Spying on the Protesters,
by JOHN S. FRIEDMAN
The Nation,
[from the September 19, 2005 issue].
“…the FBI was more interested in intimidation than in trying to gather information.”
United States Will Stand Firm On ICANN’s Authority.
by Danielle Belopotosky,
Technology Daily PM Edition,
Sept 8, 2005. [subscription required]
The Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) issued a report in August that called for dismantling or modifying ICANN. The report serves as the groundwork for an action plan on Internet governance that will be delivered at the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) November meeting in Tunis, Tunisia….
“The U.S. position is that no new organization should be created” as a result of the summit, said Dick Baird of the State Department…
Without comment, here are several articles of interest from
the last week or so. Have a good weekend!
The Time Has
Come: Taking Our Issues to the Public by Peter G. Neuman, (Sun, 28
Aug 2005) The Risks Digest Volume 24: Issue 2.
How are we doing with our information infrastructure? Is everything moving
along well and in the right direction? Peter Neuman, speaking of
computer risks in general, notes that
the “basic problems” keep recurring. “Whatever progress
might be made in computer-related technologies and their applications
has not been reducing the threats, vulnerabilities, and risks related to
the systems upon which we individually and as a civilization depend
most.”
He says that it is time for risks-aware professionals to reach
out to others and continues:
I have testified at least a dozen times for governmental
bodies on RISKS-related issues, but always have a gnawing feeling that
these efforts fall on deaf ears or are largely ignored by brains that
are preoccupied with other concerns.
What are these computer-related risks? They include failures of hardware
and software to behave as we expect them to and result in everything
from the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and a
defense system mistaking the rising moon for incoming missiles in 1960,
to radiation overdoses administered by computer-controlled
radiation-therapy machines and the collapse of a hospital computer
system brought on by a date change. They include problems of
reliability, security, and privacy. The occur in systems large and
small and with result that are laughable and life-threatening. They
include human behavior (malice, incompetence, carelessness, lack of
experience) as well as the “inherent limitations both of the technology
and of the people who interact with it.”
How does this relate to libraries and information? Neuman has noted
that, as the future leads us to a worldwide information infrastructure
(WII)…
National cultural identities may become sublimated.
Governments will attempt to regulate their portions of the WII, which
attempts could have chilling effects. Commercial interests will
attempt to gain control. Aggregation of geographically and logically
diverse information enables new invasions of privacy. Huge volumes of
information make it more difficult to ensure accuracy. The propagation
of intentional disinformation and unintentionally false information can
have many harmful effects.
(Compter-Related Risks, p300)
For more than 20 years, Neuman has been moderating the
mailing list The Risks
Digest (a “Forum On Risks To The Public In Computers And Related
Systems” of the Association for Computing
Machinery Committee on Computers and Public Policy) that
addresses such risks. He wrote The Book on the topic, Computer-Related Risks (New York,
New York : Reading, Mass. : ACM Press ; Addison-Wesley, 1995). Neuman
and contributors to the Digest document problems that “relate to
the roles that computers and communication systems play in our lives.”
This is a call for action and for help. Neuman says,
…those of us who worry about risks, hype, propaganda, distortions, and
the general demise of scientific and realistic thinking have been
outflanked by well-funded, vested interests who have everything to gain
from maintaining the status quo. Further, making real progress against
such entrenched forces means moving outside of the confines of
preaching-to-the-choir Internet mailing lists and Web sites.
Neuman invites
individuals and organizations that might be interested
in helping to to get in touch with him (neumann@csl.sri.com) or
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com).
6% of US Internet users read blogs, 2% use RSS.
IT Facts / ZDNet.com
Sept. 5, 2005.
Ok, here is the caveat to the headline. The study,
The State Of Consumer Technology Adoption
by Forrester Research, evidently only counts
“online consumers.” The summary of the report
is available for free but does not reveal much about its methodology except to note that it was a survey of
more than 68,000 households.
Other statistics from the summary:
Households with a laptop and home network watch three fewer hours of TV per week and read the paper an hour less per week than offline households do.
EFF: The Customer Is Always Wrong: A User’s Guide to DRM in Online Music
“This guide ‘translates’ the marketing messages by the major services, giving you the real deal rather than spin.”
Imagine if Tower Records sold you a CD, but then, a few months later, knocked on your door and replaced the CD with one that you can’t play in your car. Would you still feel like you “owned” the CD? Not so much, eh?
Internet Governance:
A Review in the Context of the WSIS Process
by Carlos A. Afonso.
Document prepared for
Instituto del Tercer Mundo (ITeM).
July 2005.
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is a UN sponsored
conference organized by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union
(ITU). Its mission is to address both “The Digital Revolution” as well
as “The Digital Divide” and
“to develop and foster a clear statement of political will and take
concrete steps to establish the foundations for an Information Society
for all.”
One of the key issues the summit will address is Internet
governance which includes “significant
public policy issues, such as critical Internet resources, the security and safety of
the Internet, and developmental aspects and issues pertaining to the use of the
Internet.” These issues will set the context within which libraries
operate, defining intellectual property rights,
international trade,
and what information people can get and use.
This new paper by Carlos Afonso helps sort through the issues, provides useful historical background on the current Internet global governance system, and
looks at how the battles for control of the Internet are shaping up.
Afonso is strategy director at the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and head of technological development at RITS (the Rede de informaoes para o Terceiro Setor — Information Network for the Third Sector) and member of the UN-convened working group on Internet governance.
For more information see:
This month’s “blog of the month” is actually an “RSS Feed of the Month.”
This is an RSS feed of the popular page from del.icio.us. del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows people to easily keep track on the web of a personal collection of links, categorize those links with keywords, and share those links with others. The del.icio.us popular page aggregates those links that lots of folks are bookmarking. For example, this morning, almost 400 people have linked to Cheat Sheet Roundup which is a page with “cheatsheets”
(brief documentation and reminders) for JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Google, Windows, and so forth. And, 162 people have linked to the
NPR podcast directory.
Add this feed to your RSS reader or add a live bookmark in Firefox and
get a quick idea of what is hot on the web!
The University of Florida is doing some innovative things with audio and podcasting.
The UF News Desk has begun including audio files along with press releases in text (University of Florida News). The news site includes information on general campus news (announcements, appointments, awards) as well as stories about research at the University. All the information is in a blog with RSS feeds and the audio files are included in the RSS feeds making it very easy to hear the news using iTunes or other
podcast software Examples:
In addition, the University of Florida Extension office has
a daily radio program on family issues, designed to help families improve their lives (Family Album Radio),
provides these as downloadable audio files, and will be providing a podcast of all their stories in the next month.
del.icio.us/popular