BinaryWolf

Surfing the Internet: Who’s Watching? Who’s Censoring?

Last night I attended Surfing the Internet: Who’s Watching? Who’s Censoring?, a PBS These Days community discussion hosted by Tom Fudge at the Joan Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego. The presentation was recorded and will be heard tomorrow on KPBS and will be made available as a podcast, as well.

Panelists included:
David Brin, science fiction writer and author of The Transparent Society
Lance Cottrell, Founder and CEO, Anonymizer
Pam Dixon, Executive Director, World Privacy Forum
Lawrence Hinman, Director, Values Institute, University of San Diego

USD is a beautiful campus with a first class venue at the Institute for Peace and Justice. The following is some of what I heard with a little elaboration of some of the more interesting points that were made.

David Brin jokingly talked about how David Copperfield and David Bowie had knocked him off of page one of Google (when searching for “David”) and relegated him to the second page (he’s at the 20th spot today). He stated that American’s “get” the wild west Internet culture, but some other cultures don’t like it. The Internet is changing and becoming more controlled by government. He offered insight regarding the fact that the real problem is government increasing its secrecy and not the blinding of the government by restricting its use of technological tools to gather information. That statement drew some scattered applause from the audience. Mr. Brin said that databases are an expansion of human memory and cameras are expansion of human vision. He went on to describe the futuristic concept of “penny camera stickers”, where children paste stickers that are embedded with miniature cameras on walls. The stickers would have 1-year batteries and their own Internet address.

On the subject of the passing of 20th century anonymity, Mr. Brin said that in the 21st century, we are becoming more of a global village, where when you are walking into a shop in Bangkok, facial recognition software will let the locals know who you are. Finally he mentioned a project he is consulting on, where bank branches will offer biometric centers to prove you are who you say you are for password verification.

Lance Cottrell mentioned the recent lawsuit against Google’s methods for ranking Web sites, by a company that dropped in Google rankings. (The complaint alleges Google has engaged in anti-competitive behavior and misled the public by positioning its search engine as an objective source for finding Internet content.) He went on to describe how the Web is more dynamic than some people are aware of. Web sites will alter pricing or even which products are displayed depending on who you are or where you are or where you came from. For example, if a customer came from a product pricing comparison site, it shows the customer is price sensitive and the prices could be adjusted downward accordingly.

Mr. Cottrel related how Anonymizer was started in 1995 for consumers but now the government uses his company to go after terrorists and cyber crime. Terrorist sites have become more sophisticated by having different versions of their sites displayed depending on where you come from. The CIA in Virginia may not see the beheadings yet visitors from the Middle East will see the entire barbaric act.

He talked about Yahoo’s decision to locate infrastructure in China as a mistake. He referred to Yahoo! complying with the Chinese Secret Police without argument by turning in dissident, Shi Tau, a reporter with The Contemporary Business News in Hunan, who is now serving 10 years in jail. You can’t reach Anonymizer directly in China, so users there need to know what the current pseudonym is in order to get to it. Anonymizer tries to show the Chinese government erroneous URLs in order to fake them out. Anonymizer has a “freedom spam list” which users are unable to opt out of, which the company uses to help ferret out the government officials who are moles.

Anonymizer avoids having to give information via subpoenas by not maintaining any log information at all.

Pam Dixon was asked to define googlebombs. She said that a combination of market data with search information could be considered a form of harmful censorship. She mentioned RFID networks as another privacy concern.

Lawrence Hinman wrote a recent op-ed piece, Why Google matters. During the discussion he mentioned that the Patriot Act allows the government to ask a professor about students and makes it a federal crime if that professor tells the students that the feds were asking about them.