Arguing for privacy aware systems Marc Langheinrich’s Phd thesis “Personal Privacy in Ubiquitous Computing â?? Tools and System Support” (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) from May 2005 nicely combines the technical social and legal issues in ubiquitous computing.
This is my reading tip for today.
war
day 13
After a few days offline in the middle of snowy nowhere. I have read the entire work and begun the serious process of editing. Today I have now edited a little more than half the book. I am on the 53rd version of my document and I am becoming more paranoid about data-loss for each day and version. Lots of backups now.
I thought that the backups would make the work shorter but I was wrong. Today the word count is 91856 words which is an increase by 1502 words since the last time I opened the file.
Even though there are still 13 more days to go I hand everything over to my supervisor tommorrow for him to read while he is travelling. On his return I have the weekend to edit his comments before handing it all in to the internal reviewer who will be my opponent on the senior seminar on the 15 March.
The reading tip of the day is specialist stuff – Blanke “Robust Notice” and “Informed Consent”: The Keys to Successful Spyware Legislation, Columbia Science and Technology Law Review 2006 Vol 7.
A long time ago I had to wear a school uniform with this badge… never would have guessed where I ended up…
23 days
Todays production was +1478 bringing the total up to 177 pages and 87 064 words. It was a good day.
And the countdown is still in the twenties. Today was lots of work on filters & censorship (Look at OpenNet iniative). On Yahoo! helping China chase cyberdissidents and Google creating a ideologically clean (Chinese style) search engine for China. Its obvious that the companies are bending over backwards to gain access to the Chinese market. Despite all the corporate retoric their actions speak louder than words.
Censorship by Eric Drooker
Reading tip for the weekend: Rosemary Coombe “Commodity Culture, Private Censorship, Branded Environments, and Global Trade Politics: Intellectual Property as a Topic of Law and Society Research“
27 days
The snow has turned to rain so its all mushy wet snow and cold water. The result of the days work is +900 words and its 27 days until the grand hand-in. The focus of my work today was writing a short theoretical section on privacy to introduce the chapter on the relation between spyware and integrity. The thesis is now 170 pages long.
The recommended text of the day is “The Right to Privacy” written by Warren & Brandeis in 1890. They argue that there should be a right to privacy and that such a right can be understood to exist out of the legal principles of their time. The motive for writing this article is usually their anger at the Saturday Evening Gazette reporting of one of Warren’s daughters. One of the best quotes include
“Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious, but has become a trade, which is pursued with industry as well as effrontery. To satisfy a prurient taste the details of sexual relations are spread broadcast in the columns of the daily papers.”
“The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the worldâ?¦”
Somehow this all seems very modern. The part about intensity and complexity of modern life seems almost strange considering it was written over 100 years ago.
One of the reasons why the article came about is the development of technology. The Kodak camera above was a radical development in photographic technology which enabled the photographer to become mobile and therefore allowed pictures to be taken with the fantastic portable technology. In addition to this the new technology meant that the motive did not have to remain immobile in a studio.
Gästblogga
Henrik & jag gästbloggade på centerpartisten Johan Linander med rubriken Disney, upphovsrätt & dig.
Här är texten:
Disneys framgång bygger, i grunden, på en uråldrig tradition. Man tar en berättelse som de flesta har hört talas om, man omvandlar den (i Disneys fall till tecknad film) och sprider den till andra. Se bara på Askungen, Robin Hood, Törnrosa och Peter Pan. Genom deras återberättande har Disneys ikoner blivit en del av oss.
När en okänd svensk tecknare, Charlie Christenssen, ville göra detsamma tog han Disneys ikon och förvandlade honom till Arne Anka. Christenssen tolkade, bearbetade och spred en ny anka. Disney agerade snabbt och brutalt för att försvara deras Anka. Hade Christenssen inte orkat så hade Arne försvunnit som så många andra före honom. För att veta hur Christenssen lyckades rekommenderar vi att ni köper samlingsvolymen om Arne Anka, alternativt kan ni höra av er till oss, så berättar vi.
SÃ¥dana problem har länge varit nÃ¥gon annans problem. Större delen av befolkningen har inte möjlighet att skapa nÃ¥got som kan reta storföretag som Disney. Men som alla ni som läser detta vet â?? tekniken förändrar och skapar möjligheter. Vi och vÃ¥ra barn har nu möjlighet att ta det som finns omkring oss, tolka det och sprida det till en ringa kostnad. Vi kan som aldrig förr vara delaktiga i att tolka vÃ¥r egen samtid. Men nu när vi har möjligt att vara med rent tekniskt och ekonomiskt â?? har vi det rent juridiskt? Christenssen â??besegradeâ?? Disney, men kommer du att orka ta risken, ta striden?
Disney visar oss mycket. De lär våra barn och underhåller oss. Men bakom allt detta finns ett stort problem med vår upphovsrätt. Det handlar om att det inte finns någon möjlighet för den som vill ta en del av sin samtid och kommentera den. I striden mellan Kalle & Arne stod rätten att teckna en anka. Tack vare teknologi finns fler människor som kan skapa och sprida.
Borde inte lagen omfatta möjligheter för alla att kommentera sin egen samtid?
Mathias Klang är bitr. forskare på Göteborgs Universitet samt
projektledare för Creative Commons Sverige.Henrik Sandklef är programmerare samt styrelsemedlem för Free Software Foundation Europe.
Goobuntu
This is an interesting development which can make lots of analysts hair turn grey. What does it mean? What would happen if you combine Google with a linux distro?
Google is preparing its own distribution of Linux for the desktop, in a possible bid to take on Microsoft in its core business – desktop software.
A version of the increasingly popular Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian and the Gnome desktop, it is known internally as ‘Goobuntu’.
via The Register
Or maybe its all a smokescreen to stop everyone from talking about Goole & China.
Future war
An illustration of a futuristic battle taken from the October 21st 1916 issue of the German news weekly, ‘Die Wochenschau‘ (The Weekly Review). Translation of the caption: ‘Fighting machines of the future :battle between a gigantic trenchdestroyer and a powerful electrically driven ‘circlecruiser”.
War is Peace
While reading the Arundhati Roy “The Algebra of Infinite Justice” I came across a list of countries that the United States has bombed and/or invaded since WWII. The list is frighteningly long. Here are a few examples (the dates denote the starting time):
China (1948), Korea (1950), Guatemala (1954), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959), The Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964), Vietnam (1961), Cambodia (1969), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980), Nicaragua (1980), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991), Somalia (1992), Bosnia (1995), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001) & Iraq (2003).
Looking around online it is easy to find lots more information. For example “Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the 20th Century” and Grossmans “Century of Military Interventions“. While looking through the latter it is difficult to maintain a positive attitude that peace is possible. Must a desire for peace be naive?
Vatican closes source
Richard Owen has written an article Vatican ‘cashes in’ by putting price on the Pope’s copyright in The Times.
The Vatican has been accused of trying to cash in on the Popeâ??s words after it decided to impose strict copyright on all papal pronouncements.
For the first time all papal documents, including encyclicals, will be governed by copyright invested in the official Vatican publishing house, the Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
The edict covers Pope Benedict XVIâ??s first encyclical, which is to be issued this week amid huge international interest. The edict is retroactive, covering not only the writings of the present pontiff â?? as Pope and as cardinal â?? but also those of his predecessors over the past 50 years. It therefore includes anything written by John Paul II, John Paul I, Paul VI and John XXIII.
The decision was denounced yesterday for treating the Popeâ??s words as â??saleable merchandiseâ?? and endangering the Churchâ??s mission to â??spread the Christian messageâ??.
A Milanese publishing house that had issued an anthology containing 30 lines from Pope Benedictâ??s speech to the conclave that elected him and an extract from his enthronement speech is reported to have been sent a bill for â?¬15,000 (£10,000). This was made up of 15 per cent of the cover price of each copy sold plus â??legal expensesâ?? of â?¬3,500.
Not too long ago I wrote about the Vatican Ethics in Internet report being pro-Free Software. The times seem to be changing even in the Vatican. Maybe we will see papal lawyers suing for unauthorised copies. Could this lead to a black market or file-sharing of the popes texts? Would you download a papal torrent?
Apple/iTunes reacts to privacy critics
In a recent update of Apple iTunes recent privacy problems emerged. This was followed by a storm of criticism. Apple has now tweaked the software to show that they are sensitive to the privacy concerns of their users – or maybe its that they are sensitive to criticism.
The EFF write
It is now offering a new update to the program that is a bit more privacy-friendly. A dialog box now asks you for your permission to activate the feature, and says that Apple does not keep any information related to your music library.
However privacy concerns still remain according to the EFF since some users have experienced that iTunes transmits its unique identifier the Apple ID.