Southwest Virginia Blogs

Anthony Townsend, an expert on the social impacts of technology, has written an important article about community WiFi projects. Townsend is concerned that community leaders, in the rush to show some progress in broadband, are inking deals that give away too much.

As an example, community wireless systems usually have some kind of sign on portal Web page. Often, this space is used for ad insertion, which is fine because it helps to support the cost of the system and can provide visibility to local merchants. But Townsend feels that a significant portion of the page should be allocated for community use--links to the community Web site, community calendar, notices of community events, and so on. A poorly executed contract may lose that community presence for many years.

Townsend also has a problem, as many others do, with the intrusive location monitoring now being implemented in some community wireless systems. Google's San Francisco system will be able to track a WiFi user around the city, and will use that data (where you are, where you have been) to target ads. It sounds innocuous, but this is essentially a loss of privacy. It could have serious consequences if the data is sold to third parties and/or if available to the government. Townsend thinks, and I agree, that location tracking should be an opt-in choice--the WiFi provider can do that only if you give express permission.

Finally, Townsend thinks that some bandwidth should be available to the community for experimental use, particularly as we see new and innovative uses for Internet-connected devices (e.g. parking meters, cars, etc.). The community should retain some control over the WiFi spectrum, and not just give it away to the first company that offers a "free" WiFi deal. It's worth remembering the old adage, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Make sure community leaders, when making technology decisions, remember this.

Broward County, in Florida (the Miami region), has been publishing all sorts of personal information on its citizens via the Web. They have been putting public documents online, but without redacting information like birth date and Social Security numbers.

Broward County officials maintain they have been following state law that requires them to put public documents online--but state they do not have the statutory authority to take personal information out of the documents. That will change a year from now, as the legislature has finally passed a law that requires local government to redact the information before publishing it online.

It is yet another example of clueless legislators--according to the article, local officials have been trying to get help with the problem for years. This demonstrates why education is at least as important as infrastructure when dealing with Knowledge Economy issues.

The Federal government has reached a compromise with Google on the government's request to Google to turn over a chunk of search queries. The Feds claim they need to see what people are searching for so that they can design better child pornography laws.

A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over the URLs (Web addresses) of some of the sites Google indexes, but not the search queries that people type in on the search engine.

Privacy advocates feel this is a reasonable compromise. I can agree with them in the narrow sense that it protects individual privacy rights better, but I still think the whole thing stinks. Since when does the federal government have the right to simply tell a privately owned business, "We want your data?" The only possible justification for a demand like that might be an issue of national security, but this particular demand is wrapped up in the politician's standard mantra, "It's for the kids."

Child pornography is horrendous, and those who traffic in it should be vigorously prosecuted. But surely someone in government is smart enough to figure out how to do that without trampling the rights of private businesses. This ruling sets a precedent--rest assured we will see the government trying to get the records and confidential information of other businesses in the future, on even more flimsy justification. Readers of this blog know that I am no fan of Google, but in this case, I think the company has gotten the short end of the stick.

As we move more and more of our financial transactions away from cash and toward end to end electronic transactions, our systems have to become more reliable and more secure.

But a lot of systems were designed and implemented prior to ubiquitous worldwide access via the Internet, and the security that worked okay then has to be regularly scrutinized and tested today.

Hackers figured out how to steal PINs and the encryption keys used to decode PINs from Citibank.. It is the latter that is the real problem. Merchants are apparently not erasing all of the data from a debit card transaction once it is complete, and hackers figured out to read the data, giving them access to thousands of PINs and the associated accounts. The Citibank problem is only with debit cards, but it is a warning to banks, merchants, and credit card processors that security reviews and testing have to be part of the normal IT budget.

Google's new version of its Desktop toolbar will copy the files on your computer to its servers, where you can search them. Ostensibly, this free service is designed to make life easier for people that have multiple computers (like a desktop machine and a laptop). By letting Google index all the files on both computers, you can find any file on either machine simply by searching Google.

Google promises it won't really peek at the files (although they must be read to be indexed), and that it will delete the files after thirty days if you are not using the service. And I've got swamp land in Florida I'd like to sell you.

Google may promise it will keep your files private, but I bet it is not keeping the indexes generated by the files private. It will use the indexes to better target advertising to you. So if you like fly fishing and have numerous files on your computer about fishing, Google will notice your index has many references to fishing and you will start seeing more ads about fishing tackle popping up.

Without careful configuration, the software will happily grab your income tax records, your business and accounting files, your love letters, and just about anything else on your computer.

Once Google has them, it becomes much easier for law enforcement or a civil suit to subpoena the records if someone decides they want to know more about you. A disgruntled employee or an angry neighbor could wreak havoc with your private life.

I would not touch this service, period. It's just too risky. And there are plenty of programs that will index all the files on your computer already--and they don't require turning over all your entire electronic data files to a third party.