Innovation&Society

Via Gizmodo

-----

In a privacy policy shift, Google announced today that it will begin tracking users universally across all its services—Gmail, Search, YouTube and more—and sharing data on user activity across all of them. So much for the Google we signed up for.

The change was announced in a blog post today, and will go into effect March 1. After that, if you are signed into your Google Account to use any service at all, the company can use that information on other services as well. As Google puts it:

Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you're signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we'll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.

This has been long coming. Google's privacy policies have been shifting towards sharing data across services, and away from data compartmentalization for some time. It's been consistently de-anonymizing you, initially requiring real names with Plus, for example, and then tying your Plus account to your Gmail account. But this is an entirely new level of sharing. And given all of the negative feedback that it had with Google+ privacy issues, it's especially troubling that it would take actions that further erode users' privacy.

What this means for you is that data from the things you search for, the emails you send, the places you look up on Google Maps, the videos you watch in YouTube, the discussions you have on Google+ will all be collected in one place. It seems like it will particularly affect Android users, whose real-time location (if they are Latitude users), Google Wallet data and much more will be up for grabs. And if you have signed up for Google+, odds are the company even knows your real name, as it still places hurdles in front of using a pseudonym (although it no longer explicitly requires users to go by their real names).

All of that data history will now be explicitly cross-referenced. Although it refers to providing users a better experience (read: more highly tailored results), presumably it is so that Google can deliver more highly targeted ads. (There has, incidentally, never been a better time to familiarize yourself with Google's Ad Preferences.)

So why are we calling this evil? Because Google changed the rules that it defined itself. Google built its reputation, and its multi-billion dollar business, on the promise of its "don't be evil" philosophy. That's been largely interpreted as meaning that Google will always put its users first, an interpretation that Google has cultivated and encouraged. Google has built a very lucrative company on the reputation of user respect. It has made billions of dollars in that effort to get us all under its feel-good tent. And now it's pulling the stakes out, collapsing it. It gives you a few weeks to pull your data out, using its data-liberation service, but if you want to use Google services, you have to agree to these rules.

Google's philosophy speaks directly to making money without doing evil. And it is very explicit in calling out advertising in the section on "evil." But while it emphasizes that ads should be relevant, obvious, and "not flashy," what seems to have been forgotten is a respect for its users privacy, and established practices.

Among its privacy principles, number four notes:

People have different privacy concerns and needs. To best serve the full range of our users, Google strives to offer them meaningful and fine-grained choices over the use of their personal information. We believe personal information should not be held hostage and we are committed to building products that let users export their personal information to other services. We don‘t sell users' personal information.

This crosses that line. It eliminates that fine-grained control, and means that things you could do in relative anonymity today, will be explicitly associated with your name, your face, your phone number come March 1st. If you use Google's services, you have to agree to this new privacy policy. Yet a real concern for various privacy concerns would recognize that I might not want Google associating two pieces of personal information.

And much worse, it is an explicit reversal of its previous policies. As Google noted in 2009:

Previously, we only offered Personalized Search for signed-in users, and only when they had Web History enabled on their Google Accounts. What we're doing today is expanding Personalized Search so that we can provide it to signed-out users as well. This addition enables us to customize search results for you based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser. It's completely separate from your Google Account and Web History (which are only available to signed-in users). You'll know when we customize results because a "View customizations" link will appear on the top right of the search results page. Clicking the link will let you see how we've customized your results and also let you turn off this type of customization.

The changes come shortly after Google revamped its search results to include social results it called Search plus Your World. Although that move has drawn heavy criticism from all over the Web, at least it gives users the option to not participate.

Via CNET

-----

Workers assemble and perform quality control checks on MacBook Pro display enclosures at an Apple supplier facility in Shanghai.

(Credit: Apple)

A new report on Apple offers up an interesting detail about the evolution of the iPhone and gives a fascinating--and unsettling--look at the practice of overseas manufacturing.

The article, an in-depth report by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher of The New York Times, is based on interviews with, among others, "more than three dozen current and former Apple employees and contractors--many of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs."

The piece uses Apple and its recent history to look at why the success of some U.S. firms hasn't led to more U.S. jobs--and to examine issues regarding the relationship between corporate America and Americans (as well as people overseas). One of the questions it asks is: Why isn't more manufacturing taking place in the U.S.? And Apple's answer--and the answer one might get from many U.S. companies--appears to be that it's simply no longer possible to compete by relying on domestic factories and the ecosystem that surrounds them.

The iPhone detail crops up relatively early in the story, in an anecdote about then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs. And it leads directly into questions about offshore labor practices:

In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket.

Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.

People will carry this phone in their pocket, he said. People also carry their keys in their pocket. "I won't sell a product that gets scratched," he said tensely. The only solution was using unscratchable glass instead. "I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks."

A tall order. And another anecdote suggests that Jobs' staff went overseas to fill it--along with other requirements for the top-secret phone project (code-named, the Times says, "Purple 2"):

One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone's screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing more than 10,000 iPhones a day.

"The speed and flexibility is breathtaking," the executive said. "There's no American plant that can match that."

That last quote there, like several others in the story, leaves one feeling almost impressed by the no-holds-barred capabilities of these manufacturing plants--impressed and queasy at the same time. Here's another quote, from Jennifer Rigoni, Apple's worldwide supply demand manager until 2010: "They could hire 3,000 people overnight," she says, speaking of Foxconn City, Foxconn Technology's complex of factories in China. "What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?"

The article says that cheap and willing labor was indeed a factor in Apple's decision, in the early 2000s, to follow most other electronics companies in moving manufacturing overseas. But, it says, supply chain management, production speed, and flexibility were bigger incentives.

"The entire supply chain is in China now," the article quotes a former high-ranking Apple executive as saying. "You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That's the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours."

It also makes the point that other factors come into play. Apple analysts, the Times piece reports, had estimated that in the U.S., it would take the company as long as nine months to find the 8,700 industrial engineers it would need to oversee workers assembling the iPhone. In China it wound up taking 15 days.

The article and its sources paint a vivid picture of how much easier it is for companies to get things made overseas (which is why so many U.S. firms go that route--Apple is by no means alone in this). But the underlying humanitarian issues nag at the reader.

Perhaps there's hope--at least for overseas workers--in last week's news that Apple has joined the Fair Labor Association, and that it will be providing more transparency when it comes to the making of its products.

As for manufacturing returning to the U.S.? The Times piece cites an unnamed guest at President Obama's 2011 dinner with Silicon Valley bigwigs. Obama had asked Steve Jobs what it would take to produce the iPhone in the states, why that work couldn't return. The Times' source quotes Jobs as having said, in no uncertain terms, "Those jobs aren't coming back."

Apple, by the way, would not provide a comment to the Times about the article. And Foxconn disputed the story about employees being awakened at midnight to work on the iPhone, saying strict regulations about working hours would have made such a thing impossible.

Via Adam Curry's blog

-----

As usual, the bought and paid for self-fulfilling tech press is missing the elephant in the room. 

The blogosphere discussion surrounding a self-imposed 'blackout' of "key" websites and services that we apparently can't live without, is scheduled for this wednesday. All in protest of proposed legislation in the house and senate. 

I submit this is a big fat red herring. 

First some background: 

Actually there are 3 pieces of legislation; the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN,) which is currently in draft form, initially proposed by Darrel Issa (R) who will be holding a hearing on Wednesday regarding the strong opposition to DNS 'tampering' as a punitive measure against foreign registered websites infringing on intellectual property and trademarks of US companies within the borders of the United States. 

I have read all three pieces of legislation (its a hobby) and can confidently say that not only are they pretty much identical in scope. The key differences are that only SOPA proposes the DNS 'tampering', which would allow US officials to remove an infringing website's DNS records from the root servers if deemed to be operating in defiance of Intellectual Property and Trademark law, effectively rendering them unfindable when you type in a corresponding domain name website address. 

The boundaries of what is legal and not is not actually contained in any of the bills, as they all universally refer to mainly the Lanham Act. All of it tried and true legislation. Nothing new there. 

All three bills further provide language that will allow justice to forbid US based financial transaction providers, search engines and advertising companies from doing business with a 'website' that is found to be guilty of infringement. 

Of the three proposals, OPEN appears most fair to all parties in any dispute, by requiring a complainant to post a bond when requesting an investigation of infringement in order to combat frivolous use of the provisions available. 

The outrage over SOPA's DNS provisions is justified, but misdirected, Congress is already backpedaling on including it in any final legislation and even the Administration's own response to the "We the People Petitions on SOPA" included an firm stance against measures that would affect the DNS infrastructure: 

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

Without the DNS clause, it would appear perfectly logical that the government pursue action against websites that attempt to cash in on fake products and stolen intellectual property of it's people. 

The entire reason for even trying to get a DNS provision into law is because it is nearly impossible to track down the owner of a website, or domain name, through today's registration tools. 

A whois lookup on a domain name merely provides whatever information is given at time of registration, and there is no verification of the registrant. 

So, here's what the press has missed; 

During all the shouting about SOPA and proposed blackouts to 'protest', the organization that actually runs the DNS root servers, ICANN, the backbone of the web, has been quite busy in plain view on changing the game, in favor of the government. 

It's been highly underreported that ICANN is now accepting submissions for new gTLD's, or 'generic top level domains'. 

Without getting into all the details of what that means, other than possibly hundreds if not thousands of new domains like .shop .dork .shill and .drone that you will be able to register vanity domain names under, ICANN has come up with a new requirement upon registration: 

You must verify who you are when you register a new domain name, even an international one.

So, if I pay GoDaddy or any other outfit my $9 for curry.blog and have it point to my server at blog.curry.com, I will have to prove my identity upon registration. Presumably with some form of government approved ID. 

This way, when OPEN or perhaps a non-NDS-version of SOPA is passed, if you break the rules, you will be hunted down, regardless of where you live or operate since this also includes international domain names. 

The Administration like this approach as well. Just read the language from the International Strategy For Cyberspace document [pdf]: 

In this future, individuals and businesses can quickly and easily obtain the tools necessary to set up their own presence online; domain names and addresses are available, secure, and properly maintained, without onerous licenses or unreasonable disclosures of personal information.

onerous licenses and unreasonable disclosures of personal information clearly indicates you will have to provide verification of your identity, which in today's world is not a requirement. 

"Hey Citizen, if you have nothing to hide, what are you worried about?" Just follow the rules and all will be fine. I don't think I need to explain the implications of this massive change in internet domain name policy and to your privacy. 

The term for this new type of registration is Thick Whois and you'll be hearing about it eventually, when the so called 'tech press' stops their circle jerking around the latest facebook/google/twitter cat fights and actually starts reporting on things that matter. 

Until then, feel free to make your google+ facebook and twitter icons all black, as your faux protest is futile. The real change, that of your privacy online, is being made in plain sight by former Director of the National Cyber Security Center of the Department of Homeland Security Rod Beckstrom, current CEO of ICANN. Shill anyone? 

This topic was originally discussed on the No Agenda Podcast of Janury 15th 2012. 

Disclaimers: I am not a lawyer, nor am I a journalist. I am not distracted by shiny gadgets. 

[related post: SOPA:Follow the Money] 

Via Make

------

Via PCWorld

-----

Hackers reportedly plan to fight back against Internet censorship by putting their own communications satellites into orbit and developing a grid of ground stations to track and communicate with them.

The news comes as the tech world is up in arms about proposed legislation that many feel would threaten online freedom.

According to BBC News, the satellite plan was recently outlined at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. It's being called the "Hackerspace Global Grid."

If you don't like the idea of hackers being able to communicate better, hacker activist Nick Farr said knowledge is the only motive of the project, which also includes the development of new electronics that can survive in space, and launch vehicles that can get them there.

Farr and his cohorts are working on the project along with Constellation, a German aerospace research initiative that involves interlinked student projects.

You might think it would be hard for just anybody to put a satellite into space, but hobbyists and amateurs have been able in recent years to use balloons to get them up there. However, without the deep pockets of national agencies or large companies they have a hard time tracking the devices.

To better locate their satellites, the German hacker group came up with the idea of a sort of reverse GPS that uses a distributed network of low-cost ground stations that can be bought or built by individuals.

Supposedly, these stations would be able to pinpoint satellites at any given time while improving the transmission of data from the satellites to Earth.

The plan isn't without limitations.

For one thing, low orbit satellites don't stay in a single place. And any country could go to the trouble of disabling them. At the same time, outer space isn’t actually governed by the countries over which it floats.

The scheme discussed by hackers follows the introduction of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the United States, which many believe to be a threat to online freedom.

As PC World's Tony Bradley put it, the bill is a combination of an overzealous drive to fight Internet piracy, with elected representatives who don't know the difference between DNS, IM, and MP3. In short, SOPA is a "draconian legislation that far exceeds its intended scope, and threatens the Constitutional rights of law abiding citizens," he wrote.

And apparently those who typically don't follow the law -- hackers -- think there's something they can do about it.