Thursday, March 15, 2007

Wired News: Citizen Journalism Wants You! Welcome to Assignment Zero. It's pro-am journalism in the open style made possible by the web. This is a collaboration among NewAssignment.Net, Wired and those who choose to participate. I hope you will. Because we're trying to figure something out here. Can large groups of widely scattered people, working together voluntarily on the net, report on something happening in their world right now, and by dividing the work wisely tell the story more completely, while hitting high standards in truth, accuracy and free expression? If they can, this would matter. It's called Assignment Zero because we needed to jump start our site somehow, and this project with Wired turned out to be it. We're trying to create a pro-am, open-platform reporting tool that we can improve and modify later, for use in bigger, more sprawling and difficult stories down the road. Maybe about the environment. Or the schools. Or -- who knows? -- the war. 3:35:07 PM

Assignment Zero Tests Pro-Am Journalism Assignment Zero Tests Pro-Am Journalism Jay Rosen writes  "Assignment Zero is a pro-am, open-platform reporting project. The investigation: crowd sourcing and peer production are a social trend growing well beyond tech. Why is this happening? Partners: NewAssignment.Net and Wired.com, with Newsvine. From the Wired essay: 'We're trying to figure something out here. Can large groups of widely scattered people, working together voluntarily on the net, report on something happening in their world right now, and by dividing the work wisely tell the story more completely, while hitting high standards in truth, accuracy and free expression?' Wired.com: 'We want out readers and our sources to be one and the same. We think it will make for better journalism.'"  [Slashdot] 3:32:28 PM

Chertoff: Security and privacy not at odds. Chertoff: Security and privacy not at odds. Calling privacy groups "Luddites," DHS head Michael Chertoff defends the Real I.D. Act. He claims that the data-chipped drivers licenses, which will be linked to a numbers of databases around the country, will actually protect privacy  Editor:And down is up, black is white, and I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. [...] The head of the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday downplayed privacy concerns raised by the government's efforts to create standardized, data-chipped drivers licenses across the country. The same technology that makes information on identification cards more reliable can also protect privacy, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said during a speech to the Northern Virginia Technology Council. "It's my contention that properly used technology ... actually protects privacy," he said. "We should not allow folks to be captivated by the argument that every time we do something with a computer, it invades privacy." Chertoff was referring to privacy concerns surrounding the Real ID Act, a law passed by Congress in 2005 that would require states to create machine-readable ID cards containing the name of the holder, the data of birth, a digital photograph and other information. Privacy groups, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), have said that the DHS hasn't come up with rules on how the information on the cards should be protected. DHS has made only "vague" plans for card security and for restricting which state motor vehicle agency employees would have access to the information, EPIC says. "On security and privacy standards for the card, state motor vehicle facilities, and the personal data and documents collected in state motor vehicle databases, DHS shows little interest," EPIC says on its Web site. But Chertoff said those raising privacy concerns about the use of IT in the U.S. government's domestic security efforts create a false tension between security and privacy. "This kind of Luddite attitude ... is exactly wrong," he said. "Security and privacy are very much the same type of value. I don't think they're mutually exclusive, they're mutually reinforced." Chertoff also talked about how DHS is using IT. Technology plays a part in nearly all the agency's efforts, including machines that read fingerprints at border crossings, databases that link law enforcement investigations and scanning technologies for containers coming into the U.S. [Computerworld Privacy News] 3:12:44 PM

Comments on Google's Privacy Announcement. Comments on Google's Privacy Announcement. Greetings. Google has announced significant changes to their data retention policy. Since I'm already being asked for my opinion regarding their announcement, I'm sending this out now rather selfishly to avoid having to generate a large number of individual responses... [Lauren Weinstein's Blog] 2:22:07 PM

Google To "Anonymize" Personal Data after 18-24 Months. Google To "Anonymize" Personal Data after 18-24 Months. Google made a major announcement today that by the end of the year will begin removing identifying data from its search logs after 18 -24 months: When you search on Google, we collect information about your search, such as the query itself, IP addresses and cookie details. Previously, we kept this data for as long as it was useful. Today we're pleased to report a change in our privacy policy: Unless we're legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time. When we implement this policy change in the coming months, we will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google's services and protect them from security and other abuses)--but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users, after 18-24 months. They've released a log retention FAQ (PDF) with more details, including how they will "anonymize" the log data: What does it mean to anonymize the logs? We will change some of the bits in the IP address in the logs as well as change the cookie information. We're still developing the precise technical methods and approach to this, but we believe these changes will be a significant addition to protecting user privacy. How do these anonymizing measures protect user privacy? Changing the bits of an IP address makes it less likely that the IP address can be associated with a specific computer or user. Cookie anonymization makes it less likely that a cookie can be used to identify a user. Do these changes guarantee anonymization? It is difficult to guarantee complete anonymization, but we believe these changes will make it very unlikely users could be identified. This is an important and promising step towards greater privacy and protection of personal search history records. But remember, AOL thought they had released anonymized data as well. Just because and IP and cookie has been modified doesn't mean that user privacy is ensured. The preferred solution would be for Google to purge the data altogether after, or just don't collect it in the first place. Unfortunately I don't have much time for further analysis (baby, dissertation, oh my!), but 27B Stroke 6 is on top of it, and CNet has reaction from CDT, EFF, and others. michaelzimmer.org] 2:12:41 PM

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