Month: March 2009

Update: EDLs in Saskatchewan and Quebec

/ Christopher Parsons

200903161147.jpgAs I noted a few days ago, the Saskatchewan government is debating whether or not they want to implement EDLs given the privacy and financial risks that accompany the licenses. It seems as though the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is supporting this hesitancy, with the assistant privacy commissioner;

. . . is applauding the province’s decision to back away from the enhanced licences until legislation addresses concerns about how personal information is used and how vulnerable it is to hackers.

“It’s highly significant,” Bernier said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “The province seems to come to the conclusion … that the cost-benefit analysis is not convincing.” (Source)

It will be interesting to see whether or not Saskatchewan reintroduces EDL legislation after Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner manages to implement an ‘on/off’ switch that she has been talking about with Jesse Brown for the past few weeks. My suspicion is that they will, but that they will let Ontario do the heavy lifting in this area (I expect that Ontario’s influence with DHS will be more substantial than Saskatchewan, but maybe that isn’t/won’t be the case).

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Demonstration: Why Mashups are Awesome

/ Christopher Parsons

200903132009.jpgWhen you read Lessig, he keeps pointing to Girl Talk. That’s because Girl Talk is awesome, and is one of the most prominent mashup artists. Let’s say that you’re not into the particular sounds GT is producing (which isn’t unreasonable) – if that’s the case, and that’s why you think mashup ‘sucks’, hit the video below to see what harsh music copyright laws will outlaw. The creativity is manifest in the video is clearly original, possessing focus, and is simply awesome.

Update: EDLs in Saskatchewan

/ Christopher Parsons

200903121823.jpgSome interesting news coming out of Saskatchewan: the government is looking to put the brakes on Enhanced Drivers License (EDLs). While headlines are saying that this is dominantly because of privacy concerns, I think that cost is probably a deeper reason for turning away these licenses. Crown Corporations Minister Ken Cheveldayoff is on record saying:

The criteria from homeland security has been changing. The costs have been increasing and if they go to a point where it just doesn’t make sense anymore then we’re not going to move forward. (Source)

It seems as though costs have risen from $50 – $80 dollars, without a clear sign of that stopping. Cost (financial and political) really seems to be the force keeping these licenses out of the hands of the public.

This being said, I should be fair and point out that the Privacy Commissioner of Saskatchewan hasn’t received the Privacy Impact Assessment from Sask. Government Insurance (Source). The Commissioner wasn’t outright opposed to the EDLs, and is instead suggesting that the province look to its neighbors for ways of tweaking the Bill 72 legislation.To me, this suggests looking to BC and Ontario. I don’t know exactly what the consequences of this kind of ‘tweaking’ would be, especially given how limited those governments incorporated suggested privacy protections, but it would be nice to see documents that really put the Commissioner’s cards (and desired changes) on the table. Seems like a FOI moment….

Update: EDLs and Real ID

/ Christopher Parsons / 4 Comments

200903121807.jpgThere has been discussion that Enhanced Drivers Licenses are really a ‘gateway document’ towards implementing a continental identity management system. The Department of Homeland Security’s new secretary, Janet Napolitano, is an outspoken critic of the Real ID program. There has been wide speculation about what her position would be concerning Real ID now that she is running the department that was pushing Real ID. We’re now starting to see her position come out:

Enhanced driver’s licenses give confidence that the person holding the card is the person who is supposed to be holding the card, and it’s less elaborate than Real ID. (Source)

As long as states are running the databases, rather than there being a central federal database, she’s willing to get behind EDLs. While it’s good that the DHS is retreating from a full-scale deployment of Real ID, I’m not so sure that shifting to EDLs is a ‘solution’ to the privacy issues that are discussed surrounding the RFIDs in EDLs.

Thoughts: Google and ‘Interest Based’ Advertising

/ Christopher Parsons

200903121245.jpgPrivacy. Privacy, Privacy, Privacy.

Google is persistently in the limelight for it’s ‘invasions’ of personal privacy. I’ve made references to Google and privacy in a variety of blog posts, but whenever I think about Google my mind returns to a comment from Peter Fleischer, the chief privacy officer for Google. In a post in 2007, he wrote (in his personal blog) that:

. . . privacy is about more than legal compliance, it’s fundamentally about user trust. Be transparent with your users about your privacy practices. If your users don’t trust you, you’re out of business (Source)

Perhaps naively, I think that this statement is accurate – look at the nightmares that Facebook, NebuAd, and Phorm (to name a few) all have when they ‘invade’ customers’ privacy without being fully transparent about what, and why, they are engaging in their practices. What’s more, as soon as you establish an ‘it’s our way, or no way’ approach, you immediate establish a hostile environment between you and your users. In business, your users are your lifeblood; alienate them only if you really like polishing your resume.

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Conference Presentation: The Ontological Crisis of Melacholia

/ Christopher Parsons / 2 Comments

200903121318.jpg
I’ll be presenting my paper “The Ontological Crisis of Melancholia: Searching for foundations in the ether of cyberspace” tomorrow at the (inter)disciplinarities: theory & crisis conference tomorrow. If you have any thoughts or comments on the paper, feel free to drop me a line – I’m hoping to polish it over the next few months and then start shopping it around to a few journals. The abstract is below:

Abstract

In The Psychic Life of Power, Judith Butler argues that the power structures ordering individuals and states alike are predicated on a mourning that cannot be mourned; melancholia permeates the primary ordering structures of the individual and the state. Butler takes up this absence, and alerts us to the state’s reliance on citizens’ melancholia to support its continued being. The state, constituted by the melancholic, reasserts and normalizes the melancholia responsible for plunging the modern subject into its ontological crisis of Being; it perpetuates the subjects’ inability to authentically ground their selfhood.

In this paper, I ask whether digital environments are spaces that can facilitate the resolution of modern subjects’ ontological crisis, and thus might provoke the reconstitution of modern politics. In responding to this inquiry, I take up Butler’s analysis of mourning and melancholia and situate her politics of identity in the context of Cyberspace. Specifically, I investigate whether the modern subject can work through their crisis within the plasticity of digital spaces, or if these spaces only superficially present possibilities for working through crisis. In interrogating these possibilities, I consider how psychosocial norms of embodied life are (being) embedded throughout digital spaces, and reflect on the implications of state-held norms being reaffirmed in these new media environments. I conclude by adopting the stance that Cyberspace may enable some individuals to acknowledge their experience of melancholia, but stop short of claiming that the possibilities afforded by this space’s plasticity can or will provoke a widespread reconstitution of modern politics.