Telstra’s Whereis Everyone service is bound to raise a few eyebrows. It’s great if you want to locate a few friends and they are happy for you to be able to locate where they are at anytime but….. what about any privacy concerns? Are you happy to be located anywhere anytime? The press and commentators, as usual, is going to town on some of the more alarmist uses.
We have very little privacy left in our lives - some would argue that it disappeared some time ago. Anyway, here’s another example of technology intruding further into our lives. Telstra has some great sales pitches - its certainly nice to be able to know your kids are on their way home or how you can find your misplaced phone (is it really that accurate?) but are we becoming immune or blase to these invasions of privacy? If we know we are being monitored so closely will that affect our behaviour in any way (as in Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon) or are we simply past caring?

Wikipedia also has an interesting modern definition of the Panopticon. I had a rant about this previously after reading “John Twelve Hawk’s” “The Traveller” (must have a look to see if the sequel is out yet). Anyway, if you are interested in this type of technology from legal/policy/social perspectives, you might like to go along to UNSW’s free one day seminar ‘You are where you’ve been - technological threats to your location privacy‘ on 23rd July. Just don’t forget to turn your (Telstra) phone off before you go .

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

Following on from Garry’s post, ‘We watched TV … they make TV’, this isn’t exactly about remixing and publishing content, its about publishing yourself. Interesting post from Greg Sterlings Screenwerk blog looks at the diminished view of privacy that is emerging in today’s web generation. Shameless promotion or just emergent behaviour? Make your own mind up.

technorati tags: privacy

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

Google Street view recently arrived in Australia and is already encountering interesting opinions on privacy in particular. Google Earth and Google Maps are great services already but it certainly does add an extra dimension when you are able to look at a location (360 degrees too) from street level. Of course at street level is where you will find all sorts of people engaged in all sorts of activity who may or may not want to be photographed. This is where privacy advocates are concerned. Do a Google search on Google Street View and you can find a number of articles discussing examples of where,how or when you might not want to be photographed for the world to see.
What interests me though is not so much the discussion (interesting as it is) of Google Street View now but what it may look like and how it could be used in the future. Photos are a natural precursor to video so how long is it before Street View or something like it starts using video. There are countless numbers of webcams and video surveillance in our cities now. If you really want a street view to add an extra dimension to Google Earth/Maps why not integrate these into the service.
What could you use such a service for? Obviously its great for real estate services, previewing where you might go on holidays etc and could be a great educational resource.
How about some other uses? There should be some great mashup opportunities here. Since privacy has been raised as a concern where could this go? Well, a number of social networking services I use have presence awareness so they know when I am online. I can probably be tracked down to a general area using an IP address. So, if you know my identity, that I am online and where I am online at, if there is a webcam or some sort of accessible video surveillance nearby, theoretically it may be possible for you to do a search on me and then click to some sort of video where you can see me, without me knowing it or giving any sort of permission to do so. Is this a good or a bad thing?
What if I am not online? I may be carrying my mobile phone with me. Mobiles can supposedly be located easily enough so its probably theoretically possible to track me down to a location using that technology. Of course there are other ways that I can be tracked down which I discussed briefly here. Its interesting to speculate just what sort of services could be available in the next 5 or 10 years and just how powerful and accessible technology is becoming.

Cheers,
Jerry.

technorati tags: Google, Google Street View,privacyl

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

Sweeping changes to Canada’s country code top-level domain, .ca, will put the country on the vanguard of Internet privacy. But while law enforcement isn’t happy about potentially losing an important investigative tool, the half-million Canadians whose personal information is currently publicly available on the Internet shouldn’t rest easy that they are safe from wired snoops. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

In a letter, copy of which was obtained by Reuters yesterday, Google Inc. has told a senior U.S. Republican lawmaker concerned about privacy that the Internet search and advertising company supports a federal privacy law. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

U.S. Senate bill aims at limiting spyware by seemingly allowing broadband providers, computer hardware and software vendors, financial institutions and other businesses to scan users’ computers without authorization. “We think this language is overly broad and could protect activities which could be harmful to computer users,” Butler told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. “It would, in effect, allow a software vendor to truly monitor everything that’s on a user’s computer, essentially setting [vendors] up as an ad hoc police force.” More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

Several people abroad have started mailing me and others asking if rumors of new legislation to be passed in Sweden on the 17th of June is for real. There are also reports in international forums starting to pop up. This is fairly old news, and I think that most of us are surprised that this has not generated more press both inside and outside Sweden earlier. This legislation will allow for the Swedish National Defense Radio Agency (FRA) to wiretap Internet traffic leaving the country… More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

Earlier this year, I wrote glowingly about the new CIRA whois policy, which took effect today and which I described as striking the right balance between access and privacy. The policy was to have provided new privacy protection to individual registrants — hundreds of thousands of Canadians — by removing the public disclosure of their personal contact information… Apparently I spoke too soon. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

In a response to the new wiretapping law that was introduced in Sweden this week, The Pirate Bay is asking international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden in order to protect their customers. In addition, the BitTorrent tracker will add SSL encryption to their site, and roll out a new VPN service. Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, has written about this issue on his blog. Sunde points out that Belgium has taken Sweden to the Strasbourg court and hopes more countries will follow suit. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

Charter Communications, the fourth-largest cable operator in the United States, announced yesterday that it has backed off a plan to monitor customers’ Internet transmissions. The company had been planning to harvest the stream of data from each Internet customer for clues to their interests and then make money from advertisers who would use the information to target online pitches. The data-collection effort would have protected personal information, Charter officials said in describing the plan, but critics likened the practice to wiretapping. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back