Author: Christopher Parsons

Policy wonk. Torontonian. Photographer. Not necessarily in that order.

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Links Writing

Harsher data protection sanctions are coming [but will they matter?]

Fleischer:

I regularly hear people claim that there’s not enough legal enforcement of privacy. In some places, as a matter of practice, that may well be true. But there is no shortage of overlapping authorities with the power to bring or adjudicate privacy claims. Curiously, in privacy circles, most of the focus is on the enforcement actions of the DPAs. But in practice, the DPAs are just one of many different authorities who can and do bring privacy enforcement actions. And the trend is clearly going up, both in terms of the numbers of laws that can be violated, in terms of the severity of sanctions, in terms of the numbers of complaints that are brought, and in terms of the breadth of authorities who are involved in enforcing privacy.

Fleischer is Google’s chief privacy counsel, so he’s got a pretty good eye for what’s coming at Google (and other large data collectors and processors). I wonder, however, about the actual effectiveness of the legal challenges he refers to: Canada’s privacy law didn’t stop Streetview from coming into Canada but instead mediated some of its most invasive characteristics. Similar things can be said about powerful network surveillance apparatuses that are deployed by Canadian ISPs. My worry is less that large companies will be whacked with large fines, but that the regulation will serve to legitimize a lot of practices that legally are acceptable without being according with our social norms.

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Links

Punching through The Great Firewall of T-Mobile

Punching through The Great Firewall of T-Mobile:

T-Mobile UK are moving towards a mobile network which works (technically) in a very similar manner to the Great Firewall of China.

…

Most people don’t run their own server. If you don’t, then you’re pretty screwed.

On a technical level, what T-Mobile is doing is pretty cool (assuming it is, in fact, the same techniques as China is using to attack TOR of late) but is otherwise pure evil. T-Mobile’s behaviours are a clear indication of why strong network neutrality rules are absolutely necessary: without regulations and punishments carriers will happily screw their customers if it might save, or make, the carriers a buck.

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Links

ContraRISK: Bad password advice

contrarisk:

In the December issue of Computer Fraud & Security, an article by Prof Steven Furnell – ‘Assessing password guidance and enforcement on leading websites’ – presents some fascinating original research into the password practices of various leading websites – and also paints a somewhat…

Whenever I read about bad passwords, I’m reminded of XKCD’s comic on password strengths.

 

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Quotations

Surveillance is not itself sinister any more than discrimination is itself damaging … there are dangers inherent in surveillance systems whose crucial coding mechanisms involve categories derived from stereotypical or prejudicial sources.

~D. Lyon. (2003). Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk and Digital Discrimination. New York: Routledge. Pp. 2.

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Quotations

2012.1.9

We must go further [than simply demanding transparency] and inject public values into development cycles while also intentionally hobbling surveillance technologies to rein in their most harmful potentialities.

Transparent Practices Don’t Stop Prejudicial Surveillance
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Humour

This is possibly the most insane remote I’ve ever seen. God help the traditional television makers if Apple ever produces a real TV.

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Humour

Google “Surveillance” Monster

thimulus:

Google “Surveillance” Monster

Of course, we do need to remember that surveillance in and of itself isn’t necessarily sinister: it’s when a surveillance practice’s coding mechanisms involve categories derived from stereotypical/prejudicial sources that we most need to worry.

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Writing

PlayBook Browser UI Blunders

On the whole, I really like my PlayBook. That said, there are certain UI decisions that make absolutely no sense and are in desperate need of being cleaned up. One example: the URL bar in the default browser.

Landscape Mode

The UI makes loads of sense here. No major issues, though the decision to have the history icon (counter-clockwise circle) dead beside the refresh icon (at the end of the URL bar) is a boneheaded given the imprecision of the touch interface.

Portrait Mode

Note that to get the full browser options in the second portrait screenshot, you need to slide your finger along the favourite icon to reveal the other options. This is not an intuitive decision. Note that, with the poor precision of the touch controls, having the history button beside the refresh button is an even worse decision in portrait mode than when in landscape.

Truly WTF Decision

Note that in all the above screenshots there is a medal-like icon to the left of the URL. Tapping it brings up the below screen.
99.99999% of the world will have no clue what this means. For those of us that do it’s confusing: I’ve had the browser tell me on multiple occasions that the certificate is invalid when I know that not to be the case. I get that certificate awareness is a security plus but it’s done so poorly here that it’s (at best) effectively meaningless.
Now, are these huge issues? No, of course not. Are they signs of an unpolished OS release? Most definitely. Hopefully they’ll be improved upon in the 2.0 release of the PlayBook OS.
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Links

Rethinking the Unthinkable About SOPA

Lauren has a cogent framing of the legislative hurdles that might lead to SOPA getting through the House and Senate. I think that the ‘lets put up banners’ is a cruddy way to inform the public of SOPA’s implications. I agree that full-on blackouts of majors sites is a poor public relations tactic and unlikely to positively raise public (and legislative) awareness).

What might work, however, is highly targeted blackouts. Why not prevent the Congress, Senate, and White House, along with all other government bodies throughout the US, from accessing key sites such as Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, and so forth. This would make legislators realize what they’re about to do, its implications, and create a large enough media event that the public might wake up to what’s going on in Washington. Companies needn’t target the public themselves but just create a focusing event that brings SOPA and its problems to the public’s attention and legislators’ attention at effectively the same time.

Now, would political organizations get around ‘blockades’? Sure. The aim wouldn’t be perfect enforcement of a blockade but to capture real attention on SOPA and its harms, and make those harms tangibly real to the folks responsible for voting (or not) on this POS bill.

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Links Writing

Is Silicon Valley too smart for its own good?

While Agrawal’s article argues that those in Silicon Valley are developing for people who’re as saturated as they are, I think that he’s really missing what makes the Valley what it is. For decades, we’ve seen interesting ideas and products come out of California that are absolute flops. They’re not flops because the products are necessarily bad but  because the deliverables don’t identify a real problem or offer a real solution. That’s not a bad thing, and critiques along grounds of ‘flops’ (and crafting products for the future, rather than the past) misses what’s important about the Valley’s function as a thought incubator: ideas are crafted and honed, underlying principles and technical challenges are ironed out, and eventually some bits and pieces of “failed” ideas and products tend to be integrated into the future’s successful product lines.

Innovative development, much like scholarly work, is often intellectually exciting and vibrant while lacking a direct market output. It’s because we can test, experiment, and play that cool things ultimately come out of the ether. If we demand that most, or all, of Silicon Valley’s (and academia’s) projects meet existing problems, and avoid dreamlike solutions to undefined issues, we’re going to see a lot less interesting and novel things that (seemingly) pop out of nowhere.