It’s been a strange few weeks for privacy.
First of all, erstwhile Google CEO succumbs to foot-in-mouth syndrome, and says (in reference to your usage of the internet and Google searches in particular) that “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
Now, what he was probably trying to point out was the fact that ISPs and providers these days do keep transaction logs that can be forced to be handed over to “law enforcement” (I use the term in the loosest possible sense). But it doesn’t come across that way. This is the Schmidt, after all, that Blacklisted CNET for publishing things that were discovered from…. Google searches. Hypocritical in the very least.
But the fallout continues; the Google honeymoon is clearly over. Firstly, Bruce Schneier pwns the argument being laid out (legal, proper, unembarrassing today != legal, proper, unembarrassing tomorrow); what you’re prepared to put on display as an 18-year-old party animal might not be the same as when you want to be a middle-aged “pillar of society” (just look at the problems Messrs Cameron & Johnson have had over Bullingdon Club photos – and that wasn’t even from the Internet Age…).
Next, I wake to a feeling that I’ve been transported to a parallel universe, that an exec in Mozilla effectively comes out to say Evil(BORG) < Evil(GORG), so Here’s how to switch your default search to Bing. Maybe he’s a privacy nut, but Mozilla make a majority of their revenue through google searches – so he’s at the very least a brave nut.
The perception of Google has already tarnished, and not because of the latest privacy debacle. Google is currently blundering about like the Incredible Hulk, “having fun” they say, seemingly oblivious to the collateral damage it causes. Consider: Microsoft some years ago was sued by the US Government for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, for free, thus unfairly restricting the market for competing web browsers. MS argued that web browsing was such a critical component of an “operating system” that the two were inextricably linked. Either way, this probably killed Netscape, and certainly no sane company was likely to pursue a strategy of browser product sales. Fast forward to this year. Google announce “free turn by turn maps for android”, because “maps are such a critical component of the mobile experience”. Pattern? Netscape == TomTom? Google effectively cross-subsidise their crushing of random markets with money from their monopoly over internet advertising. Sounds pretty, uh, anti-competitive to me. How long before the hulk blunders its way through your business district? Maybe you can scrape a paycheck out living in Google Opt-Out village…
Anyway; I digress. For many, the real privacy issue isn’t about “the government”. It’s largely about “non-friend” people who know you. For the non-famous amongst us, that’s casual acquaintances, colleagues (both subordinates and superiors..), friends-of-friends, people at work, down the pub, etc. For the famous of course, that’s a set that expands to fill most of the world. And it’s about perception and reputation management.
I think the reason Facebook became so successful is that it, wittingly or not, understood this. Without such a site, what are my choices for posting, say, photographs of an office party? Well, there’s flickr, a blog, a webpage. Hmm.. not *too* keen on that picture of photocopier abuse going “general release”. So a closed flickr page perhaps – mail round invites? Hm – not very appealing – I don’t have addresses to hand – too much effort. Send by email… ugh… spam people who may or may not care?
No – the selective privacy part was fantastic. And I say “was”, because the Latest set of changes make this significantly worse, and show a clear direction that they intend to persue – one of trying to coerce their users into “everyone” visibility. For them, that means more free content, more ads, more profit. For me? Well… I can’t help imagining the scene in a few years time. “Thankyou for your application for CTO of GlobalMegaTech, Inc. Can I start the interview by asking if you think being a ‘fan of Iced Gems’ is appropriate for a senior position in a major multinational?”. Or “Hi Dr Jones. Before we talk about my lung transplant, and you give me the smoking lecture, can I ask about your fandom of Benson & Hedges?”.
Yeah, even if they don’t ask it, it’s out there. Luckily I’m not famous, or work in an industry or jurisdiction that is known to be particularly humourless. But perception is important (ask Max Mosley), and the change to force “Everyone” to seeing pages is dumb. Part of the fun was that you could persue small acts of whimsy amongst selected friends in the “global village” without the perception fallout to the wider world. Is that, after all, the very essence of being “Social” ?
I’ve already had one friend divorce facebook; I suspect because of the problems of How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers will Kill Facebook. I don’t want to go that far – it does still provide a point of contact that isn’t yet replicated well by other services; but I’ve removed all information that you can’t hide from “the public”, and I can’t see me using it much more. Ironically it seems that Facebook wants now to move more towards the things that it replaced – instead of controlled privacy, a “Geocities” of content exposed to all. A social network for the Proletariat, for those who photocopy their arse at the xmas party and don’t care who knows it.
What’s a shame, from a technological standpoint, is how centralised all of this is. Networks rise, networks fall – for the reasons linked above – but in this instance it’s because a centralised party decides to change the rules of the game (as is their entitlement). What’s needed is a decentralised system. All the technology exists – PK certificates and countersigning neatly give you Friend-of-Friend access control – what’s missing is the drive to ‘make it happen’ – to wrap up the technology into something user-friendly, user-deployable and user-usable in the way that Facebook is, and OpenID, PGP and the rest of the geek-tech are not. A way to put up facebook-like social sites accessible globally, 24/7, but visible at a granularity of your choosing.
So far there has been no catalyst. Maybe a Facebook Terms-of-Service change will cause it to happen (geeks after all tend to care disproportionately more about their privacy). My guess is probably not. But there may be a catalyst coming.
Switch to P2P for a moment. Their developmental history is one, predominantly, of laziness. Napster was king for a while – easy to use, not terribly complicated, but it works, so why bother expending energy on something more sophisticated? However, it was an easily attackable system (single, centralised server!), so it eventually got crushed. BitTorrent then sprang up – but still identifiable through clients connected to a tracker. Peter Mandleson wants to “crack down on this sort of thing”. Clearly he’s never seen The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. We already know what the next-generation will look like – Microsoft wrote about it in 2002 – the Darknet paper; decentralised, closed, interconnected networks. The technology is already out there (e.g Freenet), but they’re not what you might call “consumer grade”. But nobody can be bothered much to fix the UI because… well, there’s BitTorrent, right? Necessity is the mother of invention.
The connectivity (privacy, authentication, location, discovery) issues for such a P2P darknet look a lot like the connectivity issues for a decentralised social network – How do I find people, how do I maintain and control privacy, how do I share things.
By trying to strike down the current “good enough” BitTorrent, Mr Mandleson may just provide the catalyst to make it happen.
