BigMother.dk

Yet another story about how happy Danes have become with surveillance. It’s the second story about ‘the tendency’ in few months in DK. I’ve been called by two different journalists within 12 hours for a comment (both of which I transferred to my good friend Anders who actually appears in the article). Now suddenly everybody agrees that surveillance is good and creates comfort and security. If we disregard the journalist urge simply to say SOMETHING different (I guess that’s why my BigMother perspective is popular in the Danish media) and often make up the ‘news’ themselves (as it might be in this case), I wish to use the chance to rehearse one basic observation that sparked BigMother. NOT that surveillance is good per se. But how most public debate is swamped cliché inertia. Just as the Big Brother notion have had disproportionate cultural power by offering a handy and shared image of the consequences of surveillance gone bad (actually: coupled with fascism), don’t be surprised is everybody starts saying that surveillance is for the common good, heightened general ethics, greater awareness of others or what have you. Bottom line: don’t trust you visceral reactions to ‘controversial’ issues. Chances are that they depend on a single experience you have come to generalize or simply that your opinion is THE opinion in your segment. It’s quite banal; but just realize it next time you discuss politics

I’ve just been announced professor at Århus University, simply by giving an interview on Bigmother, Careware and cognitive enhancements for Danish Radio. A surprising change of status and occupation. Look at the fact box right.

I did notify DR on the mistake but they seem so convinced of my merits that they have kept the title.

It’s becoming common sense that Google owns a lot of information about our interests, outlook, web-whereabouts, history and more through an ever-growing list of powerful web-services and applications (see for instance Michael Zimmer’s take on this). So much that this issue - which is at the very core of Google’s business model and thus not just something they can spin their way out of - is becoming a concern that many associate with the Google brand. Yesterday, I received a mail about a wiki software that we use in Actics which have been acquired by Google. One fourth of the mail reads:

What about security and privacy?

Your data is yours — that doesn’t change at Google. We will continue to work to ensure the privacy and security of your data. Furthermore, Google is as committed to privacy and security as we are. Since the user information you provided to JotSpot will soon be transferred to Google as part of their acquisition of JotSpot, we want to provide you with the opportunity to retrieve your user information and cease usage of the JotSpot service before the transition. If you do not wish to continue using JotSpot, send an email to privacy@jot.com in the next sixty days and we will reply with instructions for retrieving your user information.

Are you convinced by this? Doesn’t it rather concern you that they feel the need to tell you?

In a greater perspective the question is if Google’s successful growth will simply undermine them in the end? Can an information handling brand survive getting this kind of concern associated to it? Can Google credibly convince us that such massive ownership of peoples data is not an even more concerning monopoly than Microsoft’s production software hegemony?

Update: Wired with another argument for the illusionary in sticking to old standards for privacy. Access to vast amounts of data and the possibility to socialize online means the end of control over your data. Quite trivial actually. But triviality has never been a corrective for emotions.

We’ve witnessed at lot of activity lately on the perpetual privacy issue. This time brought about by the initiative by the Facebook designers to allow for more systematic monitoring of the activities of other community members. Big deal I’m tempted to say knowing that some people take their social web life very serious. But I do find it utterly naive to cry for privacy on the web when great parts of this information infrastructure’s success stems from delivering access to information on everything. It seems like common sense that using the web widely might have consequences later on when the web is increasingly used to check people’s credentials and nature as this fresh piece from New Scientist describes. Yesterday I fell over these quotations by Paul B. Hartzog on Many2Many, which captures my feeling quite precisely:

[A]s David Brin points out in The Transparent Society, privacy advocates are typically hypocritical in that they want privacy for themselves and transparency for everyone else. Luckily, transparency doesn’t work that way. If surveillance, then sousveillance. If you can watch me, then I demand the right to watch you. The consequence of privacy is that only the powerful will be able to watch others. In other words, the powerful will have privacy and the powerless won’t. Think about it. When is the last time you were able to see a company’s credit rating before you engaged with them? They do it to you all the time… Privacy is an experience that people have which is not only illusory, but serves the interests of those powerful players who can, and do, violate privacy all the time.

Fighting over privacy on the web feel a bit like the music and movie businesses making a fuzz of loosing a few percentages of their bizarrely enormous revenues due to new rules of the web. Times changes and put wealth and fame into changing hands. Most demands of privacy is so asymmetrical and contextual that it simply seem ridiculous. So far the value of digital payment, mobile phone roaming and web surfing totally overshadows matters of privacy. Add to that, new democratic possibilities to monitor and report lying politicians, reporters creating their facts or companies committing serious social harm over the web with the speed of light. Of course it’s concerning when powerful surveillance measures are coupled with incompetent political paranoia and a legal system put on hold as in parts of the western world, but please put things in perspectives. And referring to old norms like the music-movie industry is futile. Learn to deal with a new reality pragmatically and trust the general rationality and innovation of humans. If privacy becomes a general issue, enough will revolt in an appropriate matter and restore an overall sense of fairness.

Hurry up to get your own surveillance resistance t-shirt. The t-shirt maker Klaus Industries is offering these bold statements for you civil rights activists and soundly alert out there.

Sad they do not come in anti-surveillance fabrics shielding your torso from the penetrating eyes of Big Brother.

Via Cool Hunting

From http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/drfun.html via Bruce Schneier

A new book with the extremely BigMother congenial title “Overvågning eller Omsorg” is being presented in Copenhagen September 15′th. Below is the press release in Danish:

Ny Debatbog: Overvågning eller Omsorg

Danmark udvikler sig hurtigt med digitale forvaltninger, kameraer i det offentlige rum, registrering og opbevaring af tele- og internettrafik, biometriske pas, DNA registre osv., men med få principielle diskussioner af, hvad den stigende overvågning betyder for os som samfund, og som borgere.

For at sætte gang i debatten præsenterer Institut for Menneskerettigheder en debatbog om “Overvågning eller Omsorg - Privatlivets Grænser”, udgivet af Forlaget Thomson.

Bogens temaer spænder over politi og efterforskning, kameraer i det offentlige rum, data-logning hos teleudbydere, brug af DNA-registre i retssystemet, overvågning på arbejdspladsen, digital forvaltning, registrering af etnisk oprindelse samt patienter og sundhedsvæsen.

Bogens forfattere er: Lars Findsen, Politiets Efterretningstjeneste, Kasper Skov-Mikkelsen og Helge Kierkegaard, SikkerhedsBranchen, Mette Hartlev, Københavns Universitet, Anne Baastrup, Folketinget, Peter Blume, Københavns Universitet, Peter Garde, Retten i Hillerød, Rikke Frank Jørgensen og Birgitte Kofod Olsen, Institut for Menneskerettigheder, Sten Schaumburg-Müller, Århus Universitet, Per Helge Sørensen, Forfatter, Stephan Engberg, Open Business Innovation, Sune og Mira Skadegård Thorsen, Lawhouse.dk, Jeanette Viale, Næstved Kommune, Hanne Lykke Jespersen, Prosa.

Bogen lanceres ved et debatpanel:

TORSDAG DEN 15 SEPTEMBER 2005, KL. 14 - 16
på Institut for Menneskerettigheder
Strandgade 56, kbh. K. (Nordskov lokalet)

Hvor en række af forfatterne vil præsentere og debattere bogens temaer.
Direktør Morten Kjærum vil åbne debatten.

For yderligere information kontakt:
Birgitte Kofod Olsen, bko@humanrights.dk, 32698889
Rikke Frank Jørgensen, rfj@humanrights.dk, 32698805

Thanks to Anders ( http://albrechtslund.net/ ) for the info

The father of the notorious Big Brother meme, George Orwell, was under surveillance by British police for several years, Guardian Unlimited writes July 18

Even though Orwell probably never found out himself, inspiration for the notion of Big Brother in his famous novel 1984 could have come from being under surveillance by British police. Under suspicion for communist activities, caused by Orwell’s research for a book on the conditions of the working class, British police put Orwell under close inspection for over 12 years. The surveillance probably stopped when Orwell himself supplied a list of 86 “Stalinist fellow travelers” to an anti-communist propaganda unit. Article in Guardian Unlimited: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1530801,00.html

Business Week special on how retail is going to great strength exploiting all sorts of state-of-the-art technology in a fierce competition to gain customers and increase sales

In a world where political power is giving way for capitalistic interests the commercial aspects of surveillance technology is probably the most concerning. Not because commercial interests are a threat to us, but because our every move can be potentially capitalized on. The Business Week survey gives a good insight into present techniques such as data mining, tracking, buying history and aimed advertising. It’s facinating - and frightening: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/tc_special/tc_05retailing.htm