[iDC] The Bronx Blog Project

[tobias c. van Veen]

ola,

My concern is this: identity theft is of course the real issue here, and an
immigrant learning language skills and with less knowledge of these issues
would be a prime target.

The technical issues lead into a whole bag of complexities...

The thing about the "medium" though is that it's media -- it's a network.
And there can never be absolute privacy on an electronic network without
reducing it to a single node of one, i.e., your computer, disconnected &
encrypted, and even then, as recent public cases have shown involving
corporate and gov't members who are quite careless, laptops can be stolen &
hacked, right?

And even if one was to create a complicated set of software barriers
involving trusted social networking, wouldn't it create islands of users
disconnected from each other and thus undermine the very point of social
networking to begin with -- the random outreach encounter, the comment, the
sharing of links, the feedback, the Ze Frank Forum?

In any case, any set of software approval barriers or trusted networking can
always be hacked (just check out the recent issues of 2600 concerning all
the MySpace and so forth hacks-- and yah, FaceBook is hacked too).

In any case, the contradiction is this: how can one use social networking if
it requires pre-approval of those already known to begin with? It's a
catch-22: one never meets anyone new this way. And the feeling of security
from "locking" blogs is false, as the data resides with a corporation,
unless you own the server, and you figure out a way to block Google, and
encrypt your machine, which means that no one will ever know you exist save
for those you already let know. And that's not much of a Net, is it?

And there is another problem: that economically, no *corporate* social
networking endeavour will take place unless a profitable level of data
harvesting exists. If some level of security was demanded where data was
actually protected, you can bet that no Corp would want to be involved.

Thus any work-around has to be open source: open-source social networking
will be the only way to sidestep corporate data harvesting as the primary
factor in undermining privacy. But this is already way too late -- MySpace
*is* the Net now. There's an entire generation open to a whole future of
identity theft PK Dick style. There's a lot of catch-up to do, and it
doesn't work around the first catch_22.

And then there's Google. Even complicated architectures only delay Google in
spidering and finding your page, even if "trusted." Google is also the Net.
Many of us only see the Net through Google, i.e., physically, through a
Google cache server -- thus data harvesting is happening via the search
engine apparatus which, for all intents and purposes, has become the Net as
such. And we really don't know what's going on inside Google, do we?

Thus what it comes down to is *what* you put online, as well as being aware
of what might be put up online w/out your permission (such as corporate
data) -- as I'm not sure "technology" will solve the problem due to
intractable corporate infiltration and the very architecture of the Net
itself as well as the very desires we have in wanting to use it to share &
have new encounters with unknown beings. As I said, I use Flickr, I have a
MySpace page and a blog, etc. The point is responsibility & awareness: what
do you put online, and why?

Hence my original question -- when teaching neophytes the ropes of the Net,
is there time devoted to the precautions necessary before throwing yer life
up online?

If today 'safe sex' is the norm (or at least the rhetoric), then something
along the lines of 'safe net' discourse is called for... ?

It seems that here hacker protocols & ethics have something to offer.

best,

    tobias







> tobias,
> 
> You do raise some interesting points that I have been thinking about
> myself for a while recently. However, I question if the lack of privacy
> you mention is intrinsic to the *medium* of blogging, as opposed to the
> specific implementations we see today.
> 
> I'll have to admit -- I have not yet had a chance to listen to the talk
> you mention, so I'm not familiar with the specific points raised there,
> but the challenges of privacy online in the world of Flickr, Facebook and
> blogs have been discussed widely in the past and in other forums as well.
> 
> Personally, I feel that current implementations are relatively naive in
> the access controls they provide, but that these are criticisms of the
> implementations only and not the medium itself. I'm not yet convinced that
> the privacy implications of today's implementations neccessarily limit the
> possibility of better, socially-aware implementations for this medium in
> the future.
> 
> Already we have seen some evolution in access-control mechanisms --
> Facebook, for instance, is a lot more sensitive to these issues than
> Friendster originally was. Viegas' Collections work illustrates that
> socially-aware control mechanisms *are* possible, and is motivated by
> examples like these. Personally, my own thesis work
> (<self-plug> http://ankurkalra.com/spice.pdf </self-plug>) is an attempt
> at exploring these kinds of access-control mechanisms for blogs, amongst
> other things.
> 
> Admittedly, the mechanisms involved are still quite simplistic, but I do
> feel that there are people thinking about these problems and making
> some progress in these areas. We don't yet have all the answers, but we do
> recognize the problem.
> 
> (Josh -- interesting project, I'll be trying to get in touch with you out
> of band about some of the details)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Ankur
>