Saturday, December 13, 2003

Wired News Profiling System Takeoff Delayed

"A proposed new airline passenger screening system that would use private databases to identify risky passengers is facing delays amid heightened scrutiny from industry and government agencies."

"The GAO has met with various civil liberties groups that oppose the project, asking questions about the effectiveness and quality of data in the commercial databases to be incorporated in CAPPS II. The agency's investigative tactics have led some opponents of CAPPS II to believe that the resulting report will be harshly critical."

redux [09.23.03]
Wired News Army Admits Using JetBlue Data

""This looks and feels like the data Valdez," said Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"Look at how we found out about this, only because one company was foolish enough to speak publicly about it," Tien added. "We should put the brakes on all these data-mining programs, and have a serious national conversation, because travel data is just one example of the many kinds of data every data-mining operation wants to suck in from private businesses.""

The New York Times JetBlue Target of Inquiries by 2 Agencies
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"Two federal agencies announced today that they had opened investigations into JetBlue Airways in response to the airline's admission that it had provided travel records on more than a million passengers to a Pentagon contractor, violating its own privacy rules.

The moves by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Trade Commission came as JetBlue disclosed that it had hired Deloitte & Touche, the accounting firm, to review the company's privacy policies and determine if they needed to be revamped."

redux [09.18.03]
Wired News JetBlue Shared Passenger Data

"JetBlue Airways confirmed on Thursday that in September 2002, it provided 5 million passenger itineraries to a defense contractor for proof-of-concept testing of a Pentagon project unrelated to airline security -- with help from the Transportation Security Administration.

The contractor, Torch Concepts, then augmented that data with Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information, including income level, to develop what looks to be a study of whether passenger-profiling systems such as CAPPS II are feasible."

Wired News JetBlue Data to Fuel CAPPS Test

"Bill Scannell, a privacy advocate who boycotted Delta Airlines earlier this year for its reported participation in testing, said his sources confirm that JetBlue will be replacing Delta Airlines as the "guinea pig for CAPPS II testing."

"JetBlue has no respect for its customers or the constitution of the United States," Scannell said. "JetBlue is clearly code red.""

""People have used irresponsible scare tactics to stop the testing of CAPPS II," [TSA's Turmail] said. "The American people have the right to know whether this system will work. We should have a dialogue based on fact and not innuendo.""

redux [09.09.03]
Washington Post Fliers to Be Rated for Risk Level

"In the most aggressive -- and, some say, invasive -- step yet to protect air travelers, the federal government and the airlines will phase in a computer system next year to measure the risk posed by every passenger on every flight in the United States.

The new Transportation Security Administration system seeks to probe deeper into each passenger's identity than is currently possible, comparing personal information against criminal records and intelligence information. Passengers will be assigned a color code -- green, yellow or red -- based in part on their city of departure, destination, traveling companions and date of ticket purchase."

redux [04.16.03]
Washington Post Homeland Security Dept. Fills Privacy Post

"The former privacy officer of Internet advertising giant DoubleClick will be the Department of Homeland Security's first privacy czar, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced today."

"The "Total Information Awareness" program would have created a database of consumer financial transactions combined with other publicly available data. Congress said it will suspend funding for the Defense Department project unless the administration can demonstrate that it will not violate constitutional privacy rights. The White House's report is due next month."

GovExec Homeland privacy officer to review passenger-screening system

"Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Wednesday told a congressional panel that the government will not implement a pilot version of a controversial program for screening airline passengers until a privacy expert examines it.

"It is my intention to have this be [examined] by the privacy officer," Ridge said, responding to a question by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on why CAPPS appeared scheduled to be implemented before a privacy officer has been named."

redux [03.17.03]
NPR: All Things Considered Passenger Screening Software Would ID Terrorists

"Federal officials commission a new air-passenger screening system to identify people linked to terrorism. The Transportation Security Administration says commercial databases will be used to check the authenticity of passengers' names. Privacy advocates worry about the extent of the data search. NPR's John McChesney reports."

redux [06.06.02]
BusinessWeek Privacy vs. Security: A Bogus Debate?

"Let me emphasize again: Without some privacy, we couldn't stay human. But we'll be better equipped to defend a core of essential privacy if our overall civilization is open enough to let us catch the Peeping Toms and power abusers.

Better, more intrusive technology is going to limit our [ability to stay anonymous]. In 5 or 10 years, you'll have eyeglasses that scan any face on the street, look it up on the Internet, and provide captions as you walk by. This will be a return to the village of our ancestors, where they recognized everyone they saw. No one will be a total stranger."

redux [06.28.00]
The Standard Consumers Fight Back, Anonymously

"It's unlikely that in the future everyone will choose total online anonymity. But the new privacy technologies have implications that go beyond the short-term questions of law enforcement and marketing.

"The real dimension here isn't the choice between privacy and disclosure," says Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. "The real story is the impact it has on our sense of identity. The fact that we can selectively disclose things on the Internet is changing the nature of social interactions. If you can change your persona at will in cyberspace, that begins affecting what you think of your own identity and who you think you are.""

redux [04.30.00]
The New York Times Magazine The Eroded Self
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"A liberal state should respect the distinction between public and private speech because it recognizes that the ability to expose in some contexts aspects of our identity that we conceal in other contexts is indispensable to freedom, friendship, even love. Friendship and romantic love can't be achieved without intimacy, and intimacy, in turn, depends upon the selective and voluntary disclosure of personal information that we don't share with everyone else. Moreover...privacy is also necessary for the development of human individuality. Any writer will understand the importance of reflective solitude in refining arguments and making unexpected connections: in an odd but widely shared experience, many of us seem to have our best ideas when we are in the shower. Indeed, studies of creativity show that it's during periods of daydreaming and seclusion that the most creative thought takes place, as individuals allow ideas and impressions to run freely through their minds without fear that their untested thoughts will be exposed and taken out of context."

"We are trained in this country to think of all concealment as a form of hypocrisy. But perhaps we are about to learn how much may be lost in a culture of transparency -- the capacity for creativity and eccentricity, for the development of self and soul, for understanding, friendship and even love. There is nothing inevitable about the erosion of privacy in cyberspace, just as there is nothing inevitable about its reconstruction. We have the ability to rebuild some of the private spaces we have lost. What we need now is the will."

Salon Twilight of the crypto-geeks

"Neal Stephenson, a writer with a cultlike following among the technologically minded and author of the classic "Snowcrash," has given an over-long, hugely digressive -- and brilliant -- speech. After many, many turns and a deep stack of points and stories, Stephenson gets around to saying that the best defense for one's privacy and personal integrity turns out to be not cryptography but, what do you know, "social structures." He is not explicit about the exact nature of these structures, but from the slides that follow, we get a sense of every sort of social relationship from neighborly friendliness to political parties. The slides show drawings of small circles representing areas of social trust. The circles widen and merge, to create a field of autonomy, a trusted space.

Stephenson is making a point about code: Without a sociopolitical context, cryptography is not going to protect you. He singles out PGP for criticism, saying that relying on the encryption scheme is like trying to protect your house with a fence consisting of a single, very tall picket. A slide shows the lone picket rising into the sky, a bird considering it with bulging eyes."

redux [02.15.01]
The Atlantic Online The Reinvention of Privacy

"The debate over these questions illustrates one irreducible truth: privacy is not so much a legal or technical concept as a social one. "The dominant feature of the current privacy debate," Fred Cate told me when I asked him to try to sum things up, "is its irrationality. The drivers are emotional." I think he's right. The crucial question about privacy today is the same it has always been?namely, whom should you trust?

A lot of people instinctively don't trust technology, especially in the hands of businesses, to protect privacy. But, as Robert Ellis Smith and others have pointed out, contemporary notions of privacy have in many cases evolved not despite new technology but because of it. "Privacy," the influential journalist and editor E. L. Godkin famously wrote, in Scribner's magazine in 1890, "is a distinctly modern product, one of the luxuries of civilization." Phil Agre made a related point to me, a bit more bluntly. "The idea that technology and privacy are intrinsically opposed," he said, "is false.""

Friday, December 12, 2003

MSNBC The Odd Conflict over E-Voting

"The role of technology in U.S. elections has become the center of a curious fight in which the forces aren't lining up at all the way you might think. On one side, state and local elections officials, often thought to be technological troglodytes, are the most enthusiastic fans of the latest in computerized voting systems.

On the other is a group of computer scientists and other academics who are deeply suspicious of the technology and believe the best answer is, of all things, paper ballots."

PBS: I, Cringley Why the Best Voting Technology May Be No Technology at All

"As for voting itself, I think we have made a horrible decision to solve this problem with technology. While the voting technology we have been considering is flawed, the best answer doesn't have to be some other voting technology that is somehow better. We turn to technology because it supposedly eliminates human error. I suggest that we add humans to the process in order to eliminate technological errors. And we'd save a lot of money in the process.

My model for smart voting is Canada. The Canadians are watching our election problems and laughing their butts off. They think we are crazy, and they are right."

Media Monitors Network Electronic-Voting Debate Heats Up

"Electronic-voting machine manufacturers are circling their wagons trying to ease the security concerns raised in the last few months that their machines are susceptible to being hacked and subject to voter fraud.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University analyzed the software that runs on the voting machines of industry leader Diebold. In their report they stated, "We found significant security flaws: voters can trivially cast multiple votes with no built-in traceability, administrative functions can be performed by regular voters, and the threats posed by insiders such as poll workers, software developers, and even janitors, is even greater.""

CNN Electronic voting no magic bullet

"Several well-publicized flaws in "e-voting," or electronic voting, systems have not led to improvements, said Harvard University computer professor Rebecca Mercuri."

""Officials are not removed from their posts, fired or sent to trial; vendors are not banned from participation; equipment is not recalled; standards are not rewritten; and elections are not re-held," she said."

The Gazette E-mail stolen from Diebold is a call to gouge Maryland

"An e-mail found in a collection of files stolen from Diebold Elections Systems' internal database recommends charging Maryland "out the yin-yang" if the state requires Diebold to add paper printouts to the $73 million voting system it purchased."

"Diebold spokesman David Bear would neither dispute nor confirm the accuracy of the "yin-yang" e-mail on Monday, saying it is "at best the internal discussion of one individual and does not reflect the sentiments or the position of the company.""

Thursday, December 11, 2003

The New York Times AT&T Joins Fray for Cheaper Calls Through the Web
[requires 'free' registration]

"The battle over the future of telephone service will break wide open today with an announcement from AT&T that it plans to offer unlimited long-distance and local calling using Internet technology at a lower cost than conventional phone service.

The move, disclosed by industry executives close to the company, comes after announcements this week from Time Warner Cable that it would provide phone service in many areas where it offers high-speed Internet connections and television access and from the BT Group of Britain that it would offer Internet-based telephone service to its customers."

redux [11.13.03]
BusinessWeek Why the Bells Should Be Very Scared

"When IBM talks, Corporate America listens. So Big Blue created quite a stir on Nov. 7 when a top exec told a tech conference in Atlanta that it hopes to move 80% of its 300,000 employees to voice-over-IP phone systems by 2008."

"[The] IBM announcement signifies that the end may be far nearer than previously thought for the legacy copper-wire phone networks that have built fortunes for the Baby Bells such as Verizon (VZ ) and SBC (SBC ) as well as AT&T (T ) and Sprint (FON ). When the largest tech company on the planet announces it no longer needs the phone company to manage its calls, you can bet the communications landscape has fundamentally changed."

redux [10.15.03]
Red Herring Who needs the phone company?

"When the University of Arkansas wanted to trim the cost of intra-campus calls, it bypassed its local carrier by combining two technologies: voice-over-IP (VoIP) and 802.11 wireless. By using its existing TCP/IP networks and spending $4 million for a Cisco Call Manager, the university circumvented its local carrier and reduced monthly service fees from $530,000 to a mere $6,000. Meanwhile, the City of Dallas eliminated circuits altogether. It standardized on an IP network and expects to cut the costs of internal calls by $21 million over the next decade.

Individually, VoIP and 802.11 are hot technologies with promising futures. Now they are gaining attention for their potential as a combined force."

redux [10.01.03]
Inc Internet Phone Service is Here

"There is no risk of everyone swooping out and buying VoIP phones and eliminating the plain old telephone service (POTS) overnight. However, in the next five years there is going to be some serious worry at the traditional phone companies about how they will make money."

"The local phone companies, or incumbent local exchange carriers, will do whatever they can to slow the growth of VoIP, but the fact that the phone traffic is on the Internet will make VoIP impossible to stop. Vonage, for example, isn't a phone company at all in the eyes of the Federal Communications Commission."

The Register Numbers don't add up for Telcos

"This whole deal reminds me of some work I did for a UK advertising company years ago. I got to have lunch with the MD and Creative Director, who had just done market research for a cigarette lighter company on who their competition was. Was it Ronson, the low-end player? Or Dupont or Dunhill, the high-end players? Turns out that it actually was Parker Pen. The company learned that they were in the gift market.

My take is that telephone companies still think that other phone companies are their competition, and that the rules and givens of phone company competition will work in their favor. But actually they are actually in connection. And with increasingly wrong numbers."

redux [09.24.03]
The New York Times A New Kind of Revolution in the Dorms of Dartmouth
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""As far as I know, no one has done a wireless voice-over-I.P. network this large before," said David Kotz, a computer science professor at Dartmouth."

"The roll out of voice over Internet protocol is closely coupled with Dartmouth's recent decision to stop charging students, faculty and staff for long-distance phone calls. The college made that decision when administrators discovered that the billing function was costing more than the calls themselves."

The Register Skype: putting the hype in VoIP

"Reading interviews with the KaZaA founders and looking at their new web site, Skype we think that their second revolution has a chance of being even bigger than their first. Perhaps it's called Skype to rhyme with Hype.

The idea is to use peer-to-peer networks to give free voice over IP telephone calls to the masses, and not just calls to a special instant messenger-like registry of friends, but to virtually anyone."

redux [05.22.03]
Washington Post High Speed With the Highest Anxiety

"Both sides agreed on one point: Nobody has any idea how to turn Wi-Fi into a profitable business.

Of all the talk, Babbio's prickly attack on MCI -- along with his lukewarm comments about Wi-Fi -- perhaps best reflected the painful disputes consuming the troubled telecom industry. While studies show broadband Internet access has reached nearly a third of American homes, it remains unclear what kind of pricing, quality and add-on services consumers should expect from their beleaguered suppliers."

Wired Magazine Why Voice Over Wi-Fi Has Telcos Dialing 911

"Think of it as the love child of the two hottest developments in telecom: voice over IP and wireless broadband. There are more than 3.5 million VoIP phones in the US - mostly at work - up from practically none five years ago. Meanwhile, the number of commercial Wi-Fi hot spots in the US exploded from 2,000 to 12,000 last year. Combine the two and any gadget - laptop, PDA, tablet PC, whatever - can become a voice communication device."

"For big providers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, voice over Wi-Fi isn't pretty. Those companies blew billions on licenses for next-gen cellular networks. Now they may find themselves undercut by the same grassroots groups bringing free, unregulated Wi-Fi to the urban masses."

redux [12.16.02]
The New York Times Web Calling Roils the Telecom World
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"After all, telecommunications and technology companies lost $7.6 billion in global market value from March 2000 to September 2002, as the industry was gripped by stunning collapses, financial scandals and an effort to absorb excess capacity on globe-spanning communications systems.

But alongside the industry's search for its direction after such turmoil are trends that threaten to destabilize global telecommunications further in 2003. These trends could be described as the start of a cannibalization of established services by disruptive new technologies."

redux [08.07.02]
Bob Frankston The Economist, the Internet, Telecom and the Dow

"Of course The Economist is not alone in this fundamental error but "Crash" story is a useful foil for addressing this misunderstanding.

It is a tragic misunderstanding since the woes of the Telecom industry are seen as representing the state of the economy rather than the collapsing of a facade of a Potemkin industry. In 1900's there was a real telecommunications industry just like in the 1800's when there was a thriving business in transporting ice from frozen lakes to warmer climes. Just as refrigeration put an end to the need for buying ice, the Internet has put an end to the need to buy telecommunications services from others. We just need commodity connectivity."

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Reason The Unknown Soldier

"What makes the Lynch story of continuing interest is the way the main character both invites and defeats the various storylines that have been imposed on her. Of all the debunkers of the dramatic rescue that required the participation of special operations fighters from all four service branches, the most effective debunker has been Lynch herself. Likewise, Lynch's description of her own panic and passivity during the firefight, though it certainly elicits our sympathy, is sharply at odds with even the idea of a medal awarded for courage. Lynch's tendency to depart from the script, to hew as closely as possible to the truth as best she can piece it together, even made a friend of the reliably bullshit-loathing Hackworth, who wrote recently: "[T]he way this little wisp of a girl has stood up to the world's biggest propaganda machine makes her a hero in my book.""

redux [11.07.03]
BBC Jessica Lynch condemns Pentagon

"A US woman soldier who shot to fame after being taken prisoner during the Iraq war has accused the military of using her for propaganda purposes."

"She said she was grateful to the American special forces team which rescued her but, asked whether the Pentagon's subsequent portrayal of her rescue bothered her, she said: "Yes, it does. They used me as a way to symbolise all this stuff. It's wrong.""

redux [07.17.03]
The Washington Post A Broken Body, a Broken Story, Pieced Together

"It became the story of the war, boosting morale at home and among the troops. It was irresistible and cinematic, the maintenance clerk turned woman-warrior from the hollows of West Virginia who just wouldn't quit. Hollywood promised to make a movie and the media, too, were hungry for heroes.

Lynch's story is far more complex and different than those initial reports. Much of the story remains shrouded in mystery, in large part because of official Army secrecy, concerns for Lynch's privacy and her limited memory."

redux [05.16.03]
The Guardian Unlimited The truth about Jessica

"Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war. An all-American heroine, the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict. It couldn't have happened at a more crucial moment, when the talk was of coalition forces bogged down, of a victory too slow in coming.

Her rescue will go down as one of the most stunning pieces of news management yet conceived. It provides a remarkable insight into the real influence of Hollywood producers on the Pentagon's media managers, and has produced a template from which America hopes to present its future wars."

BBC Saving Private Lynch story 'flawed'

""We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital," said Dr Anmar Uday, who worked at the hospital.

"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried 'go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital - action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan.""

Reason Trusting the Media

" Suddenly Private Jessica Lynch is back in the news, with several stories that suggest her famous rescue was staged. This follows on another brouhaha over the now famous footage of U.S. tanks helping Iraqis tear down a statue of Saddam Hussein, which detractors denounced as a staged photo op. On close examination, these debates relate to semantics as much as facts: No one doubts that Lynch was a prisoner or that many Iraqis were glad to see Saddam's statuary fall. Instead, people are worried about the blurred lines between reality and showmanship--at the idea that the war could be reduced to action-movie agitprop with all the vexing nuances ironed out."