privacy
Privacy is about what information gets out to the world, and electronics have caused big changes in the world of privacy. The old model of privacy: Before the electronic age (the web , that is), personal information was guarded by physical barriers (such as curtains) that blocked the senses. This constituted an " airwall " like when a computer is blocked from a network because there is simply no connection. Physical items, when destroyed, stayed destroyed because their information only existed in a limited number of places. Before the electronic era information was usually directly communicated and not recorded, much of the information you received was hearsay . As you know, this is an untrustworthy form of information because it's so prone to distortion. The new world of privacy: There are all sorts of ways of getting at information that is physically hidden, because it's most often digitized. There are no more curtains. There's no way to know for sure how many copies have been made and where they are. Thus, it's very difficult to confirm that anything is truly destroyed. Hearsay is replaced by copying . That is high-fidelity reproduction. This means that the information you receive is much more likely to be an exact replica of the original. What are the new safeguards of privacy? Your desire to disclose information is one of the most important safeguards. If you never record it, it can't get away from you. User agreements with the systems to which you give information, and the safeguards in those contracts, are another new protection of privacy. The ethics of the holder of your info also play an important role. Do you trust them with your information? This will become an issue in our discussion of Google. The strength or weakness of aggregation tools that link disparate pieces of information to one id . If all of your information can be linked back together, it's less secure.
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Here is the privacy bottom line (for me at least) You give information . You get services and a better user experience in return. Although you could decide not to enter any information, the reality is that Google and Facebook are providing a very valuable service to you for no money. Instead they charge you information. Is it worth it? To decide this, you have to balance the worst-case scenario of the disclosure of your data against the benefits you gain from being able to use Google and Facebook (and all the rest of the systems you use).
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Disclosure (and overdisclosure ) is about how much information to reveal, to whom, and under what circumstances . What could be the negative consequences if your trust is betrayed? Once you put something on a computer , you're not entirely in control of where it ends up, no matter how much you trust the holder of your information. This is the first and most important security measure you can take.
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An end-user agreement creates a contract between you and a software company According to their end-user agreement , simply using Google Search constitutes an agreement with Google and allows them to use your data. Most other companies are not like this and require you to explicitly agree to the terms of use (though how often do users actually read the agreement). Google states that they don't sell your data, they keep the log files of search requests ( queries ) for a certain period of time (90 days? 18 months?), and data about your usage is associated only with your ip address . Here are some critiques of the Google privacy policy: 1) Google might disclose your information to the authorities, if requested. 2) Their privacy policy has been called vague and incomplete, and doesn't reveal everything about what they might do with your info (for me, it was difficult to locate the privacy policy at all). 3) Google doesn't consider an IP address personally identifiable information...but depending on the situation, it could be. 4) You can't always opt out (decide not to participate in their data collection or activities). You can turn off cookies , but it might compromise the service. Why is it in Google's interest to keep their policies vague ? They want to assure you of your privacy, but your information is very valuable, and they want to be able to collect and use it to make money, it's Google's most valuable product .
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Facebook's end-user agreement used to be much more vague and didn't acknowledge privacy issues, but they have since come under pressure to be more explicit. Now Facebook states that you own the content and information you post; however, you grant Facebook the right to use it most however they see fit as long as they respect your security and privacy settings. But which of us really locks down our information ? How much time and effort does that take? Companies like Facebook count on the fact that it's too much trouble for most people to really monitor their privacy settings In some ways the foxes are in charge of the hen house. facebook 's page on privacy is one of the top hits when you search for Facebook and privacy. How did I even locate information on Google and privacy? By googling it!
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Companies such as Facebook and Google run on trust —they can't function without people's participation. They must maintain at least your perception of their trustworthiness. Users join quickly but can leave just as quickly.
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Is privacy as important to young people as to older people (many of whom avoid using online tools for reasons of privacy )? What should and shouldn't be private? What should we reasonably expect to be protected? Can information ever really be gone? Are the security tools adequate to protect your information? Answer: no and no . There are always hackers looking for system weaknesses.) How do you balance personalization with privacy? There are many hurdles to protecting privacy: reading end user agreements , understanding them (time, effort, implications), and so on. Control can sometimes lead to a confusion of choices. If the system is too complicated , if it requires too much expertise, people won't use it. In fact, every time you put up a hurdle that protects their privacy, most people will not take advantage of the protection. One type of end-user agreement is opt in . This means that you are not part of a program or activity until you say you want to be. This requires extra effort on the user's part to say they want to be part of an agreement. If an end-user agreement is opt out you are part of a program or activity it until you say you don't want to be. It requires extra effort to decide not to participate. Which one of these techniques would you use if you wanted to have a lot of people accept your agreement?
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The more possible it is to aggregate data across your identities , the more possible it is to build a complete picture of " you ." This is the idea behind data warehousing as well. We put a lot of information in the data warehouse. Then we ask what is going on and what should we do . Not only do corporations do data warehousing and aggregate data, most governments do as well. They would also like to know about their users (their citizens that is). They search for social trends, threats that and coming situations in which they might want or need to intervene. The " eye in the sky " refers to satellites, looking down on populations and recording their actions. The " data eye in the sky " refers to large scale data aggregation that governments like our own are now performing. Governments ask what is going on and what should we do about it? The strength of aggregation is still very low. Data aggregation techniques are still being refined. Once organizations have aggregated large amounts of information in a data warehouse, it is still hard to make sense of it? There is bound to be a lot of conflicting information, so making conclusions can be really hard. In addition, for each bit of information that is interesting to governments or corporations, there is a massive amount of information that is irrelevant. To draw conclusions from a data warehouse you have to find many small needles in a very large haystack . These needles are not easy to find, because, unlike us who leave very plain tracks, people with ill intent know how to hide their tracks. But the hunt continues and the strength of aggregation gets higher every day.
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Where's Bobko? Placeholder for references not yet filled in Question: "Why does Google need to know so much about me?" Peter Barron from Google responds: We actually know very little about you.Credit card companies, phone companies, groceries know more than google . We know only your ip address and your search history . We don't want to know anything about you as an individual. We're interested in aggregated data and search * patterns *. Data is not sinister, but beneficial. Data collection by Google is a good thing. We collect and retain data not to sell it or give it to governments, but to make more useful products for people to use of their own free will. Data retention helps fight spam and fraud. Aggregating anonymized data can do good things such as predict flu outbreaks 2 weeks before official sources can. Barron continues: We make sure no product is launched without building in privacy tools. We should start to have a more sophisticated privacy debate. The same outlets that write about privacy are also very concerned about monetizing their news online using targeted advertising, etc. behavioral targeting is a strong future for the digital economy as long as it's based on transparency, consent , and choice on the user's part. We're working to give people control of their data online, and awareness of how it's used.
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Cory Doctorow says: There have not yet been many instances for us to analyze the potential harmful impacts of having private search information released. One big example was the aol disclosure where anonymizing turned out to be more difficult and subtle than anticipated. Much of the data was in fact traceable . With queries like "how to kill your wife," or "my baby's father physically abuses me," it's fairly obvious that having those queries revealed could cause real harm. Princeton's center run by Ed Felton has released several papers on anonymization of search data, showing that large amounts of data can be tracked back from theoretically anonymized sources. For example, a service that spies on children's Internet activity which is used by parents to protect them from sexual predators sells the " anonymized " IM sessions to market research companies. In many cases the data turns out not to be that anonymous after all.
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