ManyMedia

This is a serious moment, if delivered for comedic value. I’m shocked, shocked to learn that our cell phone records are not being protected by our carriers. The Washington Post’s article Online Data Gets Personal: Cell Phone Records for Sale describes the nature of the problem:

“This is a person’s associations,” said Daniel J. Solove, a George Washington University Law School professor who specializes in privacy issues. “Who their physicians are, are they seeing a psychiatrist, companies they do business with . . . it’s a real wealth of data to find out the people that a person interacts with.”

Such records could be used by criminals, such as stalkers or abusive spouses trying to find victims.

Unlike Social Security numbers, which are on many public documents that have been scooped up for years by data brokers, the only repository of telephone call records is the phone companies.

Outraged and in response, the video (above) reflects John Hargrave’s approach. “I’m here on behalf of Verizon customers. PLEASE DO A BETTER JOB PROTECTING YOUR CUSTOMERS’ CELL PHONE RECORDS!” said Hargrave through his bullhorn.

The common response by cell phone service providers is to point out that obtaining and selling cell phone records is illegal, and their Terms of Service changes in response to these kinds of things. Of course, we know how many people read the tiny, tiny legaleze that comes in our billing envelopes (provided we get one in the mail). More importantly, we know that people engaged in criminal activity pay great attention to compliance with these TOS docs. Right. “Can you hear me now?”

Devices, Identity, Life, Policy crime, phone records, records, terms of service, TOS, Verizon

One of the latest buzzwords in technology is cloud computing. In this scenario, the Internet is considered to be “the cloud.” The basic idea, roughly stated, is that we no longer need to rely on our local computer hard drives for everything–including software applications and storage. Now we can just log into various Internet-based services, use their applications, and store our documents on their servers.

Many examples of cloud computing are common and in use every day. On a personal level, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn help you manage your contacts and address book (friends, colleagues), and Flickr helps manage and display your photo collection. On a business level, Google Docs and Zoho offer a suite of tools for writing, accounting, and much, much more.

We all know that technology is not perfect. Combined with human interaction, we get a system that can be surprisingly fragile. Cloud computing is one example of this.

I have had the frustrating experience (many times) of using–and coming to depend on–GoogleDocs for group writing projects. I always found it frustrating when, without prior notice, Google would implement changes in the user interface that complicated our group work; or when Google Docs had a service hiccup and our group’s documents became unavailable for some time.

Similarly, others are documenting problems. I wrote about Digital Eviction (on Digital ID Coach) a couple of weeks ago citing Phil Wolff’s Data Portability article that’s timely and relevant to this post about having growing pains in cloud computing. Phil’s post offers six actions that might be appropriate to address the problems that cloud computing are likely to create. Briefly, those include:

• Intervention with a back-up service
• Prevent and educate on graceful exit strategy
• Commit to adding appropriate language to contracts (EULAs and TOSs)
• Insure your digital assets
• Advocate for the little guy
• Enforce with real laws and penalties

As we are increasingly dependent on cloud-based service providers, recognizing the vulnerability of these services makes it more important than ever to create back-ups of our work. One place might be on our local hard drives. I urge you to do it now.

Content, Network, Policy, Scenarios backup, cloud computing, digital assets, SAAS, service providers, terms of service

This story is about a game. It’s not, however, an ordinary game. This one incorporates ideas and licensing schemes that could rock the business world. Just one thing first: people must recognize and respect each other’s contributions to the body of knowledge being worked on.

Linden Lab, creator of online world Second Life(TM), today announced a significant breakthrough in digital property rights for its customers and for users of online worlds. Changes to Second Life’s Terms of Service now recognize the ownership of in-world content by the subscribers who make it. The revised TOS allows subscribers to retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create, including characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs.

Content contributions, DRM, licensing, ownership, property rights, respect, Second Life, self-determination, terms of service