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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Ed Webb

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Ed Webb

A Cypherpunk's Manifesto - 0 views

www.activism.net/...manifesto.html

privacy internet cryptography manifesto

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Nov 11 - Cached
  • Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.
  • privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems
  • Information expands to fill the available storage space. Information is Rumor's younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and understands less than Rumor.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one's identity with assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.
  • We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.
  • We don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.
  • encryption is fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible
Ed Webb

Face Recognition Moves From Sci-Fi to Social Media - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...om-sci-fi-to-social-media.html

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • the democratization of surveillance — may herald the end of anonymity
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 14 Nov 11
       
      Democratization means putting this at the command of citizens, not of unaccountable corporations.
  • facial recognition is proliferating so quickly that some regulators in the United States and Europe are playing catch-up. On the one hand, they say, the technology has great business potential. On the other, because facial recognition works by analyzing and storing people’s unique facial measurements, it also entails serious privacy risks
  • researchers also identified the interests and predicted partial Social Security numbers of some students.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • marketers could someday use more invasive techniques to identify random people on the street along with, say, their credit scores
  • “You might think it’s cool, or you might think it’s creepy, depending on the context,”
  • many users do not understand that Facebook’s tag suggestion feature involves storing people’s biometric data to re-identify them in later photos
  • Mr. Caspar said last week that he was disappointed with the negotiations with Facebook and that his office was now preparing to take legal action over the company’s biometric database. Facebook told a German broadcaster that its tag suggestion feature complied with European data protection laws. “There are many risks,” Mr. Caspar says. “People should be able to choose if they want to accept these risks, or not accept them.” He offered a suggestion for Americans, “Users in the United States have good reason to raise their voices to get the same right.”
Ed Webb

Embryos involving the genes of animals mixed with humans have been produced secretively... - 0 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...ed-secretively-past-years.html

science health research UK

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • ‘The problem with many scientists is that they want to do things because they want to experiment. That is not a good enough rationale.’
  • ‘The reason for doing these experiments is to understand more about early human development and come up with ways of curing serious diseases, and as a scientist I feel there is a moral imperative to pursue this research.
  • Human-animal hybrids are also created in other countries, many of which have little or no regulation.
Ed Webb

Surveillant Society - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...surveillant-society

surveillance sousveillance

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The assumption that one is not being recorded in any real way, a standard in civilization for more or less all of history, is being overturned.
  • CEOs have become slaves to the PR department in a bizarre inversion of internal corporate checks and balances
  • “Your word against mine” can be a serious and drawn-out dispute, subject to all kinds of subjective judgments, loyalties, rights, and arguments; “Your word against my high-definition video” gives citizens and the vulnerable a bit more leverage.
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  • The issue of ownership is being muddied by the same process that has upended media industries – the transition of recordable data from physical to virtual property, infinitely copyable but still subject to many of the necessities of more traditionally-held items. Who owns what, who is legally bound to act in which way, which licenses supercede others? A team of lawyers and scholars might spend months putting together a cohesive argument for any number of possibilities. What chance does an end user have to figure out whether or not they have the right to print, distribute, delete, and so on?
  • if you show everything, you’re likely to show something you should have hidden, and if you hide everything, everyone will assume you did so for a reason
  • Hoaxes, fakes, set-ups, staged scenarios, creative editing, post-production, photoshopping, and every other tool of the trade, all show something other than the raw, original product. I’m not familiar with forensic digital media evaluation tools in use today, but I get the feeling that if they’re not inadequate now, they will be so in a few years.
  • our responsibilities as a society to use these new tools judiciously and responsibly
  • increasingly, the answers to these questions are tending towards the “record first” mentality
  • The logical next step, after assuming one is being recorded at all times when in public (potentially true) is ensuring one is being recorded at all times when in public. Theoretically, you won’t act any differently, since you’re already operating under that assumption.
  • how long before it’s considered negligent to have not recorded an accident or criminal act?
  • You have no privacy in public, haven’t had any for a long time, and what little you have you tend to give away. But the sword is double-edged; shouldn’t we benefit from that as well as suffer? A surveillance society is watched. A surveillant society is watching.
Ed Webb

elearnspace › Rioting in an age of transparency - 0 views

www.elearnspace.org/...ting-in-an-age-of-transparency

privacy surveillance socialmedia

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • It’s the boundaries between our various social identities that give us a sense of comfort and security: we can (and often do) project different parts of ourselves in different spaces.
  • When data about those roles is explicitly captured, boundaries blur at the point of analysis
  • “context switcher”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The core problem we face in digital data use and privacy is that we are increasingly transparent in our daily lives, but the norms that govern use of transparent data have not transitioned from the physical world to the online world.
Ed Webb

The Case For Public Shaming of Vancouver Rioters « publicshamingeternus - 0 views

publicshamingeternus.wordpress.com/...c-shaming-of-vancouver-rioters

vigilante justice Canada Vancouver riots socialmedia privacy

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 17 Jun 11
     
    The future of justice?
Ed Webb

The Technium: Protopia - 0 views

www.kk.org/...protopia.php

future dystopias utopias

shared by Ed Webb on 25 May 11 - No Cached
  • It may be that this future-blindness is simply the inescapable affliction of our modern world. Perhaps at this stage in civilization and technological advance, we enter into permanent and ceaseless future-blindness. Utopia, dystopia, and protopia all disappear. There is only the Blind Now. That is possible. But I am hoping that our current future-blindness is only a passing phase and that we will again begin to generate plausible visions of a desirable future, ones that are slightly better than today. These protopian visions won't be as thrilling as either dystopias or utopias, but they might be thrilling enough to aim towards.
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