The perils of centralized blogging

[mdlbear]

Between Friends: The Perils of Centralized Blogging | Electronic Frontier Foundation

One of the paradoxes of current social software is how many of your closely-guarded secrets you are obliged to entrust to a third party. Take the social blogging site LiveJournal: its centralized server allows you to set blog posts to "friends only" or "private". To use this feature, you post these semi-confidential journal entries to LiveJournal's server, and rely on it to hide your thoughts from the most of the world using its centrally-maintained list of friends to control access. LiveJournal holds your secret data in trust, as much as you trust it to keep your public data available.

We give these companies a great deal of control over our privacy and our speech - and even if we trust that company with those responsibilities now, there are no guarantees that the pressures upon and motivations of that company will stay constant over time.

It's not just blogging sites, of course, as the recent Facebook fiasco demonstrates. Here's another Facebook incident (giving information to a user's employer), and an analysis of Beacon on Techdirt. There was a segment on KQED's Forum this morning about it -- I'll update the link as soon as they post the podcast version. (updated 12/7)

My online habits and assumptions were formed in the wide-open era of Usenet before the rise of the Web, where you didn't have to behave as if anything you posted would be public: that's how the system worked. The web has made it possible for people to think that a public website might keep some of their information private. Experience has shown that it's rarely a good assumption. Just because you're paying someone to take care of your data -- or your posessions -- doesn't mean they won't suddenly turn on you.

Comments

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Be careful what you post because your kids will Google you someday. Heh.

I think I'm glad I never drank the Facebook kool-aid.

[mdlbear]

... or your parents! (Why do you think I got onto LJ?)

Same here. But LJ has been acquiring a faint taste of bitter almond over the last year: I'm mildly pessimistic at this point.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

I've never had the illusion that anything I post (or email, or speak on the phone) was secure from intrusion and inspection. As soon as the tech is there, someone is using it, legally or illegally.

I'm not sure which intruders I find more offensive: marketing demographers or the Gov, but I figure all of them are profiling me. We live in the era of Big Brother, and my theory is that Inslaw software is helping connect us all to terrorists by tracking and connecting us via Classmates.com, Facebook, and {insert site here}. I wonder whether the CIA will market to me or track me, or both, since I've visited their web site in the past? (Oh, is THAT where those fliers for things like Anarchist's Handbook and related came from, now that I think about it?) The web and its denizens just helps facilitate all this.

BTW, I no longer keep a paper-and-ink journal, either, since I had the experience of mine being subpoenaed for a court case. When push comes to shove, privacy rights are a myth. Anything I want to keep private, I keep in my head, thank you.

Old Russian saying

[capplor.livejournal.com]

Two can keep a secret, as long as one of them is dead.

[singingpatient.livejournal.com]

well i read today that the govt subpeonaed amazon.com for the buying records of their customers! hellooooooo big brother!

[singingpatient.livejournal.com]

here's the link, lest you think I'm kidding
http://www.newstarget.com/022342.html

[singingpatient.livejournal.com]

oh BTW there is a drug named Soma (though it is for back pain relief. does this mean if someone's a pain in the back this drug will make them go away?)

[mdlbear]

I remember seeing that one a couple of days ago; it's not really the most serious case. At least they were being specific about the customers, and issued a subpoena. The phone-tracking case is much worse.

[singingpatient.livejournal.com]

well and there was a guy on NPR revealing that there are 3 giant data storage centers capturing every soingle e mail being sent by anyone, then being scanned for content

[mdlbear]

True. They've been doing that for several years; there's evidence now that they're doing it with ordinary phone calls using some kind of voice keyword recognition.

[singingpatient.livejournal.com]

i have to wonder what presidential candidate would consider reversing this trend . any of em?
speaking of which, i think jimmy carter needs to come monitor the US elections in 08! he does it every where else in the world!