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Tags > privacy
Health gets personal in the cloud
By Brian AhierNovember 19, 2009
Healthcare is one of the biggest industries in the world. The United States spends over 17% of its GDP on healthcare and the issue of the industry's future is being hotly debated in Congress. Whatever happens to other elements of health reform, health information technology will play a key role in moving us towards the goal of bending the cost...
Four short links: 2 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 2, 2009
Your Botnet is My Botnet (PDF) -- 2008 USENIX Security paper analysing >70G of data gathered when security researchers hijacked the Torpig botnet. A major limitation of analyzing a botnet from the inside is the limited view. Most current botnets use stripped-down IRC or HTTP servers as their command and control channels, and it is not possible to make...
What sociologist Erving Goffman could tell us about social networking and Internet identity
By Andy OramOctober 26, 2009
Erving Goffman's classic sociological text, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, helps us understand the contradictory effects of presenting ourselves online, and where both opportunities and dangers lie.
Vendor Relationship Management workshop
By Andy OramOctober 14, 2009
CRM can offer many valuable benefits, but ultimately the control lies with the vendor. A Vendor Relationship Management workshop at Harvard looked at what it would take to leave control with the customers.
Four short links: 18 August 2009
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 18, 2009
The Making of the NPR News iPhone App -- interesting behind-the-scenes look, with sketches and all. Station streams, however, presented a larger challenge. To begin with, NPR didn't have direct stream links for any of its stations, so we built a Web spider that identified and captured more than 300 iPhone-compatible station streams. After that first pass, we worked...
Four short links: 7 August 2009
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 6, 2009
Defragging the Stimulus -- each [recovery] site has its own silo of data, and no site is complete. What we need is a unified point of access to all sources of information: firsthand reports from Recovery.gov and state portals, commentary from StimulusWatch and MetaCarta, and more. Suggests that Recovery.gov should be the hub for this presently-decentralised pile of recovery...
Will Norris tackles privacy using OpenID
By Andy OramAugust 4, 2009
Identity expert Will Norris has two new blogs about OpenID's potential use for privacy.
Privacy and open government: conversations with EPIC and others about OpenID
By Andy OramAugust 3, 2009
Ideas about privacy policies, anonymity, and technical impacts, springing from a discussion with a director from the Electronic Privacy Information Center and from comments on an earlier blog.
Shortening cookies: Using OpenID to improve government privacy online
By Andy OramJuly 30, 2009
The OMB recently requested new perspectives on the federal cookie policy. My proposal took the opportunity to re-examine the federal approach to privacy.
Four short links: 23 July 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 22, 2009
Google Wave Federation Protocol -- the interesting part of Wave for me is the system for keeping databases coherent. There's a reference implementationl. I shouldn't have yelled at that Chinese guy so much -- the post that redeemed Fake Steve Jobs in my eyes. We all know that there's no fucking way in the world we should have microwave...
Dramatic Increase in Number of Tor Clients from Iran: Interview with Tor Project and the EFF
By Timothy M. O'BrienJune 19, 2009
The Tor Project produces an anonymous proxy services which allows users to evade surveillance. In this interview, Andrew Lewman talks about the Tor Project and discusses some statistics that show its increased use from with Iran. This article also includes some questions and answers with the EFF about the legal implications of running an open proxy server.
Four short links: 12 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 12, 2009
New Media Challenges: Legal and Policy Considerations for Federal Use of Web 2.0 Technology (Center for American Progress) -- report on the issues around Web 2.0 use in Government, which include privacy, security, Public Records Act, advertising, etc. See also It's Not the Campaign Anymore: How the White House Is Using Web 2.0 Technology So Far from the same...
Credit card company data mining makes us all instances of a type
By Andy OramMay 14, 2009
The New York Times has recently published one of their in-depth, riveting descriptions of how credit card companies use everything they can learn about us. Almost eleven years \ I wrote an article criticizing this trend.
Results from Wolfram Alpha: All the Questions We Ever Wanted to Ask About Software as a Service
By Andy OramMay 6, 2009
Software as a Service, known in earlier decades as Application Service Providers, upends the relationship between computer users and software. I'm seriously tempted to say that Wolfram Alpha takes the SaaS model to its extreme. So Wolfram Alpha's chances at scaling the heights of fame should force us to stop for a moment and run our own calculations concerning the value to us of data integrity, reliability, privacy, and innovation.
Four short links: 21 Apr 2009
By Nat TorkingtonApril 21, 2009
Space arrays, mobile hell, book scanners, and open source brains: Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown (Wired) -- Satellite hackers in Brazil are bouncing ham signals off a disused US military satellite array. Truck drivers love the birds because they provide better range and sound than ham radios. Rogue loggers in the Amazon use the satellites to transmit coded warnings when authorities...
Four short links: 9 Apr 2009
By Nat TorkingtonApril 9, 2009
Scifi, audiences, transparency, and the peril of public life. No links tomorrow, as I'll be preparing for our village fete: The Fantastic That Denies It's Fantastic: Science Fiction Talk at the Royal Institution -- Matt Jones's fascinating notes from this talk by two academics make thought-provoking reading. “SF is a response to the cultural shock of discovering our marginal place...
Hack in the Box (Dubai) 2009 / Psychotronic(a) / Hacking the Psyche
By Nitesh DhanjaniMarch 30, 2009
I will be presenting Psychotronica: Exposure, Control, and Deceit at the Hack in the Box Conference in Dubai (20th - 23rd April 2009).
Four short links: 13 Mar 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMarch 13, 2009
Museums, Labs, Businesses, and Hash--all in today's four short links: Shelley Bernstein Talks About the Brooklyn Museum at the National Library of New Zealand (Paul Reynolds) -- I've written about Shelley's work before. Brooklyn [Museum] is not about using social media as just another marketing and visitor experience tool-set. Rather, as Bernstein said last night, Brooklyn Museum itself is now...
Why Facebook's Terms of Service Change is Much Ado About Nothing
By Mark SigalFebruary 18, 2009
While perception is reality, and the emotional response suggests that Facebook needs to do a better job of being consultative with its community versus delivering material edicts from on high, the truth is that the hullabaloo about Facebook's change in Terms of Service is much ado about nothing.
International Conference on Cyber Security 2009
By Nitesh DhanjaniJanuary 4, 2009
I'll be speaking at the International Conference on Cyber Security 2009 in New York (Jan 5 - 9).
How Terrorists May Abuse Micro-Blogging Channels Like Twitter
By Nitesh DhanjaniDecember 18, 2008
In this article, I want to further the discussion on how micro-blogging channels may be leveraged by terrorist organizations to obtain real time surveillance and intelligence of their efforts.
Looking under what rises to the top: personal information in online searches
By Andy OramDecember 10, 2008
The search for self remains a powerful force, driving the flood of social networks, microblogging, and the posting of photos and videos to the Web. The urge toward self-definition exerts itself also when we search for information on other people--and that's where it becomes a problem.
Web Meets World: Privacy and the Future of the Cloud
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 20, 2008
Yesterday I gave a talk to the Privacy Forum in Auckland, New Zealand, titled Web Meets World: Privacy and the Future of the Cloud. The talk was intended as a scene setter for a discussion with the audience, about 70 lawyers, technologists, consultants, and public policy wonks. They responded well to the challenge, and we talked about the nature of...
Why Jerry Seinfeld Probably Cost Microsoft a Lot More than $10 Million
By Nitesh DhanjaniNovember 10, 2008
In this article, I want put forth a case study to demonstrate how capturing feelings on the social web can allow companies to measure the reputation of their brand.
Google Responds to Some Book Search Questions
By Mac SlocumNovember 6, 2008
Shortly after last week's Google Book Search announcement, Siva Vaidhyanathan posed a number of questions about the agreement's impact on publishers, libraries and consumers. Google responded, and today Vaidhyanathan...
Hacking the Psyche
By Nitesh DhanjaniNovember 3, 2008
In this article/blog-entry, I want to persuade you of the real possibility and high probability that, in the very near future, remote entities will be able target people's on-line presence to capture and leverage their emotional states and feelings. There are some very extreme implications of this from a security and privacy perspective...
Frightening transparency
By Simon St. LaurentOctober 10, 2008
I'm not very fond of people who claim that markets can solve all of our problems, but at the same time, I think markets can be very effective at one key economic task: setting prices. Our current financial problems derive,...
A code of ethics from Brian McConnell concerning employee rights (follow-up and reply)
By Andy OramSeptember 17, 2008
Last week I wrote about a privacy-related controversy and extolled the Code of Ethics that proposed by my colleague Brian McConnell. I heard shortly afterward from the other side of the controversy, Virtual PBX, so I want to air their point of view here and wrap up what I've been told.
Born Digital: A review for the moment
By Andy OramSeptember 10, 2008
Born Digital postulates a watershed between those born on or before 1980 and those born after. Although the book is advertised as a guide to the latter for those born earlier, I suspect that the marketing became unmoored from the authorship. That's because the book's arguments culminate in the message that its lessons need to be learned by "digital natives" most of all, and that they are the ones best positioned to alleviate the social dislocations caused by digital media and the Internet.
A code of ethics from Brian McConnell concerning employee rights
By Andy OramSeptember 4, 2008
My colleague Brian McConnell has a story about employer abuse guaranteed to make you scared and angry. But finding something constructive and beneficial in an incident that was personally devastating, he offers a Code of Ethics concerning workplace privacy that seems to me simple, fair, and both technically and legally capable of being implemented. A call for privacy is particularly well-timed in this election season, when the Republicans publicly spat on the Bill of Rights at least three times last night.
Nobody likes to be tracked--whether by NSA or DoubleClick
By Andy OramSeptember 2, 2008
Ecommerce professionals gush over targeted ads, claiming they'll make life easier on consumers and will supercharge advertising campaigns. But shouldn't someone ask the consumers how they feel about giving up personal information? Forrester Research has.
Fences in the ether: Brazil's proposed Internet laws
By Andy OramAugust 29, 2008
The subject of this article sounds like a mock-cartoon version of repressive censorship laws. But the proposals are real. They have been widely discussed in the Brazilian blogosphere and to some extent in the Brazilian press and TV, but they've received hardly any attention in the United States.
Knowing what's on your phone--and on those of your employees
By Andy OramAugust 14, 2008
Jonathan Zdziarski, while helping to develop an open toolkit for the iPhone, uncovered a fascinating trove of information that the iPhone offers to anyone who knows how to get at it. He now provides never-before-published guidelines to getting information off of an iPhone and on the computers to which it has synched, in iPhone Forensics, currently offered in RoughCut online format.
Is SocialMedia Overstepping Facebook's Privacy Line?
By David RecordonJuly 11, 2008
SocialMedia is an advertising network which places ads within social applications such as those on Facebook and MySpace. SocialMedia claims to be more effective in this type of advertising, due to a patent-pending technology they've developed named FriendRank. SocialMedia CEO Seth Goldstein claims that SocialMedia ads can pay up to 2.5 times more than traditional ads within social networks and...
News Roundup: Foldable E-Reader Coming Soon, New "Libraries" Bring New Privacy Issues, Analyst: Digital Change Targets TV and Film
By Mac SlocumJuly 9, 2008
Foldable E-Reader Launching in Europe This Fall, U.S. in '09 The New York Times takes a look at the Readius foldable e-reader: ... the Readius, designed mainly for reading...
Google Friend Connect and limits to sharing
By Andy OramMay 14, 2008
We're all tired of acquaintances tugging on us to sign up for new social networks. But we wouldn't want to have just one big social network, either. Google's Friend Connect, which was announced on Monday and covered by Radar as well as other sites, represents a small step toward a middle ground. Complete information sharing would mean mingling your data and social networking functions fully with any site that supports a Friend Connect widget. Instead, Friend Connect negotiates the traditional tension between sociability and privacy.
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