Technology

Public Databases and Massive Aggregation of Data

/ Christopher Parsons

This is just a really quick thought that I wanted to toss out.

I perceive a problem associated with the digitization of public records: such digitization allows business interests to gather aggregate data on large collections of people while retaining identifiable characteristics. This allows for a phenomenal sorting potential. At the same time, we might ask, “is there anything we can, or really want to, do about this?”

Paradigm Shift

I hear this a lot – ‘Chris, you have to understand that things are different now. The paradigm is shifting towards transparency, and there’s nothing wrong with that, and you’re being a pain in the ass suggesting that there is anything wrong with transparency. Do you have something to hide, or something like that?’ This particular line bothers the hell out of me, because I shouldn’t have to expose myself without giving my consent, especially when I previously enjoyed a greater degree of privacy as a consequence of obscurity and/or the costs involved with copying, sorting, and analyzing analogue records. I fail to see why I have to give up past nascent rights and expectations just because we can mine data more effectively (hell, that would have been a meaningless statement around the time that I was born…). Efficiency is not the same as superior, better, or (necessarily) wanted.

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I See Your DPI and Raise You a SSL

/ Christopher Parsons

A little while ago I was talking about network neutrality and Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies with a person interested in the issue (shocking, I know), and one of the comments that I made went something like this: given the inability of DPI technologies to effectively crack encrypted payloads, it’s only a matter of time until websites start to move towards secure transactions – in other words, it’s only a matter of time until accessing websites will involve sending encrypted data between client computers and servers.

The Pirate Bay and Beyond

Recently, Sweden passed a bill that allows for the wiretapping of electronic communications without a court order. This caused the Pirates Bay, a well-known BitTorrent index site, to announce that it was adding SSL encryption to their website as well as VPN solutions for native Swedes who wanted to avoid the possibility of having their network traffic surveyed. Recently, isohunt.com has done the same, and other major torrent sites are expected to follow the lead. The groups who are running these websites are technically savvy, allowing them to implement encrypted access rapidly and with little technical difficulty, but as more and more sites move to SSL there will be an increasing demand amongst tech-savvy users that their favorite sites similarly protect them from various corporate and government oversight methods.

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Transparency and *My* Click-Stream

/ Christopher Parsons

I get strange looks from some of my friends and colleagues sometimes. On the one hand, I strongly advance the idea that people’s privacy should be protected, by default, and at the same time I blog, use social networking sites (though somewhat uncomfortably), own a cell phone, use credit cards, etc. This week I’ve ‘stepped things up’ by syndicating my del.icio.us bookmarks with my blog – you’ll now be treated (or spammed, I guess, depending on how you see things) with the articles that I’ve tagged in the past 24 hours that I think are interesting.

SPAM Ahoy!

I’ll start by stating this: I don’t think that the links you’ll be seeing are Spam. I think that I’m tagging good, solid, helpful links for people that might be interested in surveillance, privacy, and (typically) how either of those topics intersects with technology in some fashion. You’ll note that, for the next little while at least, you’ll see links to articles on Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and behavioral advertising. I expect some WiMAX stuff as well. There are a couple reasons why I’m syndicating this kind of content:

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DPI, Employees, and Proper Inspection

/ Christopher Parsons

In my last post I alluded to the fact that Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies could be used by businesses to try and reduce the possibility of ‘inappropriate’ employee use of bandwidth and wrongful or accidental transmissions of confidential IP. In that last post I was talking about IT security, and this post will continue to reflect on DPI technologies’ applications and benefits to and for corporate environments.

A Quick Refresher on DPI

From ArsTechnica:

The “deep” in deep packet inspection refers to the fact that these boxes don’t simply look at the header information as packets pass through them. Rather, they move beyond the IP and TCP header information to look at the payload of the packet. The goal is to identify the applications being used on the network, but some of these devices can go much further; those from a company like Narus, for instance, can look inside all traffic from a specific IP address, pick out the HTTP traffic, then drill even further down to capture only traffic headed to and from Gmail, and can even reassemble e-mails as they are typed out by the user. (Source)

For a slightly longer discussion/description of DPI I suggest that you look at the wiki page that I’m gradually putting together on the topic of Deep Packet Inspection.

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The Coming of Ubiquitous Bandwidth?

/ Christopher Parsons

At work, I’m often referred to as the ‘neo-luddite‘ because I don’t advocate the rapid adoption of new technologies for their own sake, nor do I adhere to the position that technologies are inherently value neutral. In fact, I think that technologies are typically inscribed with a particular value-orientation; this orientation is not necessarily the one that is expressed at the technology’s creation. I think that there should be genuine thought and caution advanced when developing technologies that could be destructive to various facets of social life. With the introduction of new technologies comes the possibilities of reshaping cultural traditions, and sure a reshaping shouldn’t be done without at least some forethought. This shouldn’t be taken to mean that I see technology as adding to, or detracting from, a culture, but rather that accompanying a new technology’s adoption is a new cultural system with its own unique environmental characteristics. The world with cellphones isn’t the world as it was, plus cell phones, but instead is an entirely different techno-cultural world. We need to be mindful of the potency of new technologies to reshape facets of our lives through the transmutation or abolition of our traditions – doing otherwise is irresponsible to ourselves and the other members of our society.

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The Sweet Smell of Redmond…

/ Christopher Parsons

I’ve previously talked about the horrors of the native document format in the Office 2007 (and now 2008 for Mac as well), OOXML. I’m not going to go through an extended talk about the nonsense that Microsoft has done to essentially bankrupt the legitimacy of ISO bodies around the world. I’ll let you head over to Bob Sutor’s blog if you want to do that (disclaimer: Bob is a VP at IBM. He’s super smart, but IBM is an ardent supported of ODF, and opposed to OOXML. That position comes through in the blog.).

Now, I just want to note something that you might have missed in some of the FUD that has been swirling about OOXML receiving ISO certification. While it’s true that OOXML may indeed receive such certification (which will be a sad, sad day), the current office suites that Microsoft has on the market (i.e. 2007 and 2008) do not support ISO 29500 – the OOXML standard. That’s right: if you’re saving your documents in OOXML right now, you are NOT saving it as the default standard that Microsoft is championing. Instead, you’re just saving in the ‘transitionary’ format. This means that you could potentially be stranded with a lot of OOXML documents in the future, especially if you decide to move to a non-Microsoft office package. At the very least, it’s looking as though only Microsoft will be able to be ‘backwards compatible’ with 2007 and 2008 when and if the ISO 29500 is approved – no Open Office, Neo Office, Abiword, Google Docs, or anything else for you!

I’m so impressed that ‘open standards’ are translating to ‘closed, proprietary based standards’. It seems in accordance with the thousands of pages that go into the OOXML so-called ‘standard’.