Public policy and privacy
Public policy issues such as privacy, technology industry economic development, education to support technology workers, and so on. Privacy in particular, whether or not strictly tied to public policy.
Why an actual peace treaty is essential in Lebanon
War is inevitably a terrible thing. This truth is repeatedly forgotten or disregarded, not least in the Middle East, most recently by Hizbollah and Israel alike, and perhaps by other parties influencing the Lebanese conflict as well.
But I am writing today, not about hatred and folly in general, but about a narrower point – namely, the need for an actual peace treaty in Lebanon, after decades of a formal state of war. Such a treaty is, in my judgment, essential for Lebanon’s economic future. And so it is essential for Israel’s security too, and by extension for the security of many other countries as well. For if Lebanon does not thrive — if the people of Lebanon lose hope — Lebanon will remain what it has been for three decades, an unstable and uncontrollable enemy of the Israeli state.
| Categories: Economic development, Public policy and privacy | Leave a Comment |
AOL’s IM content privacy policy
AOL’s privacy policy isn’t as bad as Microsoft’s, but it’s no joy either. “Rights” can be a slippery word, as partisans all over the political spectrum are apt to point out.
The contents of your online communications, as well as other information about you as an AOL Network user, may be accessed and disclosed in response to legal process (for example, a court order, search warrant or subpoena); in other circumstances in which AOL believes the AOL Network is being used in the commission of a crime; when we have a good faith belief that there is an emergency that poses a threat to the safety of you or another person; or when necessary either to protect the rights or property of AOL, the AOL Network or its affiliated providers, or for us to render the service you have requested.
| Categories: Online and mobile services, Privacy, censorship, and freedom, Public policy and privacy | Leave a Comment |
Microsoft’s non-privacy policy
I just went to download Microsoft Messenger, and reviewed the terms and conditions. The following is excerpted, emphasis mine.
We consider your use of the Service, including the content of your communications, to be private. We do not routinely monitor your communications or disclose information about your communications to anyone. However, we may monitor your communications and disclose information about you, including the content of your communications, if we consider it necessary to: (1) comply with the law or to respond to legal process; (2) ensure your compliance with this contract; or (3) protect the rights, property, or interests of Microsoft, its employees, its customers, or the public.
EDIT: I can’t find anything at all about content privacy on the Yahoo! Messenger privacy page.
| Categories: Online and mobile services, Privacy, censorship, and freedom, Public policy and privacy | Leave a Comment |
Would a Google PC succeed?
Richard Brandt asked me to look over his post on the oft-rumored possibility of a Google PC. I actually opined on this back in January, when the rumors were rife in connection with a supposed Wal-Mart sales/marketing agreement. I concluded that that would make a lot of sense for internet connectivity and student/homework uses (I didn’t consider work-at-home or gaming uses because that didn’t seem a good fit with Wal-Mart). The reasoning I came up with back then looks good in retrospect, with only minor tweaks (e.g., my new reason for not worrying about IE-only websites is the IE emulation capability in Firefox).
Richard, however, goes further, thinking that Google could succeed in PCs used mainly to run word processing, spreadsheets, etc.. His arguments include:
| Categories: Google, Hardware, Online and mobile services, Privacy, censorship, and freedom, Public policy and privacy, Software as a service | 7 Comments |
Scatterchat and Tor vs. The Great Firewall of China
Hacktivismo has just released Scatterchat, an IM tool intended to beat repressive regimes’ firewalls. Unlike other anonymizer types of tools that use Chinese repression mainly as a marketing hook, Scattershot seems to truly be focused on its stated goal. I haven’t figured out whether it does much clever other than leverage Tor, an anonymous network established by the Electronic Freedom Foundation to try to beat traffic analysis. This all sounds like a perfect example of what I’ve been calling for — technological creativity directed at beating technological repression.
Universal surveillance of vehicle movements
- Last December, Bruce Schneier documented the UK’s near-term intention to track the movement of every vehicle in the whole country, mile-by-mile. He further reported that there are (longer-term, of course) plans or hopes to track people’s personal movements, via face recognition and the like.
- Forrester Research apparently now reports (I found out via Ian Turvill) that pay-as-you-drive insurance in Europe is on the rise. This is a clever idea, for a variety of reasons, but it requires tracking almost every choice a driver makes.
- Meanwhile, cruder movement tracking is provided by electronic toll payment, something that is bound to skyrocket due to time savings, to pollution/congestion benefits, and eventually also to the benefits of time-of-day pricing, which can further reduce traffic congestion.
This is scary stuff. And we’re not going to wind up stopping it, even if we try. We can only hope to blunt its ill effects, by adopting new laws and legal principles that prevent misuse of data the government has already collected.
Unlocking fiscal from technical architecture
Martin Geddes of Telepocalypse is kind enough to call Tariff Rebate Passthrough “the first new idea I’ve seen in a long time on the stale network neutrality debate.” He goes on to express concern about the practicality of the idea, but hopefully I addressed that somewhat in subsequent posts. While there certainly are major systems to build, which I acknowledge, I don’t see why it’s worse than what would be needed if the telcos’ preferred bill successfully makes it through Congress.
| Categories: Net neutrality, Public policy and privacy | Leave a Comment |
So THAT’S why Andrew Orlowski still has a job
Good things can come from the oddest sources, like mushrooms from a guano cave. And thus an amusing and worthwhile article has appeared under Andrew Orlowski‘s byline. It’s over-the-top, of course, but hey — it IS an Orlowski piece, after all.
His basic thesis is that political bloggers feel so driven to just write that they eventually lose touch with logic, and that this plays in to the general paranoid theme in political discourse. (For some reason, he identifies paranoia uniquely with Americans, but let’s overlook that piece of silliness.) In particular, he thinks the pro-net-neutrality arguments are extremist, even as he correctly points out that the bill being rammed through Congress in their despite is horrifically anti-competitive.
| Categories: Net neutrality, Public policy and privacy | 1 Comment |
Simple legislative language for Tariff Rebate Passthrough
One of the best features of Tariff Rebate Passthrough is that, even with pricing flexibility, it can be implemented using simple legislative language. There only have to be three stipulations:
- Pricing of internet services to consumers will be based wholly on technical characteristics such as volume and quality of service, and not on the identity of the information provider, the content of the information, or the equipment (hardware or software) used by the consumer to consume it. (Actually, the telecom providers may yelp at the “hardware” clause.)
- Pricing of “last-mile” delivery to information providers will be based on those same factors only, and be in the form of standard per-byte tariffs only. Pricing will not discriminate in any way among information providers, nor among types of application.
- Telecom service vendors can’t charge two parties for delivering the same byte.
I think that’s it. Maybe I’m missing something – I’m surely no regulatory lawyer – but those three provisions seem to incorporate the essence, and the benefits, of Tariff Rebate Passthrough.
| Categories: Net neutrality, Public policy and privacy | 1 Comment |
Tariff Rebate Passthrough – achieving pricing flexibility
I’ve thought more about the one weakness so far in the Tariff Rebate Passthrough plan – pricing flexibility. Contrary to what I implied a few hours ago, I now believe that Tariff Rebate Passthrough (TRP) is fully compatible with the kinds of service pricing flexibility providers and consumers are used to or would want. To see that, let’s consider the basic kinds of telecom service pricing:
| Categories: Net neutrality, Public policy and privacy | 2 Comments |