Social Networks Confront Privacy Loopholes

This word just in from The Wall Street Journal:


Facebook, MySpace and several other social-networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details, despite promises they don't share such information without consent.

The practice, which most of the companies defended, sent user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users clicked on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code.

Go WSJ! Go Rupert Murdoch, who owns WSJ -- and My Space!

Small world, isn't it.

Dutch Royals Win Privacy Lawsuit

Back in August, the Dutch Royals won a legal action in Dutch courts against Associated Press (AP), the American news agency, for violating their privacy by shooting photos of them on vacation in Argentina. A reference to this story on Media Law Prof Blog just popped up on my Facebook.

Case was compared to a landmark privacy ruling that Princess Caroline of Monaco won against the German press in 2004. The court then ruled that photographers had violated the European convention on human rights, which declares the right to respect for private life.

Media Code protecting the privacy of members of the Dutch Royal House

French Hacker Arrested

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that a 24-year-old Frenchman could face up to two years in a French prison if convicted of hacking into the Twitter accounts of two U.S. citizens -- President Barack Obama and Britney Spears.

His name wasn't released, but his pseudonym is "Hacker Croll" -- and he lives with his parents.

Posing as a site administrator in April 2009, he hacked just to see if he could do it; but he did not post anything on the accounts. He did take screen shots, which he shared on Internet chat forums, according to the prosecutor in the case.

It took a joint operation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the French police to track him down. Because the crime was committed in France, he will be tried under French laws for fraudulent access to a computer system.

In addition to jail time, he could be fined up to 30,000 Euros if found guilty.

He was freed after questioning but is due in court on June 24. Maybe he has sworn off the Internet. The Wall Street Journal reported he hadn't replied to the reporter's email seeking comment.

Google vrs. China

China may have more to lose than Goggle, The New York Times reports today. By tightening its grip on online communication, it is challenging admittedly Western free-speech notions; but free flow of information is the bedrock of globalism. If China wants to be a global leader, perhaps THE global leader, it may have to ease its censorship and give its citizens access to "a wide range of political and social topics that its leaders believe could lead to instability."

Otherwise, "the cost, at least with some influential sectors of its own society, could be steep," speculates the Times . For one thing, the Chinese technology sector may find itself cut off from innovation.

A U.S. scholar who advised President Bill Clinton on China, observed, "“What does Google’s exit say? What it says publicly is what everyone deeply engaged in China knows privately. This is a system with very substantial domestic imperfection."

Moral: Even the most powerful nations today have to open the door to free flow of information if they want to be part of the global system.

Google's Chinese Solution

This news alert just in from the Wall Street Journal:

"Google will shift its search engine for China off the mainland to Hong Kong and maintain other operations in the country. The compromise announced Monday is an attempt to balance its stance against censorship with its desire to profit from a growing Internet market.

Google plans to keep its engineering and sales offices in China so it can keep a technological toehold in the country and continue to sell ads for the Chinese-language version of its search engine in the U.S."

The company's chief legal officer blogged : "Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Goggle.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement."

Google has set up a new web page to give a daily report of what Google services are available in China -- and what are blocked.

Political Attack Ads Go Viral

Political ads are an important part of educating citizens in a democracy. Candidates use them to get their message across to voters.But sometimes the message gets nasty. "Attack ads," which began in the U.S. in the early 1960s, are negative advertising. They are intended to shape public opinion by smearing opponents, often by innuendo and false or exaggerated statements.

Now with the Web, attack ads have gone viral with demon sheep, an opponent portrayed as a hot-air blimp and Dubai "slave bosses." Examples The debate on the health insurance legislation in the U.S. is getting so heated, even the families of politicians are being featured in the attack ads.

In the highly competitive world of advertising, the pressure is always on for produce ads that create a buzz, but where's the line between edgy and unethical?

What What You Text; Somebody Else May Be Reading

Two Emirates Airline cabin crew members in Dubai thought that what they were texting was just between them. They found out otherwise when a divorce court ordered Etisalat to release the messages six months ago. The two were ordered to leave the country after serving six-month jail sentences. They appealed. Agence France-Press just reported that the sentence has been reduced -- three months in jail and they can stay in the country. The "Sexy Texting" story has been getting a lot of attention in the world press. Asharq Alawsat observes: "Dubai, a regional tourist hub with a large non-Muslim expatriate population and the Gulf's most liberal social policies, nevertheless continues to apply strict rules based on Islamic Sharia laws."

Rolltop Computer--The Future?

How would you like to be carrying
one of these around instead of a laptop?

Don't Cover Insurgency, Afghan Officials Say

Last Friday may be the last time anyone sees live coverage of firefights in Kabul. Afghanistan's intelligence service told reporters Monday that the press will no longer be allowed to cover Taliban attacks while they are in progress, because such coverage "does not benefit the government." Even to film the aftermath will require permission from the intelligence service.

Expect protest from both foreign and Afghan journalists, who believe people have the right to know what is happening in their world.

Abu Dhabi:The Beginning

An amazing documentary from the early 1970s. Enjoy.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Photography: When is it real? When is it fake?

In the olden days, photographers enhanced their photos in the darkroom. Art directors have long cropped photos for size and to emphasis certain aspects of the original frame. So how far can a photographer or an editor today go in manipulating an image and under what circumstances?

The "invented reality" in two winning photos in Modern Photography's 16th Annual Readers Contest raised some questions. Winners in the "Action/sports" and "Travel/Places" categories were composites.

The New York Times technology columnist discusses in Photoshop and Photography: When Is It Real? The answers may surprise you.

Google Executives Found Guilty of Privacy Violations

An Italian criminal court judge found three Google executives guilty of privacy violations Wednesday in what may be a landmark case in Internet freedom. An Associated Press story reports, "This could help define whether the Internet in Italy is an open, self-regulating platform or if content must be better monitored for abusive materials." And it's likely not to stop there.

The judge ruled that three Goggle executives did not act quickly enough in pulling down a video --uploaded by some teenagers - showing bullies abusing an autistic boy. The video, which immediately went to the top of the most-viewed list, was posted before Google bought YouTube.

Google says it's impossible to prescreen thousands of hours of footage uploaded daily to sites like YouTube and considers the ruling a threat to freedom on the Internet. Not censorship, argue the prosecutors in the case, but balancing freedom of expression with the rights of an individula.

Google will appeal.

Publishing: The Revolutionary Future - The New York Review of Books

Here is a long and learned discussion about the future of the book with some observations about international copyright.

Publishing: The Revolutionary Future - The New York Review of Books

Goggle Goes Mobile

Here's a headline to strike terror in the hearts of telephone companies around the world:

Google sees its future in mobile technology

And that was the headline of a business story in the print edition of The National last week datelined Barcelona. In a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress, Google's chief executive said straight out that the internet search giant is going Mobile, because that's where the action -- and the advertising potential -- is. He pointed out that Mobile users are going online eight times faster than users of desktops did a decade ago. Google is finding that more than half of its search engine queries come for mobile phones.

So Skype (see previous post) isn't the main worry of the mobile network folks. Where does an 800-pound gorilla sit? Anywhere it wants.

Israeli Embassy Pulls Its Tweet

Twitter started in March 2006 as a way for individuals to flash short messages to one another but quickly ballooned into a major public relations and marketing tool, used by businesses , celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears and political leaders like President Obama and HH Sheikh Mohammed.

Even the Israeli embassy in London tweets but may be wishing it didn't.

The New York Times News Blog reported Friday that the embassy had posted and then quickly deleted a tweet with a joking reference to the Hamas assassination.

It read: You heard it here first: Israeli tennis player carries out hit on #Dubai target http://ow.ly/18A79 The news? An Israeli female had reached the semi-finals in Dubai Tennis Tournament. For the backstory see Israeli Tennis Player Performs Under Dubai Restrictions

After the British press reported on the bad joke, the Embassy pulled the post from its Twitter feed and its Facebook page. Maybe it should stick to old-fashioned diplomatically worded press releases.

Skype & Internet Neutrality

The UAE isn't the only place where Skype's voice-over-Internet phone (VoIP) service is outlawed. But is blocking Skype a question of censorship, competing technologies or rival business plans?

"In a world where network neutrality has becoming a rallying cry for advocates of an unfettered Internet, Skype, the pioneer in low-cost and even free online calls, has become a prime example of the limits of wireless freedom," writes Kevin J. O'Brien this week in the NYT/IHT.

Reporting from Barcelona, Spain, where the Mobile World Congress has been underway, O'Brien quotes one network equipment maker as saying, "The battle is not about technology but the business model." If telephone service is free over the Internet, traditional telephone companies go broke. A similar argument has been used with intellectual property issues in music, film, news content.

Yet Neelie Kroes, the new commissioner for digital issues for the European Parliament, recently said that blocking VoIP violated network neutrality. She plans to put pressure on wireless operators in Europe to allow VoIP service on their networks. Just last month, Ms. Kroes testified that "open and clear cut net neutrality is needed."

Interestingly, Ms Kroes most recently held the portfolio of Competition Commissioner for the Parliament.

Who's Making the Call?

Here's a transcript of an interview with The New York Times executive editor about holding the secret raid story. It's taken from the website of a new (US) national morning news radio described as "a unique partnership of global news leaders... a co-production of Public Radio International and WNYC Radio in collaboration with the BBC World Service, the New York Times and WGBH Boston." The question that comes to my mind: objectivity. Can a news report produced in part by The New York Times be objective in reporting on The New York Times

This Q&A gives some insight into the process and thinking that went on in making the decision to hold the story for reasons of national security. Please note that the executive editor wasn't the one who decided. It was the journalist in charge of the newspaper's Washington bureau. Note also that it was the newspaper that decided what was of "obvious public interest."

More importantly, note that it wasn't the White House that initiated holding the story. The newspaper called the government looking for comment, not confirmation. The Times had the story "nailed down."

It sounds as though the White House hadn't even considered press coverage. White House response: "Well, hold on for a second." Are we exchanging the White Dog function for press self-censorship?

What do you think of what Keller says about the decision to hold -- and then publish -- the secret raid story?

When is Prior Restraint Justified?

The First Amendment protects freedom of speech in the U.S., but sometimes the government tries to block the news before it is published through prior restraint. In today's New York Times , the newspaper reports on a secret raid that captured the Taliban's top military commander. Big news, indeed. Even more interesting in terms of our discussion of freedom of information, the newspaper has known about the classified operation since last Thursday. So why didn't it race to get the news to its readers?

No, the government didn't go to the Supreme Court as the Nixon Administration did in 1971 to block publication of the Pentagon Papers about the war in Vietnam (New York Times v United States). The Supreme Court ruled no, by the way.

Obama White House officials asked nicely, arguing that making the news public "would end a hugely successful intelligence-gathering effort." The Times agreed to hold the story but decided to publish after convincing White House officials that the news "was becoming widely known in the region."

What issues do you see behind this story?

This semester Dr. J's Wonderful Web World will be focusing on media law and ethics with emphasis on globalism and technology. So it's not all that far from what has been appearing on the blog since fall 2008. Expect to see much discussion about what's going on with Google in terms of privacy, copyright, cyberattacks and antitrust concerns. A good news analysis ran as the lead story on the International Herald Tribune front page earlier this week. For Google, the biggest source of risk is in Europe.

Excerpt:
In a region where the media sector is mostly fragmented along national lines and sometimes dependent on public subsidies, Google's border-straddling scale, its ambitious pursuit of profit and its embrace of an open, anything-goes Web are raising alarms.

....and law suits!

NOTE TO THOSE OF YOU IN THE CLASS: We will discuss Sunday.