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Tokyo

In a recent interview with CNBC, Google CEO Eric Schmidt did a poor job of choosing his words and noted “privacy is not the same thing as anonymity.” The head of Google then goes on to describe when crimes are committed that judges will ask that the suspect be unmasked and that the right of absolute anonymity is not obvious.  You can see the interview here.

What is unfortunate is that Eric Schmidt is feeding blood to the sharks. Blood being the fear of rapists and murderers being able to hide their identities online while committing horrendous crimes and the sharks being the legislators of the world. Eric Schmidt and Google are driving a political agenda to rid the world of user anonymity.

In a stroke of human of repetition we see the same tactics that have been used over and over in the past, the underlying implication of the age-old phrase “if you aren’t committing a crime, what do you have to fear?” This, of course, is a noble cause with only the truest of altruistic intentions in mind. Google only wants to make the world safe for everybody, while they milk every byte of your information for every advertising dollar that they can squeeze from it.

The trouble is that in the real world, no one is altruistic. No one is trustworthy, especially the government. To force users into a choice of “technological stone age” vs. “no-anonymity” means that the people who fear organizations, that do no not have their best interests in mind, will be left behind. Whether someone believes that local or foreign governments would abuse access to information or Google’s partners and advertisers of ill-repute would build elaborate phishing scams to rip people off of their money. The people who distrust the large machinations of the business and government will be left without a means of communication, without a means of rebellion, without a means of free speech without persecution.

Then there will be people who choose freely the risks of a non-anonymous internet where every move they make could be used against them with fewer safeguards available to them. They will be the bitter bunch. The Tech workers of the world whose job is to be part of the digital world and accept all of its insane and byzantine rules. Even though they enter with eyes open and believe they have a choice, that choice is just an illusion.

And last will be the ignorant. The poor grandmothers who follow a link from their equally ignorant grandchildren to a website that lets them download a movie. Grandma might realize later what she has done and erase the file before viewing it, but it’s already too late. 3 weeks later the police are knocking on the door and Granny is baking cookies for a woman named Birtha for the next few weeks or going bankrupt from the piracy lawsuit. The ease of information flow without requiring warrants to governments and intellectual property holding organizations is too tempting to believe that an automated “safety-net” meant to capture criminals and property rights violators expeditiously will be anything other than inevitable.  

The internet is already a hard place to navigate, the information available about any individual is already easy enough for governments and law enforcement to get what they need to prosecute, using old-fashioned and constitution-approved tools such as warrants. Why do we need to relieve the safeguards that keep information from ending up in the wrong hands?

Anonymity is another layer of security that keeps people’s information from being exposed to those who should not have it. Anonymity, embraces, encompasses, and encircles privacy and is both part of it and greater than it at the same time. It is the foundation of freedom of speech on the internet.

Anonymity is the last freedom left in the world where everything is audited, recorded, reported, and kept forever; it should be kept sacred. 

Review of The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics by David Harriman, read by Erik Singer.

Great book for any technical person. Scientist, biologist, programmer, etc.

Just watched an interesting thought on garyvaynerchuk.com about the word media being the wrong description of the interactions in “Social Media”. I think Gary has a point. The word media isn’t right, it is both too broad and too narrow for what we consider social media and how personal brand’s (like Gary’s) and companies (like Old Spice) are using it to get back in touch with their customers. It’s about reaching out and caring about the customer and being able to reach customers directly while still scaling. This is the power off the tools like Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and blogging and … It lets you get at the individual customer at, for lack of a better word “Cloud Scale”. Hundreds of thousands of users, millions, with only a little extra time spent. And at the end of the day it is about that 1:1 interaction. That connection you are making. So since I am an idea guy, and I love making up new words, such as “April F00lz” (look it up in urban dictionary), I thought I would throw out a new term for the socializing that goes on. You are interacting with the “Croud” (no that isn’t misspelled). A large group of people that are only accessible through the tools of social networking. Now you can attach anything after that. So instead of all the things under “Social Media” you have:

- “Croud Conversation”

- “Croud Marketing”

- “Croud Service” (instead of Customer Service)

- “Croud Media” for the stuff that really is media

Just a thought.

Came up with another

ChatterNet

BTW, I am still getting through the current book. Since moving out west I don’t have the 2 hour per day commute, reduced to 10 minutes per day and it is impeding my reading time. I am about 2/3 through the book. Looking to find another venue to get it kick started. Stay tuned.

Got my computer back and I got my first audiobook rolling.

The next review will be: The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics

Hi everyone. I will be taking about 1 month away from my book reviews as I move out to Seattle, WA. 

I have two books in the can already and I may write blog posts to make up for them, or try to find a low budget alternative and post video reviews. But my equipment is being packed and there isn’t going to be a way for me to throw out my standard stuff.

I’ll catch you in a month.

Gp