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Jernej Prodnik

Amazon unpacked - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...bd-11e2-85d0-00144feab49a.html

amazon political economy of the internet political economy of communication labour conditions

shared by Jernej Prodnik on 24 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • February 8, 2013 12:30 pm Amazon unpacked By Sarah O’Connor The online giant is creating thousands of UK jobs, so why are some employees less than happy?
  • Between a sooty power station and a brown canal on the edge of a small English town, there is a building that seems as if it should be somewhere else. An enormous long blue box, it looks like a smear of summer sky on the damp industrial landscape. Inside, hundreds of people in orange vests are pushing trolleys around a space the size of nine football pitches, glancing down at the screens of their handheld satnav computers for directions on where to walk next and what to pick up when they get there. They do not dawdle – the devices in their hands are also measuring their productivity in real time. They might each walk between seven and 15 miles today. It is almost Christmas and the people working in this building, together with those in seven others like it across the country, are dispatching a truck filled with parcels every three minutes or so. Before they can go home at the end of their eight-hour shift, or go to the canteen for their 30-minute break, they must walk through a set of airport-style security scanners to prove they are not stealing anything. They also walk past a life-sized cardboard image of a cheery blonde woman in an orange vest. “This is the best job I have ever had!” says a speech bubble near her head.
  • If you could slice the world in half right here, you could read the history of this town called Rugeley in the layers. Below the ground are the shafts and tunnels of the coal mine that fed the power station and was once the local economy’s beating heart. Above the ground are the trolleys and computers of Amazon, the global online retailer that has taken its place. As online shopping explodes in Britain, helping to push traditional retailers such as HMV out of business, more and more jobs are moving from high-street shops into warehouses like this one. Under pressure from politicians and the public over its tax arrangements, Amazon has tried to stress how many jobs it is creating across the country at a time of economic malaise. The undisputed behemoth of the online retail world has invested more than £1bn in its UK operations and announced last year that it would open another three warehouses over the next two years and create 2,000 more permanent jobs. Amazon even had a quote from David Cameron, the prime minister, in its September press release. “This is great news, not only for those individuals who will find work, but for the UK economy,” he said.
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  • Workers in Amazon’s warehouses – or “associates in Amazon’s fulfilment centres” as the company would put it – are divided into four main groups. There are the people on the “receive lines” and the “pack lines”: they either unpack, check and scan every product arriving from around the world, or they pack up customers’ orders at the other end of the process. Another group stows away suppliers’ products somewhere in the warehouse. They put things wherever there’s a free space – in Rugeley, there are inflatable palm trees next to milk frothers and protein powder next to kettles. Only Amazon’s vast computer brain knows where everything is, because the workers use their handheld computers to scan both the item they are stowing away and a barcode on the spot on the shelf where they put it. The last group, the “pickers”, push trolleys around and pick out customers’ orders from the aisles. Amazon’s software calculates the most efficient walking route to collect all the items to fill a trolley, and then simply directs the worker from one shelf space to the next via instructions on the screen of the handheld satnav device. Even with these efficient routes, there’s a lot of walking. One of the new Rugeley “pickers” lost almost half a stone in his first three shifts. “You’re sort of like a robot, but in human form,” said the Amazon manager. “It’s human automation, if you like.” Amazon recently bought a robot company, but says it still expects to keep plenty of humans around because they are so much better at coping with the vast array of differently shaped products the company sells.
  • The unassuming efficiency of these warehouses is what enables Amazon to put parcels on customers’ doorsteps so quickly, even when it is receiving 35 orders a second. Every warehouse has its own “continuous improvement manager” who uses “kaizen” techniques pioneered by Japanese car company Toyota to improve prod­uctivity. Marc Onetto, the senior vice-president of worldwide operations, told a business school class at the University of Virginia a few years ago: “We use a bunch of Japanese guys, they are not consultants, they are insultants, they are really not nice … They’re samurais, the real last samurais, the guys from the Toyota plants.” In Rugeley, the person with the kaizen job is a friendly, bald man called Matt Pedersen, who has a “black belt” in “Six Sigma”, the Motorola-developed method of operational improvement, most famously embraced by Jack Welch at General Electric. Every day, the managers in Rugeley take a “genba walk”, which roughly means “go to the place” in Japanese, Pedersen says as he accompanies the FT on a tour of the warehouse. “We go to the associates and find out what’s stopping them from performing today, how we can make their day better.” Some people also patrol the warehouse pushing tall little desks on wheels with laptops on them – they are “mobile problem solvers” looking for any hitches that could be slowing down the operation.
  • . . . What did the people of Rugeley make of all this? For many, it has been a culture shock. “The feedback we’re getting is it’s like being in a slave camp,” said Brian Garner, the dapper chairman of the Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club, still a popular drinking spot. One of the first complaints to spread through the town was that employees were getting blisters from the safety boots some were given to wear, which workers said were either too cheap or the wrong sizes. One former shop-floor manager, who did not want to be named, said he always told new workers to smear their bare feet with Vaseline. “Then put your socks on and your boots on, because I know for a fact these boots are going to rub and cause blisters and sores.” ©Ben RobertsAmazon workers in Rugeley process ordersOthers found the pressure intense. Several former workers said the handheld computers, which look like clunky scientific calculators with handles and big screens, gave them a real-time indication of whether they were running behind or ahead of their target and by how much. Managers could also send text messages to these devices to tell workers to speed up, they said. “People were constantly warned about talking to one another by the management, who were keen to eliminate any form of time-wasting,” one former worker added.
  • Watson said Amazon was supposed to send the council employment data every six months, but it had not done so. “We had no idea Amazon were going to be as indifferent to these issues as they have been, it’s come as a shock to us how intransigent they are,” he said. Inside the warehouse, Amazon employees wear blue badges and the workers supplied by the agencies wear green badges. In the most basic roles they perform the same tasks as each other for the same pay of £6.20 an hour or so (the minimum adult wage is £6.19), but the Amazon workers also receive a pension and shares. A former agency worker said the prospect of winning a blue badge, “like a carrot, was dangled constantly in front of us by management in return for meeting shift targets”. Amazon’s Darwinian culture comes from the top. Jeff Bezos, its chief executive, told Forbes magazine last year (when it named him “number one CEO in America”): “Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove, we’ll settle for intense.”
  • Ransdtad said it supplied a number of clients with “onsite-flexible workforce solutions”. It added: “The number of workers required by these clients fluctuates in response to supply and demand. When demand for clients’ products or services is high (for example during the Christmas period) the Randstad partnership allows local people to benefit from short-term work on a temporary contract, to help supplement our clients’ permanent workforce and deliver against order requirements.” Certainly, not everyone in Rugeley is upset about Amazon. A group of workers having a pint on a picnic table outside The Colliers pub near the warehouse gates said they liked their jobs, albeit as their managers hovered nervously in the background. One young agency worker said he was earning about £220 a week, compared with the £54 he had been receiving in jobless benefits. He had bought a car and moved out of his mum’s house and into a rented flat with his girlfriend, who he had met at work. “I’m doing pretty well for myself,” he said with a shy grin. “There’s always opportunities to improve yourself there.” Across the table, an older man, wagging two fingers with a cigarette pinched between them, said slowly: “It gives you your pride back, that’s what it gives you. Your pride back.” Many in the town, however, have mixed feelings. They are grateful for the jobs Amazon has created but they are also sad and angry about the quality of them. Timothy Jones, a barrister and parish councillor, summed up the mood. “I very much want them to stay, but equally I would like some of the worst employment practices to end.”
  • For Watson, the big question is whether these new jobs can support sustainable economic growth. In Rugeley, it is hard not to look back to the coal mine for an example of how one big employer could transform a place. . . . The Lea Hall Colliery opened officially on a soggy Tuesday in July 1960. Miners and their families huddled under marquees to eat their packed lunches and when the first coal was wound to the surface, three bands played an overture specially written for the occasion. It was the first mine planned and sunk by the Coal Board, the body set up after the second world war to run Britain’s newly nationalised coal industry, and the Central Electricity Generating Board was building a coal-fired power station right next door. It was a defiant demonstration of confidence in coal at a time of increasing competition from oil. “King Coal is not yet dead, as many would have it, but is going to be with us for many years to come,” the regional secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers told the crowd.
  • Soon, miners from all over the country were swarming to the modern new mine. The Coal Board and the local council built housing estates and schools to cope with the exploding population. “Peartree estate was built for the Geordies, the Springfield estate was built for the Scots and the Welsh,” remembered Brian Garner, who helped to build the mine when he was 16. “It was unbelievable, it was buzzing in the town, there was that much money about then. I could leave my job at 10 o’clock in the morning and start at five past 10 on another.” On Friday and Saturday nights, the queue outside the Lea Hall Miners’ Welfare Centre and Social Club would wrap right around the building. Rugeley’s mine was soon the most productive in the country. It was a “young man’s pit” with all the latest machines and techniques, says Ken Edwards, who started there at 25 as an electrician. The work was still dirty and dangerous, though. In 1972, a local reporter took a tour. “All is silent except for the movement of conveyor belts which carry the coal and the murmur of the air pumps. The blackness is relieved only by narrow shafts of light coming from each person’s headlamp,” she wrote. It took her two days to remove the black dust from her nails, ears, nose and hair.
  • The good times didn’t last. By the time the pit closed, four days before Christmas in 1990, a spokesman for British Coal told Reuters it was losing £300,000 a week. More than 800 people lost jobs that paid the equivalent of between £380 and £900 a week in today’s money. The town council’s chairman tried desperately to say something reassuring. “It has come as such a shock,” he told the local paper. “[But] we have got to do what many have done and look for new areas, particularly information technology and high technology. We have a lot of expertise and a wonderful geographical spot. There’s no reason why it should be the end for Rugeley.” From behind her desk in Vision estate agents, all purple paint and fairy lights, Dawn Goodwin sucks the air in through her teeth at the mention of Amazon. “We all thought it was going to be the making of the town,” she says. She expected an influx of people, including well-to-do managers, looking to buy or rent houses. But she hasn’t had any extra business at all. People are cautious because they don’t know how long their agency jobs with Amazon will last, she says. One of her tenants, a single young woman, got a job there but lost it again after she became ill halfway through a shift. She struggled to pay her rent for three months while she waited for her jobseeker’s benefits to be reinstated. “It’s leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouths,” Goodwin says with a frown. Even the little “Unit 9” café next to the Amazon warehouse hasn’t had a boost in trade. The women who run it reckon the employees don’t have enough time in their 30-minute break to get through security, come and eat something, and then go back in again.
  • In a cramped upstairs office at the Citizens Advice Bureau, Gillian Astbury and Angela Jones have turned to statistics to try to identify Amazon’s effect on the area. They haven’t had an increase in the number of people asking about employment problems or unfair dismissal, but nor has there been any improvement in the community’s problems with debt and homelessness. Their best guess is that people haven’t had enough sustained work to make much of a difference. Astbury says employment agencies are a “necessary evil”, but stresses it is hardly ideal for people to be bouncing in and out of temporary work, particularly when a job ends abruptly and they are left with no income at all until their benefits are reinstated. Workers leaving Amazon have had a particular problem with this, prompting the parish council to submit a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Work and Pensions to find out exactly how long local people are being made to wait for their social security payments to come through.
  • Far from the CAB’s little office in Rugeley, Britain’s economists are also puzzling over why the economy remains moribund even though more and more people are in work. There are still about half a million fewer people working as full-time employees than there were before the 2008 crash, but the number of people in some sort of employment has surpassed the previous peak. Economists think the rise in insecure temporary, self-employed and part-time work, while a testament to the British labour market’s flexibility, helps to explain why economic growth remains elusive. Angi Cooney, who runs C Residential, the biggest estate agent in Rugeley, thinks the nature of employment is changing permanently and people should stop pining for the past. It’s “bloody great” that a company like Amazon chose to come to “this little old place”, she says fiercely, looking as if she’d like to take the town by the shoulders and give it a shake. “People expect a job for life, but the world isn’t like that any more, is it?” Sarah O’Connor is the FT’s economics correspondent
Gabrijela Vrbnjak

Brain-to-brain interface lets rats share information via internet | Science | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ts-connected-share-information

internet rats information brain organic computer code encode

shared by Gabrijela Vrbnjak on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • News Science Neuroscience Brain-to-brain interface lets rats share information via internet Rats thousands of miles apart collaborate on simple tasks with their brains connected through the internet Share 9893 inShare61 Email Ian Sample, science correspondent The Guardian, Friday 1 March 2013 jQ(document).ready(function(){ jQ.ajax({ url : 'http://resource.guim.co.uk/global/static/file/discussion/5/fill-comment-counts-swimlaned.js', dataType : 'script', type : 'get', crossDomain : true, cache: true }); }); Jump to comments (449) A rat with a brain-to-brain implant responds to a light (circled) by pressing a lever. Its motor cortex was connected to that of another rat. Photograph: Scientific Reports Scientists have connected the brains of a pair of animals and allowed them to share sensory information
  • US team fitted two rats with devices called brain-to-brain interfaces that let the animals collaborate on simple tasks to earn rewards
  • experiments showed that we have established a sophisticated, direct communication linkage between brains
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • In one radical demonstration of the technology, the scientists used the internet to link the brains of two rats separated
  • we are creating
  • an organic computer
  • If the receiving rat failed at the task, the first rat was not rewarded with a drink, and appeared to change its behaviour to make the task easier for its partner.
  • Even though the animals were on different continents
  • they could still communicate
  • we could create a workable network of animal brains distributed in many different locations
  • you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves
  • the work was "very important" in helping to understand how brains encode information
  • Very little is known about how thoughts are encoded and how they might be transmitted into another person's brain – so that is not a realistic prospect any time soon
manca_

Apollo Plus: Microsoft's next Windows Phone update to include Wi-Fi, audio, and other f... - 0 views

www.theverge.com/...ollo-plus-windows-phone-update

microsoft Apollo Plus: Microsoft's next Windows Phone update to include Wi-Fi audio and other fixes

shared by manca_ on 05 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • bring new features to Windows
  • // 33inShare Microsoft is currently preparing an update for Windows Phone 8, codenamed Apollo Plus.
  • A Wi-Fi connection fix is also planned to let connections always remain on, alongside some audio improvements. Apollo Plus will also test Microsoft's ability to deliver Windows Phone 8 updates over-the-air, a change from the previous OS that required users to plug devices into PCs to get similar updates.
sintija

BBC News - Google told to fix privacy policy by EU data regulators - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-19959306

google privacy

shared by sintija on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Google told to fix privacy policy by EU data regulators
  • consolidate 60 separate privacy policies into a single agreement.
  • Google has been told it should give clearer information about what data is being collected and for what purpose. It has also been told to give users more control over how the information is combined.
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  • Google
  • has been accused of providing "incomplete and approximate" details raising "deep concerns about data protection and the respect of the European law".
  • It said that EU data protection laws place limits on such activities and proposed the following changes:
  • Google must "reinforce users' consent". It suggests this could be done by allowing its members to choose under what circumstances data about them was combined by asking them to click on dedicated buttons. The firm should offer a centralised opt-out tool and allow users to decide which of Google's services provided data about them. Google should adapt its own tools so that it could limit data use to authorised purposes. For example, it should be able to use a person's collated data to improve security efforts but not to target advertising.
sergeja perklič

The European Union Closes in on Data Privacy Legislation - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...vacy-legislation-a-877973.html

data privacy EU

shared by sergeja perklič on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The European Union is seeking to increase the private sphere of its citizens by strengthening data protection laws for the web. Large Internet firms and lobbyists are fighting the plans.
  • Gmail and Facebook may be forced to abandon their ad-supported models and start charging their customers in Europe or stop providing them with these popular services altogether.
  • Take Facebook, for example, which has its European headquarters in Ireland. The Irish government's data protection commissioner would then be responsible for the concerns of all EU citizens relating to the company's privacy policies.
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  • Under exi
  • sting privacy regulations, data protection supervision in EU countries must be conducted entirely independently of public authorities, and data protection controllers are not under the supervision of the European Commission. But the EU wants to weaken this policy and install itself as the data protection agencies' supervisory authority.
Gabrijela Vrbnjak

BBC News - Web code weakness allows data dump on PCs - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-21628622

clevercode html5 browser bug

shared by Gabrijela Vrbnjak on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The loophole exploits a feature of HTML 5 which defines how websites are made and what they can do.
  • Developer Feross Aboukhadijeh found the bug and set up a demo page that fills visitors' hard drives with pictures of cartoon cats. In one demo, Mr Aboukhadijeh managed to dump one gigabyte of data every 16 seconds onto a vulnerable Macbook. Clever code Most major browsers, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, were found to be vulnerable to the bug, said Mr Aboukhadijeh. While most websites are currently built using version 4 of the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), that code is gradually being superseded by the newer version 5. One big change brought in with HTML 5 lets websites store more data locally on visitors' PCs. Safeguards built into the "local storage" specification should limit how much data can be stored. Different browsers allow different limits but all allow at least 2.5 megabytes to be stored. However, Mr Aboukhadijeh found a way round this cap by creating lots of temporary websites linked to the one a person actually visited. He found that each one of these associated sites was allowed to store up to the limit of data because browser makers had not written code to stop this happening. By endlessly creating new, linked websites the bug can be used to siphon huge amounts of data onto target PCs. Only Mozilla's Firefox capped storage at 5MB and was not vulnerable, he found. "Cleverly coded websites have effectively unlimited storage space on visitor's computers," wrote Mr Aboukhadijeh in a blogpost about the bug. Code to exploit the bug has been released by Mr Aboukhadijeh and he set up a website, called Filldisk that, on vulnerable PCs, dumps lots of images of cats on to the hard drive. So far, no malicious use of the exploits has been observed. In a bid to solve the problem, bug reports about the exploit have been filed with major browser makers. More on This Story .related-links-list li { position: relative; } .related-links-list .gvl3-icon { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; } Related Stories Firefox smartphone partners revealed 24 FEBRUARY 2013, TECHNOLOGY Flash Player exits Android store 15 AUGUST 2012, TECHNOLOGY HTML 5 target for cybercriminals 02 DECEMBER 2011, TECHNOLOGY $render("page-see-also","ID"); $render("page-newstracker","ID"); Related Internet links Feross Aboukhadijeh The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites $render("page-related-items","ID"); Share this pageShare this page1.4KShareFacebookTwitter Email Print In association with $render("advert","advert-sponsor-module","page-bookmark-links"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); More Technology stories RSS Computer glitch hits Mars rover Nasa's Curiosity Mars rover is put into "safe mode" after a computer glitch caused by corrupted files. US plans small-ship drone launches Hackers breach Evernote security $render("advert","advert-mpu-high"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); Top Stories http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/6618
  • found the bug and set up a demo page that fills visitors' hard drives with pictures of cartoon cats.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • because browser makers had not written code to stop this happening. By endlessly creating new, linked websites the bug can be used to siphon huge amounts of data onto target PCs.
  • Most major browsers, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, were found to be vulnerable to the bug
  • found a way round this cap by creating lots of temporary websites linked to the one a person actually visited
  • was not vulnerable
  • Mozilla's Firefox
  • bug reports about the exploit have been filed with major browser makers.
Janja Petek

Unreported Side Effects of Drugs Are Found Using Internet Search Data, Study Finds - NY... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...internet-data-study-finds.html

effects internet search data

shared by Janja Petek on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Using data drawn from queries entered into Google, Microsoft and Yahoo search engines, scientists at Microsoft, Stanford and Columbia University have for the first time been able to detect evidence of unreported prescription drug side effects before they were found by the Food and Drug Administration’s warning system.
  • Using automated software tools to examine queries by six million Internet users taken from Web search logs in 2010, the researchers looked for searches relating to an antidepressant, paroxetine, and a cholesterol lowering drug, pravastatin.
  • The new study was undertaken after Dr. Altman wondered whether there was a more immediate and more accurate way to gain access to data similar to what the F.D.A. had access to.
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  • He turned to computer scientists at Microsoft, who created software for scanning anonymized data collected from a software toolbar installed in Web browsers by users who permitted their search histories to be collected.
  • The researchers said that they were now thinking about how to add new sources of information, like behavioral data and information from social media sources. The challenge, they noted, was to integrate new sources of data while protecting individual privacy.
Katja Jerman

Letters: Big data and big problems for personal information | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...-problems-personal-information

data personal information problems privacy identification security

shared by Katja Jerman on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • describes a new product to collect and mine user data online
  • PII is a predetermined list of attributes that could identify an individual
  • personally identifiable information?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Identifiably personal information (IPI, if you must) is any set of data which by inspection could lead to the identification of an individual from a group, with a given level of confidence in a given time
  • is based on solid academic work on differential privacy and security threat modelling.
  • could turn data science into data surveillance.
  • Data mining by many businesses seeks to predict trends in purchasing behaviour, monitor customer response to service delivery and assess their marketing strategy against those of their rivals.
  • The real power of social media mining is establishing a "pattern of life" from which anomalies might stand out
Jernej Prodnik

Google raises privacy fears as personal details are released to app developers | Techno... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...e-privacy-fears-app-developers

google privacy technology guardian personal details surveillance surveillance society

shared by Jernej Prodnik on 25 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Google raises privacy fears as personal details are released to app developers Campaigner says tech giant's policies don't make it clear that Google Play users who buy apps give over information
  • Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 February 2013 14.39 GMT
  • Google Play: the personal details of app buyers are released to developers Google could face a third privacy row in a two years, after a leading campaigner called for the US government to investigate the fact that the names, geographic region and email addresses of people who buy apps from its Play store are passed on to the app developers without users' explicit permission.
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  • Ben Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, says that analysis of Google's terms and conditions relating to its Google Play store and Google Wallet transaction system (used for buying apps) doesn't show any clauses where users are specifically told that their emails will be sent on to the developer. He also warns that developers could use that information to "track and harass" people who have given apps low ratings or requested refunds. And hackers – or malicious developers – could create personalised emails to send out to people to steal passwords (phishing) or install "updates" that were actually malware.
  • Google says it has to provide some location data about which country apps are bought in so developers can calculate the correct amount of tax to pay. But that does not explain why it passes on buyers' names and email addresses, which together with a postcode could be used to identify a person's location and address."Google's prior privacy blunders have put [it] under higher scrutiny," Edelman says, pointing to the 20-year consent order with the US Federal Trade Commission that Google signed in March 2011 in the wake of its Buzz social network fiasco – followed by a record $22.5m fine in August 2012 for hacking Apple users' browsers to install tracking cookies. It has also been fiercely criticised in Europe for its changes in March 2012 to its privacy policies, which data protection chiefs said could mean "uncontrolled" use of personal data.
  • Eric Butler, a freelance software developer of the Tapchat and Farebot apps, tweeted in July 2012 "I wonder if most Android users realise that when you buy an app in the Play Store the seller [of the app] can see your name, email address and phone."Following the row, he has noted on his blog that "Because the entire experience of purchasing Android apps is so sloppy, it's not unreasonable to assume that this privacy issue was actually an oversight." But, he says, "Google should follow Apple's lead and offer users and developers better privacy protection."
  • Another developer, Jesse Wilson, pointed out the same problem in November on Google+, and was quickly echoed by Chris Lacy, who said that "as a developer I never asked for this information, I have no need for it, and I simply do not want to be a custodian of such information."Lacy added that "As a consumer, this is distressing on many levels: there is no fair warning that this information will be transferred … trusting my personal information to Google is one thing. But with this system, users are unknowingly having to trust their information to a third party. There's no way to know what security measures that third party might have in place." He added that it meant that the app developer "has gained my personal information without requesting the appropriate permissions via the app."
  • Google has said that passing on the details does not breach its privacy conditions. In a quote to Siliconvalley.com, a representative told the site that "Google Wallet shares the information necessary to process a transaction, which is clearly spelled out in the Google Wallet privacy notice."
anonymous

Google to be summoned over data grab 'excesses' | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...le-summoned-data-grab-excesses

shared by anonymous on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Google representatives are to be summoned to appear before European data protection officials over concerns about the way it collects data on web users.
  • On Thursday, a coalition of 30 data protection officials, including Britain's information commissioner, demanded "significant progress" from Google before the summer
  • The authorities are concerned about changes Google introduced to its privacy policies in March last year. The changes were made to "unify" how information is collected across approximately 60 products, including YouTube GoogleMail, Google has said.
Blaž Gobec

Why Facebook's new Open Graph makes us all part of the web underclass | Technology | gu... - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...book-open-graph-web-underclass

facebook plans graph opengraph underclass

shared by Blaž Gobec on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • ou're not paying for your presence on the web, then you're
  • just a product being used by an organisation bigger than you
  • When you use a free web service you're the underclass. At best you're a guest. At worst you're a beggar, couchsurfing the web and scavenging for crumbs. It's a cliché but worth repeating: if you're not paying for it, you're aren't the customer, you're the product.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Your individual account is probably worth very little to the service provider, so they'll have no qualms whatsoever with tinkering with the service or even making radical changes in their interests rather than yours. If you don't like it you're welcome to leave. You may well not be able to take your content and data with you, and even if you can, all your URLs will be broken.
  • if you really care about your site you need to run it on your own domain. You need to own your URLs. You'll have total control and no-one can take it away from you. You don't need anyone else. If you put the effort in up front it'll pay off in the long run.But it's no longer that simple.
  • Anyone who's ever run a website knows that building the site is one thing, but getting people to use it is quite another. The smaller your real-world presence the harder it is. If you're a national newspaper or a Hollywood star you probably won't have much trouble getting people to visit your website. If you're a self-employed plumber or an unknown blogger writing in your spare time, it's considerably harder.
  • Social networks have changed all that. Facebook and Twitter now wield enormous power over the web by giving their members ways to find and share information using tools that work in a social context.
  • Either way, your social network presence is more important than your own website.
  • But increasingly that freedom is just the freedom to be ignored, the freedom to starve.
  • es, that's nearly 34,000 new Facebook apps created in one day by customers of just one hosting company.
  • What Facebook is doing is very different. When it records our activity away from the Facebook site it's a third party to the deal. It doesn't need this data to run its own services.
  • orst o
  • all, the way Facebook collects and uses our data is both unpredictable and opaque. Its technology and policies move so quickly you'd need to be a technical and legal specialist and spend an inordinate amount of time researching Facebook's activities on an ongoing basis to have any hope of understanding what they're doing with your data.
alja polajžer

BBC News - Clarity call for mobile and internet privacy - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...business-13522071

bbc news internet privacy

shared by alja polajžer on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Clarity call for mobile and internet privacy
  • The Communications Consumer Panel said that people should have control over which information is shared.
  • Data doubts
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The panel, which was set up to advise communications regulator Ofcom about consumers' interests, wants more control for shoppers over their data.
  • Consumers using their mobile phones can allow businesses to collect data about their location and the products and services they are interested in.
  • the Information Commissioner raised concerns over people's awareness of data privacy.
  • "It has never been more important to protect your personal information. Whether you are surfing the net, shopping online or signing up to social networking sites, it is crucial that people are thinking about how their information might be used," said Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner.
  • From employers looking up potential employees on Facebook to cyber-criminals hacking into unsecured wi-fi networks, not protecting your personal information can cause serious harm and distress."
Kaja Horvat

EU agencies to sanction Google over privacy violations - INTERNET - FRANCE 24 - 0 views

www.france24.com/...google-privacy-violations-cnil

internet privacy google violation

shared by Kaja Horvat on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • EU data-protection agencies will take action against internet giant Google after it failed to comply with EU privacy laws,
  • In October the data protection agencies warned Google that its new confidentiality policy did not comply with EU laws and gave it four months to make changes or face legal action.
  • Google rolled out the new privacy policy in March 2012, allowing it to track users across various services to develop targeted advertising, despite sharp criticism from US and European consumer advocacy groups.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It contends the move simplifies and unifies its policies across its various services such as Gmail, YouTube, Android mobile systems, social networks and Internet search.
  • But critics argue that the policy, which offers no ability to opt out aside from refraining from signing into Google services, gives the operator of the world's largest search engine unprecedented ability to monitor its users.
  • European data protection agencies had recommended to Google that it improve information provided to users, particularly on the categories of data being processed, and for what purposes and services.
  • changes are designed to improve the user experience across the various Google products, and give the firm a more integrated view of its users
Katja Kotnik

Me and my data: how much do the internet giants really know? | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...me-and-my-data-internet-giants

shared by Katja Kotnik on 02 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Google is not only the world's largest search engine, it's one of the top three email providers, a social network, and owner of the Blogger platform and the world's largest video site, YouTube. Facebook has the social contacts, messages, wallposts and photos of more than 750 million people.
  • The site also lists my most recent sent and received emails (in both cases a "no subject" conversation thread with a colleague).
  • The big relief comes when I note Google isn't tracking the internet searches I've made on my work account
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • only around 29% of the information Facebook possesses on any given user is accessible through the site's tools.
  • The Facebook extended archive is a little creepier, including "poke info", each instance of tracking cookies they possess, previous names, and full login and logout info
  • Looking through anyone's list of searches gives a distressing degree of insight into odder parts of their personality.
  • sell us stuff
  • how much do the internet giants really know?
  • picked up by hackers
  • how much the internet giants know about us.
  • Google isn't totally unhelpfu
  • Every event to which I've ever been invited is neatly listed, alongside its location, time, and whether I said I would attend .
  • One piece of information – a supposed engagement to a schoolfriend, Amy Holmes – stands out. A Facebook "joke" that seemed faintly funny for about a week several years ago was undone by hiding it from any and all Facebook users, friends or otherwise (to avoid an "… is now single!" status update). The forgotten relationship helpfully explains why Facebook has served me up with badly targeted bridalwear adverts for several years, and reassures me that Facebook doesn't know quite everything.
  • This is the core of the main comfort
  • despite their mountain of data, Google and Facebook seem largely clueless, too – they've had no more luck making any sense out of it than I have. And that, for now, is a relief.
Rebeka Aščerič

The internet comes of age | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...endgameforsilversurfers

internet ipraktikum social media age

shared by Rebeka Aščerič on 05 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Comment is free The internet comes of age Older people are using the web as never before.
  • Silver surfers, defined as internet users over the age of 65, spend more time on the web (42 hours a month) than any other group,
  • A lot of older people still do not realise that once you have fixed up a broadband connection (which admittedly can be dodgy with some service providers) it is very easy to buy or sell things on the auction space eBay (the most popular one in the UK); to buy a book from Amazon or the wonderful abebooks; or to Google or email.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • They do want to keep up with old friends, but they also want to make contact with other people of whatever age with whom they share a common interest.
Katja Saje

Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier; Big Data by Victor Mayer-Schönberger an... - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...wns-future-jaron-lanier-review

manipulation privacy data intrusiveness malevolence benefit danger

shared by Katja Saje on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Successful technologists are the new "ruling class". In this digital world order, money and power are concentrated in the hands of a few.
  • Each technological innovation produces the potential not just for cyber-crime, but for manipulating the way we lead our lives.
  • imagine you take a driverless taxi. Without explanation, it lingers in front of billboards during your journey or forces you to a particular convenience store if you need to pick up something. Is that very different to search engines reading your mind through your click-habits or Amazon telling you, often accurately, what you really want to read next?
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The amount of raw data about all our lives continues to rise exponentially.
  • benefit and danger will depend on the use to which the information is put and the safeguards that protect us from technical malfunction and human malevolence.
mancamikulic

Google Glass: is it a threat to our privacy? | Technology | The Guardian - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...le-glass-threat-to-our-privacy

google glass technology privacy shooting

shared by mancamikulic on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • glasses that can shoot video, take pictures, and broadcast what you're seeing to the world
  • They weren't due to get them until last Friday
  • Google Glass is the most hotly anticipated new arrival in "wearable computing"
  • ...46 more annotations...
  • from "mainframe" computers
  • Google's idea is that you need only speak to operate it
  • "OK, Glass, take video!"
  • The only other way to get that point of view is to strap a camera to your head.
  • And yet people are already beginning to fret about the social implications of Glass
  • the question of privacy
  • how will we behave in groups
  • David Yee, the chief technology officer at a company called Editorially
  • Yee's worry was that the young person might be filming everything
  • Joshua Topolsky
  • have tried out Google Glass
  • This is the company that has repeatedly breached the boundaries of what we think is "private".
  • forgetting that sometimes deadly enemies have mutual friends
  • use of personal data without an individual's clear consent.
  • So how comfortable – or uneasy – should we feel about the possibility that what we're doing in a public or semi-public place (or even somewhere private) might get slurped up and assimilated by Google?
  • Oliver Stokes
  • ou could inadvertently become part of somebody else's data collection – that could be quite alarming
  • Now it's going to be able to compute what it is you're looking at.
  • Song Chaoming
  • nalysing mobile phone records
  • how your smartphone is able to show where you are on an onscreen map
  • Google probably knows what you're going to do before you do.
  • Where the five million are the wearers of Glass – and the one monitor is Google
  • Social media
  • Twitter
  • we're more used to the snatched photo or video that tells a story
  • Google doesn't want to discuss these issues.
  • this is a live issue,
  • One of the reasons they're doing Explorers is to get feedback on these things
  • how will we behave with each other?
  • hows data such as your speed, altitude, and even ski-resort maps
  • Concentrating on what was in front of me wasn't hard
  • they do it without letting others realise you are doing anything
  • we get too deeply involved with our technology
  • she pointed out how smartphones change us:
  • Topolsky
  • It brought something new into view
  • the more I used Glass the more it made sense to me; the more I wanted it."
  • how text messages or phone calls would just appear as alerts
  • Glass makes you feel more powerful
  • Hurst
  • is likely to be annoying
  • here's where the problems really start – you don't know if they're taking a video of you.
  • body language change
  • model seems to require voice control
  • how much are we going to share with others
Meta Arcon

Figuring out the future of online privacy - CNN.com - 1 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

future online privacy cnn

shared by Meta Arcon on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • They may not be paying for the services directly, but customers still have a lot of power -- and companies know that they need to listen.
  • "We can't just sit back and allow the industry to just continue to ignore a core component of the user experience online," said Alex Fowler, Mozilla's global privacy and public policy leader.
  • The more devices that connect to the Internet, from smart cars to home thermostats, the more data there are about a person to collect.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Free versions come with ads, but for a price, people can upgrade to the ad-free experience.
  • It's also possible that over the next five to 10 years, people's attitudes toward privacy and their data will change, and they'll be willing to share more personal information
  • Not everyone will want the same level of privacy,
  • "Do not track" seems like a clear, smart option to give consumers
  • Companies that provide free services, such as search engines or social networks, have to strike the right balance between respecting their customers' privacy concerns and serving advertisers.
  • It's also possible that over the next five to 10 years, people's attitudes toward privacy and their data will change, and they'll be willing to share more personal information, attached to their real-world identity, in exchange for more heavily customized computing experiences.
Anja Pirc

Online privacy: Difference Engine: Nobbling the internet | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...online-privacy

privacy networking internet social social networking

shared by Anja Pirc on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • TWO measures affecting the privacy internet users can expect in years ahead are currently under discussion on opposite sides of the globe. The first hails from a Senate committee’s determination to make America’s online privacy laws even more robust. The second concerns efforts by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations, to rewrite its treaty for regulating telecommunications around the world, which dates from 1988, so as to bring the internet into its fief.
  • The congressional measure, approved overwhelmingly by the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 29th, would require criminal investigators to obtain a search warrant from a judge before being able to coerce internet service providers (ISPs) to hand over a person’s e-mail. The measure would also extend this protection to the rest of a person’s online content, including videos, photographs and documents stored in the "cloud"—ie, on servers operated by ISPs, social-network sites and other online provider
  • a warrant is needed only for unread e-mail less than six months old. If it has already been opened, or is more than six months old, all that law-enforcement officials need is a subpoena. In America, a subpoena does not need court approval and can be issued by a prosecutor. Similarly, a subpoena is sufficient to force ISPs to hand over their routing data, which can then be used to identify a sender’s various e-mails and to whom they were sent. That is how the FBI stumbled on a sex scandal involving David Petraeus, the now-ex director of the CIA, and his biographer.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • No-one imagined that ISPs would one day offer gigabytes of online storage free—as Google, Yahoo!, Hotmail and other e-mail providers do today. The assumption back then was that if someone had not bothered to download and delete online messages within six months, such messages could reasonably be considered to be abandoned—and therefore not in need of strict protection.
  • wholesale access to the internet, powerful mobile phones and ubiquitous social networking have dramatically increased the amount of private data kept online. In the process, traditional thinking about online security has been rendered obsolete. For instance, more and more people nowadays keep their e-mail messages on third-party servers elsewhere, rather than on their own hard-drives or mobile phones. Many put their personal details, contacts, photographs, locations, likes, dislikes and inner thoughts on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Dropbox and a host of other destinations. Bringing online privacy requirements into an age of cloud computing is only fit and proper, and long overdue.
  • the international telecoms treaty that emerged focused on how telephone traffic flows across borders, the rules governing the quality of service and the means operators could adopt to bill one another for facilitating international calls. As such, the regulations applied strictly to telecoms providers, the majority of which were state owned.
  • he goal of certain factions is to grant governments the authority to charge content providers like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter for allowing their data to flow over national borders. If enacted, such proposals would most certainly deter investment in network infrastructure, raise costs for consumers, and hinder online access for precisely those people the ITU claims it wants to help.
  • a proposal sponsored by the United States and Canada to restrict the debate in Dubai strictly t
  • o conventional telecoms has met with a modicum of success, despite stiff opposition from Russia plus some African and Middle-Eastern countries. Behind closed doors, the conference has agreed not to alter the ITU’s current definition of “telecommunications” and to leave the introductory text concerning the existing treaty’s scope intact.
  • The sticking point has been what kind of organisations the treaty should apply to. Here, one word can make a huge difference. In ITU jargon, the current treaty relates only to “recognised operating agencies”—in other words, conventional telecoms operators. The ITU wants to change that to simply “operating agencies”. Were that to happen, not only would Google, Facebook and other website operators fall under the ITU’s jurisdiction, but so too would all government and business networks. It seems the stakes really are as high as the ITU’s critics have long maintained
nensic

Under the regime of precarity: bring your own device | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...recarity-bring-your-own-device

mobile internet PC neoliberal economic policy precarity monopoly

shared by nensic on 05 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • At one and the same time technocracy and financial oligarchies find here an ideal medium to extend their influence and their control of individuals in space and time.
  • At one and the same time technocracy and financial oligarchies find here an ideal medium to extend their influence and their control of individuals in space and time. This explains the fierce struggle going on among key market players.
  • Today large communities use devices like smartphones, tablets, e-readers and ultrabooks to navigate this new ecosystem.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • The growing dynamic of mobile internet, today accounting for 12% of all internet traffic,[ii] signals a new ecosystem where living bodies, machines, networks, code, data, territory and time interact.
  • as a way of consolidating their strictly neoliberal economic policy.
  • The hundreds of thousands of apps, available in just a few years, originate from the intersection of two factors:
  • The desire and necessity to have simple, functional and fast devices able to do specific tasks on the go.
  • the operative skills to develop apps for popular mobile platforms such as Iphone Operating System (IOS) or Google Android. 
  • Apps galore
  • Apple likes to play on the ambiguity in a form of propaganda that exalts the “revolutionary” spirit of technological innovation
  • The first iPhone, in 2007, inaugurated the new phase of the cognitive era, just as the PC heralded the decline of the industrial phase. Five years later, Apple no longer has a monopoly: hundreds of millions of smartphones and tablets are sold every year and the total number of these active devices will be soon 2 billion. It took the PC thirty years to reach this level of diffusion.
  • War over the immaterial
  • Often these machines play opposite functions: as a tool to create new forms of horizontal communication and social interaction or as bait for a capillary exploitation.
  • A political analysis of mobile devices
  • The PC became a liberating tool for social cooperation in the workplace of a booming third-sector.
  • In the following phase, the spread of the first mobile devices – cellphones and laptops – provided an initial impulse for a blurring of life and work, imposing with mobile calls, emails or SMS a new type of real-time processing, regulating the rhythms of life
  • In the new biohypermedia environment, the key change lies in the combination of miniaturizing and mobilizing these pieces of equipment, allowing them to always be within the body’s reach in any context.
  • they augment physical reality[ix] with every kind of information – commercial, cultural, ecological – and act more and more as biomedical sets for the control, correction and support of our vital biological functions.
  • The PC has a central function as the medium for linguistic and written processes - its typical uses often tied to the logical concatenation of thought and the priority management of sequences over time.
  • But mobile devices concentrate complex perception of stimuli in terms of spatial organization and intervene in emotional responses. PC work in this way occupies our left hemisphere, while the continual interactions of a smartphone engage the right hemisphere.
  • In contemporary neoliberalism, these devices become an essential means of rent and profit, through a fine capture of what we generate by living with them and using them. At one and the same time technocracy and financial oligarchies find here an ideal medium to extend their influence and their control of individuals in space and time.
  • Marketing and communication campaigns portray these devices as commodity fetishes, characterizing a new phase of capitalism often described as cognitive because based on knowledge.
  • In the sphere of multinational ICT[x] Corporations a war is being waged over the design and deployment of immaterial enclosures
  • Even though all this is based on freeware and open source, they trick us into believing that the iPhone 5, Windows 8 or Jellybean[xi] are miracles that descend from Mount Olympus and for which we should be grateful as to the gods.
  • Unlike automobiles or, to a lesser degree, PCs, the use value of new mobile devices is no longer determined merely by the initial design but can be moulded by the final user.
  • The innumerable websites, blogs and forums in every language globally blooming and growing are a workshop for worldwide exchange where the digital means are developed that could be used to withdraw workers both from precarity and  from total submission to a life of labour.  
  • Microsoft is no less defensive of its monopoly: with Intel and other accomplices, they introduced a new firmware to boot Windows 8 PCs that, substituting the old BIOS,[xv] makes it impossible or very complicated to install Linux or other operating systems on new laptops.
  • Despite hesitations related to “security” problems, today companies allow or even oblige people to use their own devices
  • So, if you were one of those many who found the latest tablet, smartphone or hybrid touch device under the tree this year, be aware that you won’t be the only one pleased: under the regime of precarity, bring your own device if you want to survive. 
  • nensic on 05 Mar 13
     
    "Bring your own device (BYOD) is a business policy whereby employees bring personally owned mobile devices to their place of work and use them to access privileged company resources such as email, file servers and databases as well as their personal applications and data."
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