Data security: Google's headache

And now a word from our sponsor:

Greater transparency around government requests

4/20/2010

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights states that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Written in 1948, the prinicple applies aptly to today's Internet -- one of the most important means of free expression in the world. yet government censorship of the web is growing rapidly: from the outright blocking and filtering of sites, to court orders limiting access to information and legislation forcing companies to self-censor content.

So it's no surprise that Google, like other technology and telecommunications companies, regularly receives demands from government agencies to remove content from our services. Of course many of these requests are entirely legitimate, such as requests for the removal of child pornography. We also regularly receive requests from law enforcement agencies to hand over private user data. Again, the vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations. However, data about these activites hisotrically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship.

We are today launching a new Government Requests tool to give people information about the requests for user data or content removal we receive from government agencies around the world. for this launch, we are using data from July-December, 2009, and we plan to update the data in 6-month increments. Read this post to learn more about our prinicples surrounding free expression and controversial content on the web.

We already try to be as transparent as legally possible with respect to requests. Whenever we can, we notify users about requests that may affect them personally. If we remove content in search results, we display a message to users. The numbers we are sharing today take this transparency a step further and reflect the total number of request we have received broken down by jurisdiction. We are also sharing the number of these content removal request that we do not comply with, and while we cannot yet provide more detail about our compliance with user data requests in a useful way, we intend to do so in the future.

As part of our commitment to the Global Network Initiative, we have already agreed to principles and practices that govern privacy and free expression. In the spirit of these principles, we hope this tool will shine some light on the scale and scope of government requests for censorship and data around the globe. We also hope that this is just the first step toward increased transparency about these actions across the technology and communications industries.

Posted by David Drummound, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

Google Blog:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/greater-transparency-around-government.html

Government Requests tool: http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/

Thang 23: We are the library gypsies!

And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
My followers I'll say it clear
I'll state my case of which I'm certain

I've lived a life that's full
I travelled each and every E-highway
And more, much more than this
I blogged it my way.

Some basic principles I've learned along the way:

1. Always check if your blog title has been used elsewhere. Oh dearie me, another Gigi's Thang at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuyCtuu-A5g
2. Keep a sharp eye on your privacy permissions and how much self-info you are giving to the public.
3. Keep copies of files on your home computer should the "Cloud" disperse abruptly.
4. Discipline to up-date Web 2.0 sites on a daily basis, but not have your working life taken over by the virtual one.
5. Librarians do have a thing for cats.
6. Keep a notebook on hand for recording all your usernames & passwords and guard it with your life!

My like-o-meter:

1. Blogger and iGoogle page with all their gadgets because you can personalize them and they do provide a one-stop-shop platform. iGoogle is like a monitoring centre whereas you can express more thoughts on Blogger with interactions from others.
2. Facbook I find less attractive looking, but it may be easier for fans to comment on. I've used the "Note" tab to display my blog and I have a Twitter tab along with the Wall, Photo and Video. How do the other libraries do the Box and Discussion tabs? I think it a good idea to encourage dicussions as a means of discovering what your readers want.
3. Twitter I like as quick bits of information that could draw people to more in-depth sources.
4. RSS Feeds and Delicious can be very useful, but you do need discipline as some 23 Thingers have mentioned since you can get overwhelmed with such delightful information to bring on a headache!
5. YouTube and podcasts are addicting and bad for my health (I'll stay up until the wee hours of the night watching & listening). If you develop the skill of making these they provide an additional eye-catching method of educating (like the SSL induction video).
6. Flickr and Picnik are fairly easy to learn and don't take over your computer like Picassa (grrr). I use Flickr to store photos for blogging purposes.
7. Office 2.0 and wiki's are great ways of collaborating if you aren't a control freak. Particularly Office 2.0 since those who are working from different computers can always have access to their works in progress. Must keep aware, though, of potential big Brothers searching through your files, and that if the "Cloud" collaspes, you're screwed (keep back-ups at home).

My groan-o-meter:

1. Linkedin: I wasn't willing to provide so much information unless I was looking for a job. A student doing a DPhil thesis on the informal means of scientific collaboration found that scientists preferred setting up blogs than using Linkedin. They saw it as just for job hunting.
2. ThinkFree: too slow, too fiddly with several windows to open, and not free (only free 30 day trial).

The following portion corresponds with the Flickr Photostream display (hopefully) on the left.

What can we expect of libraries in the future? Beautiful old libraries will be given over to the tourist trade with all the dust, cobwebs and old dons removed and automatic aerosol dispensers strategically placed to squirt out essences of leather binding, brass and wood polish.

There has been a proliferation of new libraries of fantastic architectural designs that are revamping the concept of "library". No longer just a repository of fusty books; they are Idea Shops, Information Centres, community centres that provide child-care, theatres, cafes, lounges with a view, offices, computers, computers, computers! How about computers powered by tread-mills; keeping our readers fit and our environment green.

No longer will librarians be glued to their reference desk. Desks will be too hot to stay put. We need to be on the go, like the lady with her mobile desk, ever vigilant for a confused and puzzled look: "May I help you?" Or if the budget gets too tight for full-time librarians, how about Courtesy Nodes dotted about the Human-Information Interaction Zone.

Of course, Cloud computing with their database warehouses could put pay to analog libraries. The virtual library would be accessible from your personal living space (the chair/computer set-up is just perfect for my style of horizontal reading). However, that wouldn't mean the end of the librarian career. We just need to be more creative and colourful in our approach. There will be people who would miss the human-touch of knowledge and thus I suggest Librarian Gypsies who travel the length and breath of Britain reading the "Cloud" for their customers.

Anthracothorax: Sadness of the end, warmth in communal support- Web 2 future joy. #ox23

Thank you Oxford 23 Things organisers.

Thang 22: We're almost there

That was fairly easy and it made me want to remove some gadgets and rearrange them. Since I had added Channel 4 news to my feed I really didn't need the three other news feed so that is where my Delicious went to. My facebook box is now working since I created an account, but I don't like the Whats on your mind? since you can only see what you are typing for the first line. For some reason there is no scrolling capability so if you type in more than one line you just have to hope it looks alright (like writing on paper without looking).

I've changed my theme from snow covered mountains to misty spring, but the weather in Scotland makes me feel I should return to the snowy mounts!

Thang 21: Been there done it

Thanks to Penny I already added on the Flickr Photostream gadget a few weeks ago. One problem I encountered was no pictures showing up; then we realised that my privacy permissions were too strick. Once I changed the permission to public viewing for some of my pictures up they popped on my Blog (bottom left-hand side).

I hadn't noticed the Feature, Most Popular and More Gadget options to the left. Instead I just typed in what I was looking for in the search window. So even when you've been-there-and-done-it you still learn something new.

I've also added a counter, but its been counting more my viewing of my own blog than others. I would like to change it but cannot for the life of me remember how I found the last site of free counters, especially since it had a nice discreet butterfly counters.

Thang 20: Not so free ThinkFree

Well, I was able to do the same article in a similar format on both Google Docs and ThinkFree. I was even able to download the essays as PDF onto my desktop with both; however,
ThinkFree could be a bit or a lot slower than Google Docs, in particular the fact that it has to open another window for editing the text and downloading the Java script.

You do get about the same amount of storage: 1 GB. However, another downer about ThinkFree is it ain't free. What you get is a 30 day free trial, but eventually you will have to pay. This I gathered from the FAQ's in Thinkfree Help.

http://help.thinkfree.com/views/jsp/user/help_center/contents/userFaqView.jsp

Thang 19: even more!

Here is my questionaire on Hot-desking (an issue close to my heart): do you want it or do you don't? A nifty little program which has already given me one result in the automatically generated spreadsheet. I also provided a power-point presentation about the issues around Hot-desking to help my survey victims develop their opinions. Again the presentation program was very easy to work out with enough variety of background them to serve its purpose. I went for very loud as you can see below:

My favourite of the hot-desking styles. It matches my favourite position when reading:

Thang 19: Privacy or Patriotism

Google Docs was quite easy to use and I was able to edit other people's documents with no problemos. I can see its use for collaborative work though I would eventually store the final work on my own computer and use WORD for the final touches. My main reason is privacy protection as my short essay explains on "Google and the Patriot Act" done on Google Doc:

Two years ago Simon Avery wrote an article in the Globe and Mail about the dangers of the U.S. Patriot Act skulking about the internet jungle:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/article675014.ece

The article begins with some worries expressed by members of a Canadian university that had signed up to Google's Cloud Service (which only took 30 days to set up and was for free versus investing $1 million for another commercial product that would have taken months to establish). You may wonder why these professors were against a freebie which offered the latest in software capabilites to their students. The problem was the country that Google Inc. is based in: the United States of America.

Part of the war against terrorism was the creation of the Patriot Act which made it easy for the U.S. government to snoop on it's citizens for security reasons. This was to exist for only a limited time, but has been extended since it reached it expiration date. The latest extension was just this February 2010 [ http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0301/Obama-signs-Patriot-Act-extension-without-reforms ].

"Using their new powers under the Patriot Act, U.S. intelligence officials can scan documents, pick out certain words and create profiles of the authors - a frightening challenge to academic freedom" is a quote from one of the Canadian academics. "For instance, a researcher with a Middle Eastern name, researching anthrax or nuclear energy, might find himself denied entry to the United States without ever knowing why."

Apparently Google has gone to court over just this issue: "The firm cites a court case it fought in 2006 against attempts by the U.S. Justice Department to subpoena customer search records." It may be a comfort to know that Google is fighting for our privacy, but scary to know that the U.S. government does see Google as a prime source of information with a great search engine to assist in their security scans. Google was not willing to reveal how frequently they receive such demands from the government to access customers' files and whether the Patriot Act had invoked against them.

For more information go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act