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Paul Merrell

Ad industry threatens Firefox users with more ads if Mozilla moves on tracking plans | Computerworld New Zealand - 0 views

  • The online ad industry has attacked Mozilla over its decision to block third-party cookies in a future release of Firefox, calling the move "dangerous and highly disturbing," and claiming that it will result in more ads shown to users. The fierce reaction came from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Association of National Advertisers (ANA), both of which laid out positions in blog posts on March 14.
  • In their blogs, the two groups lambasted Mozilla, predicting dire consequences, including the shuttering of small businesses and small websites, fewer choices for online users, and more ads in Firefox. "If Mozilla follows through on its plan ... the disruption will disenfranchise every single Internet user," said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB, in his post. "All of us will lose the freedom to choose our own online experiences; we will lose the opportunity to monitor and protect our privacy; and we will lose the chance to benefit from independent sites ... because thousands of small businesses that make up the diversity of content and services online will be forced to close their doors."
  • What raised the IAB's and ANA's hackles was Mozilla's decision last month to automatically block all third-party tracking cookies in a future version of Firefox, perhaps as soon as June with the release of Firefox 22. Cookies are used by online advertisers to track users' Web movements, then deliver targeted ads, a practice labeled "online behavioral advertising," or OBA, by the ad industry. The new Firefox policy will allow cookies presented from domains that users actually visit -- dubbed a "first-party" site -- but will automatically block those generated by a third-party domain unless the user had previously visited the cookie's site-of-origin.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Hollywood Withdraws Funding for UK Anti-Piracy Group FACT - TorrentFreak - 0 views

    • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.
       
      # ! Quit Witch Hunts funding and invest in new Media poolicies...
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    " Andy on May 24, 2016 C: 33 Breaking The UK's Federation Against Copyright Theft has received a major blow after the Motion Picture Association advised the anti-piracy group it will not renew its membership. The termination of the 30-year long relationship means that FACT will lose 50% of its budget and the backing of the six major Hollywood movie studios."
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    " Andy on May 24, 2016 C: 33 Breaking The UK's Federation Against Copyright Theft has received a major blow after the Motion Picture Association advised the anti-piracy group it will not renew its membership. The termination of the 30-year long relationship means that FACT will lose 50% of its budget and the backing of the six major Hollywood movie studios."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Who Does That Server Really Serve? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation - 0 views

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    "by Richard Stallman (The first version was published in Boston Review.) On the Internet, proprietary software isn't the only way to lose your freedom. Service as a Software Substitute, or SaaSS, is another way to let someone else have power over your computing."
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    "by Richard Stallman (The first version was published in Boston Review.) On the Internet, proprietary software isn't the only way to lose your freedom. Service as a Software Substitute, or SaaSS, is another way to let someone else have power over your computing."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Piracy: Hollywood's Losing a Few Pounds, Who Cares? - TorrentFreak - 0 views

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    " Andy on August 27, 2015 C: 72 Breaking Following news this week that a man is facing a custodial sentence after potentially defrauding the movie industry out of £120m, FACT Director General Kieron Sharp has been confronted with an uncomfortable truth. According to listeners contacting the BBC, the public has little sympathy with Hollywood."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

'Fining' File-Sharers Makes Anti-Piracy Company Lose Money | TorrentFreak - 0 views

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    " Andy on March 26, 2014 C: 61 Breaking Financial results published by anti-piracy group Rightscorp shows that while turning piracy into profit is a nice idea, it's not lucrative for everyone. A loss of $2.04m in 2013 means that for every single dollar of settlement revenu"
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Three fights Big Telecom is losing - and what that might mean for IT | Network World - 1 views

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    "It's been an unusually tough few months for Big Telecom. The industry, which enjoys a generally friendly regulatory climate, has plenty of influence in Congress and with state and local governments across the country. Featured Resource Presented by Citrix Systems 10 Essential Elements for a Secure Enterprise Mobility Strategy With enhanced mobility and work flexibility comes increased security risk. Explore the security Learn More On three big issues, however, the outlook is fairly grim for America's biggest telecom companies. First, "
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    "It's been an unusually tough few months for Big Telecom. The industry, which enjoys a generally friendly regulatory climate, has plenty of influence in Congress and with state and local governments across the country. Featured Resource Presented by Citrix Systems 10 Essential Elements for a Secure Enterprise Mobility Strategy With enhanced mobility and work flexibility comes increased security risk. Explore the security Learn More On three big issues, however, the outlook is fairly grim for America's biggest telecom companies. First, "
Paul Merrell

Google will lose up to 800 million users if Huawei ditches Android - Huawei CEO - 0 views

  • If one of the world’s leading smartphone makers, Huawei, turns away from Google’s Android operating system (OS), the US tech giant risks losing a huge number of users, Huawei’s CEO has warned. “[Huawei] will always be on the same line of interest, and if we don’t load Google’s system, Google will lose 700-800 million users in the future,” Ren Zhengfei said in an interview to CNBC.The Chinese telecommunications major was blacklisted last month by the Trump administration after Washington accused the company of spying for Beijing. Google, whose Android OS is used in many of Huawei’s phones, was among the American tech companies prohibited from dealing with Huawei.
  • Huawei said earlier that it is working on its own mobile operating system called Hongmeng and has already filed a trademark. In his interview, the CEO stressed that Hongmeng will allow the company to protect its growth if it is forced to replace Android, which Huawei does not want to do.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

UK Govt. Will Address Music 'Value Gap" as Part of Brexit - TorrentFreak - 0 views

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    " By Andy on November 3, 2016 C: 64 Breaking The UK government says it will address the so-called music 'value gap' as part of Brexit negotiations. The confirmation came in response to a probing Digital Economy Bill amendment which would see sites like YouTube lose their safe harbor protections if they "optimize the presentation" of uploaded works."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Save EU Net Neutrality - 0 views

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    "This summer, the EU decides on net neutrality. If we lose, European ISPs win the power to give some sites & apps special treatment-while slowing others to a crawl. On June 28, the EU Slowdown begins. Sites will protest with a slow loading icon based on Europe's flag, to drive millions of comments to EU regulators. Can you join?"
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

All Nations Lose with TPP's Expansion of Copyright Terms | Electronic Frontier Foundation - 0 views

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    "EFF has previously written about various troubling provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) that is being negotiated under wraps. One other major concern is that TPP seeks to propagate the excessive copyright terms currently found in American copyright legislation, and will become yet another tool of the second enclosure movement: "the enclosure of the intangible commons of the mind.""
Paul Merrell

Google to encrypt Cloud Storage data by default | ITworld - 0 views

  • Google said Thursday it will by default encrypt data warehoused in its Cloud Storage service. The server-side encryption is now active for all new data written to Cloud Storage, and older data will be encrypted in the coming months, wrote Dave Barth, a Google product manager, in a blog post.
  • The data and metadata around an object stored in Cloud Storage is encrypted with a unique key using 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm, and the "per-object key itself is encrypted with a unique key associated with the object owner," Barth wrote. "These keys are additionally encrypted by one of a regularly rotated set of master keys," he wrote. "Of course, if you prefer to manage your own keys then you can still encrypt data yourself prior to writing it to Cloud Storage."
  • A Google spokeswoman said via email the company does not provide encryption keys to any government and provides user data only in accordance with the law.
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    Google paints a deceptive picture of security in a new default encryption service for customer data stored on Google Cloud Storage. See Google blog article linked from the bookmarked page. ITWorld goes part way in unmasking the deception but could have been far more blunt. The claimed fact that Google does not turn encryption keys over to the NSA, et ilk, is irrelevant if Google still decrypts the customer data upon NSA/FBI demand, which it very apparently does. But the Google blog article doesn't mention that and paints a picture seemingly intended to deceive customers into not encrypting their own data before parking it on Google Cloud Storage, thus aiding the NSA/FBI, et cet., in their surveillance efforts.  Deceptive advertising is a serious legal no-no. Hopefully, Google Cloud Storage users will be perceptive enough not to be misled by Google's advertising. But it's a sign that Google managers may be getting worried about losing customers to companies operating in nations that have far stronger protection for digital privacy than the U.S.
Paul Merrell

The US is Losing Control of the Internet…Oh, Really? | Global Research - 2 views

  • All of the major internet organisations have pledged, at a summit in Uruguay, to free themselves of the influence of the US government. The directors of ICANN, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Architecture Board, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Internet Society and all five of the regional Internet address registries have vowed to break their associations with the US government. In a statement, the group called for “accelerating the globalization of ICANN and IANA functions, towards an environment in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an equal footing”. That’s a distinct change from the current situation, where the US department of commerce has oversight of ICANN. In another part of the statement, the group “expressed strong concern over the undermining of the trust and confidence of Internet users globally due to recent revelations of pervasive monitoring and surveillance”. Meanwhile, it was announced that the next Internet Governance Summit would be held in Brazil, whose president has been extremely critical of the US over web surveillance. In a statement announcing the location of the summit, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said: “The United States and its allies must urgently end their spying activities once and for all.”
Paul Merrell

The End of the Internet As We Know It - 2 views

  • We owe everything we love about the Web to net neutrality, the principle that the Internet is an open platform and service providers like AT&T, Comcast, and Time Warner can’t dictate where you go and what you do online. Without net neutrality, the Web would look a lot like cable, with the most popular content available only on certain tiers or with certain providers. (Imagine AT&T as the exclusive home of Netflix and Comcast as the sole source of YouTube.)
  • In 2010, the Federal Communications Commission tried to establish concrete rules to protect net neutrality. But the agency ended up caving to pressure from the biggest phone and cable companies and left huge loopholes standing in the way of a truly open Internet. And now Verizon is in court challenging those rules — and the FCC’s authority to draft and enforce them to protect consumers and promote competition. That’s because under the Bush administration, the FCC decided to give away much of its authority to oversee our broadband networks. The current FCC could fix the problem by reclaiming this authority, but it hasn’t yet. If the FCC loses the case and fails to take the necessary action to reverse course, the agency will be toothless as the biggest Internet providers run amok and destroy everything we love about the Internet. Indeed, the second it looks like the FCC is going to be defeated, you can expect all the telecoms and ISPs to join hands and declare they’ve reached an agreement to self-regulate.
  • If this happens, they’ll win and we’ll lose. Online privacy will be a thing of the past. (If you thought it already was, believe me, things could get worse.) The ISPs will try to read all of your content so they can sell you to advertisers. New “troll tolls” will force content creators and others to pay discriminatory fees just to reach people online — and will require the rest of us to pony up for “premium” content. Does that sound Orwellian? That’s because it is. But this is no far-fetched scenario. It’s time for us to stand up and fight for our online rights. We need to tell the FCC to stop messing around. It’s time for the agency to fix its past mistakes — and establish strong net neutrality protections that are 100 percent loophole-free.
Paul Merrell

This project aims to make '404 not found' pages a thing of the past - 0 views

  • The Internet is always changing. Sites are rising and falling, content is deleted, and bad URLs can lead to '404 Not Found' errors that are as helpful as a brick wall. A new project proposes an do away with dead 404 errors by implementing new HTML code that will help access prior versions of hyperlinked content. With any luck, that means that you’ll never have to run into a dead link again. The “404-No-More” project is backed by a formidable coalition including members from organizations like the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Old Dominion University, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Part of the Knight News Challenge, which seeks to strengthen the Internet for free expression and innovation through a variety of initiatives, 404-No-More recently reached the semifinal stage. The project aims to cure so-called link rot, the process by which hyperlinks become useless overtime because they point to addresses that are no longer available. If implemented, websites such as Wikipedia and other reference documents would be vastly improved. The new feature would also give Web authors a way provide links that contain both archived copies of content and specific dates of reference, the sort of information that diligent readers have to hunt down on a website like Archive.org.
  • While it may sound trivial, link rot can actually have real ramifications. Nearly 50 percent of the hyperlinks in Supreme Court decisions no longer work, a 2013 study revealed. Losing footnotes and citations in landmark legal decisions can mean Losing crucial information and context about the laws that govern us. The same study found that 70 percent of URLs within the Harvard Law Review and similar journals didn’t link to the originally cited information, considered a serious loss surrounding the discussion of our laws. The project’s proponents have come up with more potential uses as well. Activists fighting censorship will have an easier time combatting government takedowns, for instance. Journalists will be much more capable of researching dynamic Web pages. “If every hyperlink was annotated with a publication date, you could automatically view an archived version of the content as the author intended for you to see it,” the project’s authors explain. The ephemeral nature of the Web could no longer be used as a weapon. Roger Macdonald, a director at the Internet Archive, called the 404-No-More project “an important contribution to preservation of knowledge.”
  • The new feature would come in the form of introducing the mset attribute to the <a> element in HTML, which would allow users of the code to specify multiple dates and copies of content as an external resource. For instance, if both the date of reference and the location of a copy of targeted content is known by an author, the new code would like like this: The 404-No-More project’s goals are numerous, but the ultimate goal is to have mset become a new HTML standard for hyperlinks. “An HTML standard that incorporates archives for hyperlinks will loop in these efforts and make the Web better for everyone,” project leaders wrote, “activists, journalists, and regular ol’ everyday web users.”
Paul Merrell

Internet Giants Erect Barriers to Spy Agencies - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • As fast as it can, Google is sealing up cracks in its systems that Edward J. Snowden revealed the N.S.A. had brilliantly exploited. It is encrypting more data as it moves among its servers and helping customers encode their own emails. Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo are taking similar steps.
  • After years of cooperating with the government, the immediate goal now is to thwart Washington — as well as Beijing and Moscow. The strategy is also intended to preserve business overseas in places like Brazil and Germany that have threatened to entrust data only to local providers. Google, for example, is laying its own fiber optic cable under the world’s oceans, a project that began as an effort to cut costs and extend its influence, but now has an added purpose: to assure that the company will have more control over the movement of its customer data.
  • A year after Mr. Snowden’s revelations, the era of quiet cooperation is over. Telecommunications companies say they are denying requests to volunteer data not covered by existing law. A.T.&T., Verizon and others say that compared with a year ago, they are far more reluctant to cooperate with the United States government in “gray areas” where there is no explicit requirement for a legal warrant.
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  • Eric Grosse, Google’s security chief, suggested in an interview that the N.S.A.'s own behavior invited the new arms race.“I am willing to help on the purely defensive side of things,” he said, referring to Washington’s efforts to enlist Silicon Valley in cybersecurity efforts. “But signals intercept is totally off the table,” he said, referring to national intelligence gathering.“No hard feelings, but my job is to make their job hard,” he added.
  • In Washington, officials acknowledge that covert programs are now far harder to execute because American technology companies, fearful of losing international business, are hardening their networks and saying no to requests for the kind of help they once quietly provided.Continue reading the main story Robert S. Litt, the general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees all 17 American spy agencies, said on Wednesday that it was “an unquestionable loss for our nation that companies are losing the willingness to cooperate legally and voluntarily” with American spy agencies.
  • Many point to an episode in 2012, when Russian security researchers uncovered a state espionage tool, Flame, on Iranian computers. Flame, like the Stuxnet worm, is believed to have been produced at least in part by American intelligence agencies. It was created by exploiting a previously unknown flaw in Microsoft’s operating systems. Companies argue that others could have later taken advantage of this defect.Worried that such an episode undercuts confidence in its wares, Microsoft is now fully encrypting all its products, including Hotmail and Outlook.com, by the end of this year with 2,048-bit encryption, a stronger protection that would take a government far longer to crack. The software is protected by encryption both when it is in data centers and when data is being sent over the Internet, said Bradford L. Smith, the company’s general counsel.
  • Mr. Smith also said the company was setting up “transparency centers” abroad so that technical experts of foreign governments could come in and inspect Microsoft’s proprietary source code. That will allow foreign governments to check to make sure there are no “back doors” that would permit snooping by United States intelligence agencies. The first such center is being set up in Brussels.Microsoft has also pushed back harder in court. In a Seattle case, the government issued a “national security letter” to compel Microsoft to turn over data about a customer, along with a gag order to prevent Microsoft from telling the customer it had been compelled to provide its communications to government officials. Microsoft challenged the gag order as violating the First Amendment. The government backed down.
  • Hardware firms like Cisco, which makes routers and switches, have found their products a frequent subject of Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, and their business has declined steadily in places like Asia, Brazil and Europe over the last year. The company is still struggling to convince foreign customers that their networks are safe from hackers — and free of “back doors” installed by the N.S.A. The frustration, companies here say, is that it is nearly impossible to prove that their systems are N.S.A.-proof.
  • In one slide from the disclosures, N.S.A. analysts pointed to a sweet spot inside Google’s data centers, where they could catch traffic in unencrypted form. Next to a quickly drawn smiley face, an N.S.A. analyst, referring to an acronym for a common layer of protection, had noted, “SSL added and removed here!”
  • Facebook and Yahoo have also been encrypting traffic among their internal servers. And Facebook, Google and Microsoft have been moving to more strongly encrypt consumer traffic with so-called Perfect Forward Secrecy, specifically devised to make it more labor intensive for the N.S.A. or anyone to read stored encrypted communications.One of the biggest indirect consequences from the Snowden revelations, technology executives say, has been the surge in demands from foreign governments that saw what kind of access to user information the N.S.A. received — voluntarily or surreptitiously. Now they want the same.
  • The latest move in the war between intelligence agencies and technology companies arrived this week, in the form of a new Google encryption tool. The company released a user-friendly, email encryption method to replace the clunky and often mistake-prone encryption schemes the N.S.A. has readily exploited.But the best part of the tool was buried in Google’s code, which included a jab at the N.S.A.'s smiley-face slide. The code included the phrase: “ssl-added-and-removed-here-; - )”
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

SoundCloud close to inking deals with record labels | The Music Network - 0 views

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    # ! #Everytime a '#Deal' is '#inked' 'this way'... # ! … a bunch of #Songs #Die… # ! … The #Music #cries… # ! …The #Culture #loses… # ! .. a #Cold #Silence fills it all. "Poppy Reid - Jul 14, 2014 Audio streaming platform SoundCloud is allegedly finalising licensing deals with the major labels and publishers."
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    # ! Siege to Independents "Poppy Reid - Jul 14, 2014 Audio streaming platform SoundCloud is allegedly finalising licensing deals with the major labels and publishers."
Paul Merrell

Closing CDF WG, Publishing Specs as Notes from Doug Schepers on 2010-07-12 (public-cdf@w3.org from July 2010) - 0 views

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    This event speaks loudly to how little interest browser developershave in interoperable web solutions. One-way compatibility wins and the ability of web applications to round-trip data loses. For those that did not realize it, the Compound Document by Reference Framework not only allowes but requires that more featureful implementations round-trip the output of less featureful implementations without data loss. See http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-CDR-20070718/#conformance ("A conformant user agent of a superset profile specification must process subset profile content as if it were the superset profile content"). 
Gary Edwards

The Open Web: Next-Generation Standards Support in WebKit/ Safari - 0 views

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    Apple has posted an interesting page describing Safari technologies. Innovations and support for existing standards as well as the ACID3 test are covered.

    Many people think that the Apple WebKit-Safari-iPhone innovations are pushing Open Web Standards beyond beyond the limits of "Open", and deep into the verboten realm of vendor specific extensions. Others, myself included, believe that the WebKit community has to do this if Open Web technologies are to be anyway competitive with Microsoft's RiA (XAML-Silverlight-WPF).

    Adobe RiA (AiR-Flex-Flash) is also an alternative to WebKit and Microsoft RiA; kind of half Open Web, half proprietary though. Adobe Flash is of course proprietary. While Adobe AiR implements the WebKit layout engine and visual document model. I suspect that as Adobe RiA loses ground to Microsoft Silverlight, they will open up Flash. But that's not something the Open Web can afford to wait for.

    In many ways, WebKit is at the cutting edge of Ajax Open Web technologies. The problems of Ajax not scaling well are being solved as shared JavaScript libraries continue to amaze, and the JavaScript engines roar with horsepower. Innovations in WebKit, even the vendor-device specific ones, are being picked up by the JS Libraries, Firefox, and the other Open Web browsers.

    At the end of the day though, it is the balance between the ACiD3 test on one side and the incredible market surge of WebKit smartphones, countertops, and netbook devices at the edge of the Web that seem to hold things together.

    The surge at the edge is washing back over the greater Web, as cross-browser frustrated Web designers and developers roll out the iPhone welcome. Let's hope the ACiD3 test holds. So far it's proving to be a far more important consideration for maintaining Open Web interop, without sacrificing innovation, than anything going on at the stalled W3C.

    "..... Safari continues to lead the way, implementing
Gary Edwards

Zoho Blogs » Firefox 3.1 & Google Chrome: Javascript Wins, Flash/Silverlight Lose - 0 views

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    ZOHO Speaks about Chrome: "The biggest losers in Google's announcement are not really competing browsers, but competing rich client engines like Flash and Silverlight. As Javascript advances rapidly, it inevitably encroaches on the territory currently held by Flash. Native browser video is likely the last nail in the coffin - and Google needs native browser based video for its own YouTube, so we can be confident Google Chrome and Firefox will both have native video support, with Javascript-accessible VOM (video object model) APIs for web applications to manipuate video. As for Silverlight, let me just say that if Silverlight is the future of web computing, companies like us might as well find another line of work - and I suspect Google and Yahoo probably see it the same way too. More speculatively, I believe we will witness the emergence of Javascript as the dominant language of computing, as it sweeps the client side and starts encroaching on the server. The server landscape today is split between "enterprise" platforms like Java and .NET on the one side (we ourselves are in the Java camp on the server side), and "scripting" languages like PHP, Python, Ruby on the other, with Javascript firmly entrenched on the client. Languages like Ruby promise tremendous dynamism and flexibility to the developer, but their relatively weak execution environments have held them back. It is telling that both Java and .NET come with state of the art just-in-time compilers, while none of the major scripting languages do......" Interestingly, ZOHO already has a prototype running on Chrome! Solves tons of performance problems for them, as well as givign them an on-line / off-line story (Gears). The success of Chrome depends on Chrome "killer apps"; Not browser surfing features! And we already have a number of killer apps that will immediately take advantage of Chrome: gMail, gReader, gMaps and Google Docs! ZOHO will no doubt use Chrome to put themselves squarely i
Paul Merrell

American Surveillance Now Threatens American Business - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • What does it look like when a society loses its sense of privacy? <div><a href="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=%2F4624%2FTheAtlanticOnline%2Fchannel_technology&t=src%3Dblog%26by%3Drobinson-meyer%26title%3Damerican-surveillance-now-threatens-american-business%26pos%3Din-article&sz=300x250&c=285899172&tile=1" title=""><img style="border:none;" src="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=%2F4624%2FTheAtlanticOnline%2Fchannel_technology&t=src%3Dblog%26by%3Drobinson-meyer%26title%3Damerican-surveillance-now-threatens-american-business%26pos%3Din-article&sz=300x250&c=285899172&tile=1" alt="" /></a></div>In the almost 18 months since the Snowden files first received coverage, writers and critics have had to guess at the answer. Does a certain trend, consumer complaint, or popular product epitomize some larger shift? Is trust in tech companies eroding—or is a subset just especially vocal about it? Polling would make those answers clear, but polling so far has been… confused. A new study, conducted by the Pew Internet Project last January and released last week, helps make the average American’s view of his or her privacy a little clearer. And their confidence in their own privacy is ... low. The study's findings—and the statistics it reports—stagger. Vast majorities of Americans are uncomfortable with how the government uses their data, how private companies use and distribute their data, and what the government does to regulate those companies. No summary can equal a recounting of the findings. Americans are displeased with government surveillance en masse:   
  • A new study finds that a vast majority of Americans trust neither the government nor tech companies with their personal data.
  • According to the study, 70 percent of Americans are “at least somewhat concerned” with the government secretly obtaining information they post to social networking sites. Eighty percent of respondents agreed that “Americans should be concerned” with government surveillance of telephones and the web. They are also uncomfortable with how private corporations use their data: Ninety-one percent of Americans believe that “consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies,” according to the study. Eighty percent of Americans who use social networks “say they are concerned about third parties like advertisers or businesses accessing the data they share on these sites.” And even though they’re squeamish about the government’s use of data, they want it to regulate tech companies and data brokers more strictly: 64 percent wanted the government to do more to regulate private data collection. Since June 2013, American politicians and corporate leaders have fretted over how much the leaks would cost U.S. businesses abroad.
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  • What does it look like when a society loses its sense of privacy? <div><a href="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=%2F4624%2FTheAtlanticOnline%2Fchannel_technology&t=src%3Dblog%26by%3Drobinson-meyer%26title%3Damerican-surveillance-now-threatens-american-business%26pos%3Din-article&sz=300x250&c=285899172&tile=1" title=""><img style="border:none;" src="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=%2F4624%2FTheAtlanticOnline%2Fchannel_technology&t=src%3Dblog%26by%3Drobinson-meyer%26title%3Damerican-surveillance-now-threatens-american-business%26pos%3Din-article&sz=300x250&c=285899172&tile=1" alt="" /></a></div>In the almost 18 months since the Snowden files first received coverage, writers and critics have had to guess at the answer. Does a certain trend, consumer complaint, or popular product epitomize some larger shift? Is trust in tech companies eroding—or is a subset just especially vocal about it? Polling would make those answers clear, but polling so far has been… confused. A new study, conducted by the Pew Internet Project last January and released last week, helps make the average American’s view of his or her privacy a little clearer. And their confidence in their own privacy is ... low. The study's findings—and the statistics it reports—stagger. Vast majorities of Americans are uncomfortable with how the government uses their data, how private companies use and distribute their data, and what the government does to regulate those companies. No summary can equal a recounting of the findings. Americans are displeased with government surveillance en masse:   
  • “It’s clear the global community of Internet users doesn’t like to be caught up in the American surveillance dragnet,” Senator Ron Wyden said last month. At the same event, Google chairman Eric Schmidt agreed with him. “What occurred was a loss of trust between America and other countries,” he said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “It's making it very difficult for American firms to do business.” But never mind the world. Americans don’t trust American social networks. More than half of the poll’s respondents said that social networks were “not at all secure. Only 40 percent of Americans believe email or texting is at least “somewhat” secure. Indeed, Americans trusted most of all communication technologies where some protections has been enshrined into the law (though the report didn’t ask about snail mail). That is: Talking on the telephone, whether on a landline or cell phone, is the only kind of communication that a majority of adults believe to be “very secure” or “somewhat secure.”
  • (That may seem a bit incongruous, because making a telephone call is one area where you can be almost sure you are being surveilled: The government has requisitioned mass call records from phone companies since 2001. But Americans appear, when discussing security, to differentiate between the contents of the call and data about it.) Last month, Ramsey Homsany, the general counsel of Dropbox, said that one big thing could take down the California tech scene. “We have built this incredible economic engine in this region of the country,” said Homsany in the Los Angeles Times, “and [mistrust] is the one thing that starts to rot it from the inside out.” According to this poll, the mistrust has already begun corroding—and is already, in fact, well advanced. We’ve always assumed that the great hurt to American business will come globally—that citizens of other nations will stop using tech companies’s services. But the new Pew data shows that Americans suspect American businesses just as much. And while, unlike citizens of other nations, they may not have other places to turn, they may stop putting sensitive or delicate information online.
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