Privacy on Philip Sheldrake

the hi:project and the Digital Life Collective

Tue, 25 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This is the newsletter about the Digital Life Collective sent to hi:project subscribers 24th April 2017 and posted to the hi:project blog .

The hi:project team is collaborating with others interested in trustworthy and empowering technologies. We’re working to launch the Digital Life Collective and we’d love you to be part of it.

Now for anyone interested in the trials and tribulations of an ambitious, open-source, nonprofit vision such as the hi:project, I provide a fuller debrief below. For those who prefer their updates bitesize, everything you need is contained in the next six paragraphs.

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You’ll recall the hi:project has some mighty challenges in its sights. We will help: solve personal data & privacy; secure a citizen-centric Internet of Things; transform accessibility & digital inclusion.

Just as for many free open source software projects, no-one profits with the hi:project but rather everyone because of it. And therein lies both the broad opportunity and the deep problem. If everyone secures the return on investment, if the profit cannot be privatised, who exactly is going to make the investment?

In other words, markets aren’t designed to address such particular potential, but that hasn’t stopped us appealing to commercial players – more on how that works below. Moreover, it doesn’t seem foundations can fund and foster such fundamental architecture. And our brush with academic funding was a brush off. In all, we’ve been working across four fronts, failing at these three, and seeing if we can succeed at the fourth.

At first the fourth appears counter-intuitive … if the hi:project seemed too big, fifty of us have banded together so far to go bigger. The Digital Life Collective is a co-operative dedicated to “tech we trust for the world we want”, and today is the day we go all official. Today we put the incorporation paperwork in the post and invite you to become a co-founding member so that together we can give the market a miss for the moment, pause the powwow with foundations, give up grinding the grant applications … and start simply co-operating.

Technology of, by and for the people. Our tech, not their tech. Find out more now at www.diglife.com .

As for engineering the hi:project … well we’ll be making our case to the Collective in due time.

The debrief

From the moment we started talking about the hi:project, we contrasted the user interface (UI) and the human interface (HI), the former describing the status quo in which you, the mere user, are actually the used, where you are in fact the product being sold, the civilian being controlled . By adopting HI as our terminology, we communicate the intent to reinstate your sovereignty, your dignity, your humanity.

The Digital Life Collective

Thu, 26 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

An invitation to build our technology together … tech we trust for the web we want.

Our motivation

Digital technologies are undermining our privacy, permitting mass state surveillance, enabling censorship, undermining journalism, and spreading fake news. It feels forbidding, uncertain, unsafe – more problem than solution, and far from the original vision for the Internet and Web.

And yet we’re optimistic that we can join together to fix it. The problem isn’t really the technologies we have to work with of course, but rather the way they’re crafted and who gets to do the crafting.

How and why I strive to maintain my privacy – a post in light of the Snooper's Charter

Fri, 18 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

[caption id=“attachment_30414” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”] An aerial image of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Photographer: GCHQ/Crown Copyright. CC BY-SA 2.0[/caption]

Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

Edward Snowden, 2015 (source )

I get asked now and then how to improve one’s personal privacy, digitally speaking. It’s unsurprising that such questions are directed my way given privacy is a core objective of the hi:project , and yet I seemed to have attracted more than the usual number of questions since my last post – Introducing Google Assistant, the Surveillance Interface .

You might want to stop commercial entities intruding – it’s difficult to sum up in a sentence or two how egregious the state of commercial surveillance is today. You might want to help head off the realisation of a surveillance state if only because you’ve read somewhere that such things don’t end well. You might simply want to have less data about your movements and purchases and media habits and general proclivities out there because it’s not a case of if the corresponding databases are hacked but when.

Importantly, I write this post the very week the UK has passed the most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy. The so-called Snoopers’ Charter is disgusting, distressing and, in good part, stupid.

Introducing Google Assistant, the Surveillance Interface (SI)

Mon, 31 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A new kind of interface has surfaced over the past five years – artificial intelligence (AI) based ‘personal assistants ’.

Apple Siri started the ball rolling, swiftly followed by Google Now , Microsoft Cortana , Amazon Alexa , and half a dozen others. But it now has a new apogee, a new sector defining moment, a revolution dressed up as evolution. The only thing more alarming than its instrusive, opaque, and society-altering capabilities is the way in which tech pundits have ladled out the accolades, pundits whose worldview appears as limited as a magpie’s regard for shiny things.

Google Now is now Google Assistant , and it comes integrated into Google’s first full-on (i.e. not just a reference design) mobile phone – the Pixel.

Why can't Deezer answer simple questions about privacy?

Wed, 06 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve just bought an Onkyo TX-8150 network receiver. Lovely. Especially because it can drive two pairs of speakers, eats so-called hi-res music (24/192 with a 32/384 Hi-Grade DAC), and comes ready to play nice with the likes of Spotify, Airplay and Deezer.

Spotify tarnished its reputation somewhat with its privacy cock-up last year, and doesn’t yet entertain hi-res. Apple’s Airplay looks neat but doesn’t do hi-res either, and totally ignores Android. Hmm. So let’s check out Deezer I thought to myself. A rare European Unicorn . And while it describes lossless CD quality as hi-res when that’s not really what the term means, I’m not sure my ’listening environment’ is that sensitive! Lossless CD quality will do me.

Toward a social compact for digital privacy and security

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Updated 16th September, embedding the videos of the session below.

The Global Commission on Internet Governance (ourinternet.org) was established in January 2014 to articulate and advance a strategic vision for the future of Internet governance. With work commencing in May 2014, the two-year project is conducting and supporting independent research on Internet-related dimensions of global public policy, culminating in an official commission report.

Marketing and PR and the General Data Protection Regulation

Fri, 22 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

My main character in Attenzi – a social business story , the CEO Eli Appel, has this to say over lunch with his chairman:

Good business is about cooperative and interdependent relationships, always has been, yet the humanity was lost when organizations scaled way up during the 20th Century. We want to make those relationships more human again, but the answer can’t be to scale it all back down. We have to scale something else up.

He adds:

… No business can really get to be social in a meaningful and valuable way simply by indulging in social media or by slapping apps onto social devices or by subscribing to a social enterprise network.

Eli is referring here to the visceral difference between ‘doing’ social (bolted on) and ‘being’ social (built in), and you know which one you’re on the receiving end of in any given situation right?

Different kinds of privacy, empowerment and autonomy – centralized versus decentralized

Thu, 09 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

[Originally posted to the hi:project blog .]

In an article in the Guardian last week , Professor Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland mooted the potential for Google to cleave in two, with one part dedicated to providing a regulated bank-like service for data. Pentland directs the MIT Human Dynamics Lab and co-leads both the Big Data and the Personal Data and Privacy initiatives of the World Economic Forum, and I’m surprised how often his name crops up in my hi:project related research, yet I find it difficult to reconcile his observation here with his fluency in the power of decentralized networks :

Social physics strongly suggest that the [Adam Smith’s] invisible hand is more due to trust, cooperation and robustness properties of the person-to-person network of exchanges than it is due to any magic in the workings of the market. If we want to have a fair, stable society, we need to look to the network of exchanges between people, and not to market competition.

Pentland continues under the heading: How can we move from a market-centric to a human-centric society?

The hi:project, social business and Flat Army

Tue, 27 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I help organisations work better, so how on Earth is that connected to the hi:project ? Given I dedicate not a small fraction of my time to this non-profit endeavour, I’m asked on occasion to explain how the two are related.

The ‘HI’ of the hi:project stands for human interface. It’s our way of describing the technology we think should and will largely supplant the user interface, the UI. Here’s how I’ve begun to explain it of late …

When we approach digital, we have a natural propensity to digitize the pre-digital; after all, that is all we know. That’s how we ended up sticking an ’e’ in front of mail for example, and went from having desktops, files and folders to, well, desktops, files and folders.

Yet digital has unprecedented qualities – it just takes us a while to discover and exploit them. It’s only with the passing of decades for example that organisations can now explore alternatives to email. And filing stuff looks increasingly anachronistic with the power of near-instant search at our fingertips.

In the same way, the UI is attached to the digital machine / service today because pre-digital physical machines had a physical interface.

A presentation to the Open Mobile Alliance conference on big data

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

According to its website, the Open Mobile Alliance “was formed in June 2002 by the world’s leading mobile operators, device and network suppliers, information technology companies and content and service providers. OMA delivers open specifications for creating interoperable services that work across all geographical boundaries, on any bearer network.”

The OMA met today in Dublin to discuss aspects of big data, and I was invited to present on personal data, social media and social business.

The UK takes a step closer to Streams Banks – your personal data nirvana

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A year ago, to the week, I was writing Chapter 8 of The Business of Influence about the future trends each and every influence professional would have to grasp. In particular, I wrote:

I consider the data and information I create directly or indirectly through my use of products and services to be private and mine by default. I may choose to make any part of it accessible to specified others and maintain my ownership, or relinquish some ownership rights, or all rights.

Should I consider entering a contract with the purchase of a product or service that entails some variation to this default – perhaps simply because delivery of the product or service is meaningless without such variation – the nature of this variation must be made explicitly clear to me in plain language, and it is then my choice whether or not to agree to those terms, which may entail my negotiating different terms or choosing not to buy that specific product or service.

To me, a future where so much data is collected about me and owned by others is nothing short of dystopia. Of course, the situation I describe above is far from where we find ourselves today and I make the case that influence professionals should be helping to lead the charge toward empowering the customer – past, present and future. As such, the chapter continues to lay out a potential privacy framework, introducing Streams Banks:

It’s the moniker I’ve given the service with the primary purpose of collecting all your digital detritus, all your so-called life streams of data, in one place on your behalf and giving you the power to analyse and visualize it all.

A streams bank archives the minutiae of your life, if you so wish. The service may offer suggestions or advice in decision-making, and perhaps it may even be relied upon to make certain decisions for you autonomously.

What on Earth could catalyse this transformation?..

Imagine that you’re a mobile telephone network operator. Right now, you own the data describing the customer’s use of your network. What competitive advantage might be had by reversing that situation, by transferring ownership to the customer – on the condition of service of course that you can have access to their data in order to determine billing and associated aspects of your service provision? And what if you gave the customer the tools to learn about her data, to download it and share it with whomever she wished. What might she learn about herself and her family? How might this data be mashed up? How much easier would it be to source the perfect tariff for the next year given the opportunity to share last year’s data? If you think that sounds bad for business you’re effectively saying that opacity is good. History has shown that walled gardens and other protective practices eventually crumble in competitive telephony markets.

Well, it seems this day is dawning.

The Web this decade and what it means for your organisation

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a fortunate geek. I got to chair the 6UK launch back in November, with keynote by Vint Cerf – fondly referred to as one of the fathers of the Internet. And on Monday this week, I chaired Profiting From The New Web at the Royal Society with keynote by Sir Tim Berners-Lee – inventor of the World Wide Web. How cool is that?!

[caption id=“attachment_28121” align=“alignnone” width=“300” caption=“Sir Tim Berners-Lee, New Web, London, 23rd May 2011 (courtesy Intellect)”] [/caption]

I worked with the Web Science Trust and Intellect to design this week’s conference, and we set ourselves this mission:

Discover new and better ways to do business, run our countries, and lead fulfilling and sustainable lives via the intelligent, innovative and diligent development of the New Web, and to make progress faster than otherwise.

Web Innovation

The term Web 1.0 is applied retrospectively to a Web of documents and ecommerce. The term Web 2.0 has come to describe social community and user-generated content. The New Web – the Web of Data or the Semantic Web, and sometimes Web 3.0 – entails the Web itself understanding the meaning of that participation and content.

A component of the Web of Data, known as Open Data , encompasses the idea of freeing data so that others may query it, check and challenge it, augment it, and mash it up with other sources. Sir Tim is particularly motivated by this vision given its potential to drive scientific breakthrough, enhance delivery of public services and open up new frontiers for competitive advantage.

Do Not Track

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Today, I’m in Paris. I’m working with the Mozilla Europe team to prepare for the imminent launch of Firefox 4 and Firefox Mobile. And this prompts me to write here on the subject of privacy – a hot topic and one on which your organisation can lead, to your customers’ advantage and yours.

Mozilla is a global, non-profit organisation dedicated to making the Web better. It emphasises principle over profit, and believes that the Web is a shared public resource to be cared for, not a commodity to be sold.

This means that whilst Internet Explorer must justify its existence to Microsoft, Safari to Apple, and Chrome to Google, Firefox is only answerable to you. Many consider Mozilla to be the sole reason we’ve all moved on from the terrible browsing experience Internet Explorer 6 gave over 90% of Web users back in 2003. And now Firefox is the most popular browser in Europe.

Back to privacy. Do you know what information your browser is reporting about your browsing habits? Do you know that some high profile websites add as many as 100 tracking devices to your computer?

Now, lest you think this is some kind of hippy essay, I’m a capitalist. I believe the for-profit motive is the best mechanism we’ve found to date to improve life. But we’ve also seen in recent times that some free markets require a bit of intervention now and then; a spot of regulation. Indeed, a recent Business Week article identified how free-marketers are as fond of regulation as they are more widely reported to dislike it.

My browser history is my own, so back off with your unethical social media metrics

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Privacy is a personal thing. Some people want to be as “off grid” as they can get. And then there are those who actually bolt a camcorder to their heads and stream their life 24/7. Irrespective, I believe there are some things that everyone expects to be private by default; even Marc Zuckerberg ! And one of these is your browser history… the log that lists every webpage you visit.

It’s this list that enables modern browsers to suggest auto-completions for URLs as you enter them in the address bar. It’s this list you might visit when you’re trying to find that something or other you stumbled across the other day. It’s this list that allows your browser to try to render unvisited links one way, underlined blue by default, and previously visited links another way, underlined purple by default (even though individual webpages and associated styling information may actually override these defaults).

My browser history is mine. My wife’s browser history is hers. Your browser history is yours.

But whilst the Internet turned 40 last year, the World Wide Web is still a teenager, and that relative immaturity places irresistible temptations in the path of the less ethical. And being able to read your browser history is just one of those.

Has your browser history been “sniffed” recently

You wouldn’t know.

Tell us about an ad you've come across and loved today

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This was the question I posed upfront at the Convergence Conversation I chaired last night. The topic of the conversation – “Advertising and the impact of convergence”, and a topic sufficiently compelling to attract 80 people on a summer’s evening.

Deloitte kindly hosted us, with Jolyon Barker , their Head of TMT, kicking off proceedings, and Knowledge and Research Director Paul Lee presenting an overview of their third “The state of the Media Democracy Survey ”. One of the reports main findings is that, following a survey of 2000 Brits, 60% regard their computer to be the premier entertainment device, relegating TV to second place. Not an inconsequential finding for the advertising industry.

Which begged a second question “What is TV?”, and this garnered more responses than my first question of the evening, which went uncomfortably unanswered. How could such a simple question about describing a great ad, particularly when we have hundreds every day to chose from, draw such a blank response? (I’ve posted here one of a series of ads from Lloyds TSB that I loved because they tell a story rather than simply hit me over the head with a product.)

A Rolling Stone gathers no location based information

Fri, 16 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

I met Ronnie Wood this week. He sat down next to me in a bar and bought me a drink. That ranks him in my book as a very nice chap. And I got a 90 minute window into living life as a globally famous rock star, an insight that confirmed my relief, as if the situation could be otherwise, that I’m not a ‘celebrity’…

“Is that Ronnie Wood? Ronnie Wood? Rolling Stones? Ronnie Wood?”
“I don’t believe it… is that really you? We’re big fans of……”
“I’ve got all your albums.”
“Could I have your autograph and a picture with you?”
“I don’t believe it, is it really you?”

Although Ronnie has had four decades to come up with witty ripostes, I particularly liked his response to the last one… “Actually, I only came fifth in a Ronnie Wood lookalike competition.” From what I saw, he has a lovely way in dealing with the countless people that approach him; what the rest of us would call invading our space.

We got talking about my line of work having danced through the ages of music technology, from the vinyl and 8-track of the mid-60s, through compact cassette and CD to mp3. Not unexpectedly, Ronnie mourns the passing of the physical format, but loves the idea that music has returned to the 60s notion that it’s all about the music, having been distracted in between times by the huge music marketing machine. The 80s and 90s were all about shifting massive volumes of records and CDs, and gigging was just a distraction.