn’t find the postings prejudicial enough to throw out the entire case, as the defense wanted. But in turning down that motion to dismiss this week, the judge still came down hard on ex-prosecutor Jay Kuo, calling his conduct “juvenile, obnoxious and unprofessional.” … (via Lunda Wright)

Other bloggers take greater risks as whistleblowers or reporting on corrupt and/or repressive governments. While some bloggers and blogs are well protected using different means many are open and tracing the authors is a (relatively) easy task.

Organisations such as the EFF have created documents to help those who need to blog anonymously â??How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)â?? but these are either not widely known or widely used.
There seems to be something special about the blog and its place in the private/public divide. The blog is a private diary and yet it is open to the world.  The privacy promotes the sharing of secrets while the public the desire to communicate.

Why take the risks? Are they really risks or is blogging perceived to be a private act? Even though most bloggers are aware of their publicâ?¦

*Some examples from Google on the search â??why I blogâ??
Watermark – Jacobsen – Under the sun – Media Metamorphosis –

Posted on by mklang