In the good old days there was the phone book.  A list of all phone numbers in your area.  You could flick through this open, public record and find out where someone lived and their phone number.  Easy, simple and in black and white delivered to your door.

Back in 2006 when Ajit Jaokar and I wrote "Mobile Web 2.0" we created an idea about "I am a tag and not a number" - which was to become a bedrock of PhoneBook 2.0 thinking.  The thinking was that phone books will die as the phone number is dead; you will become what others tag you as.  This move would allow phonebooks to move on from a disconnected phone number and become an connected action and activity delivering: book a meeting, message, call, IM, find and locate,

In the old model you trusted the company who printed the phone book to remove (in the next addition) your details if you so wanted.  However, once printed there was always a copy at the library if you wanted older versions to see if someone had just gone x-directory.

Yes there was a lot of work involved, you had to find the directory, pick it up, use your brain to determine where "F" "I" "S" "H" was in the alphabet, run your finger down the page and horror, write down the number, before you walked to a phone and dialled in the number.

But, however you look at it, this was a public record and was open. So why is there so much concern about web directories.  Yes it is easier to find and any lazy fool can do it from anywhere, but so what?

Is it that we now don't know who to turn to become x-directory (there are too many) or is it that we cannot delete what is there or is it that we are worried about someone else other than a trusted party publishing our data.

In the old printed world there was a sense of control, redress and trust, in the new on-line world we only control what we say we say about ourselves, but cannot control and have little ability to redress what others say about us, or someone providing data that we want, for whatever reason, to keep from open and public scrutiny.

Did our forefathers think, debate, wrestle about the implications of printing every phone number is an open and public book, or was it a useful utility?

Don’t forget to do a factory reset before you pass it on – or you will compromise your identity, privacy, security, reputation ……

20^th June 2010

Google have a secure/ encrypted search https://www.google.com  - not working for .co.uk or from a mobile (yet)

This allows you to search without your ISP knowing or being able in inspect.  Obviously Google does know what you are doing. 

Walled garden or neat idea – still thinking

This post puts into words the fundamental shift that I have had difficulty in explaining for a while.  I believed that the prime privacy issues were erosion and  fear but now I think it is an adjustment to a new paradigm of what public means.  Public tends to mean information is available and current (news) or available but inaccessible (marriage record). The majority of us understand public in its “current public” form as it is about here and now (broadcast TV, radio, daily newspapers). This view of public was friendly as it naturally leads to a softening or erosion over time until forgiven and forgotten. With the advent of the Internet public now carries the same meanings but we have added a third dimension; always there, no control, no hiding, permanent and always accessible. 

How can privacy die?

Privacy is closer to gravity and electrons, in the mind of the public, than to bricks and trees, so how can it die?  Privacy is a concept, something you explain but cannot touch and to every person the idea can be explained from their own personal perspective. Privacy is a boundary between private and public, but depends on the perspective. 

The Wikipedia article on privacy is a rounded, by dogged by trying to detail every aspect of privacy from all angles, however there are some good snippets that help.

“The boundaries and content of what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals, but share basic common themes.”

“Privacy may be voluntarily sacrificed, normally in exchange for perceived benefits and very often with specific dangers and losses, although this is a very strategic view of human relationships.”

“Many languages lack a specific word for "privacy"”

The concept of privacy is not difficult, as it is the boundary between private and public, the complexity arrives in the definition when one considers context and experience.  Our date of birth is a public record but is often used as an identifier for private services; therefore I should keep it as private as possible.

“Privacy is Dead” but that doesn’t mean that it no longer exists as I can feel its warmth and pulse. Privacy will always exist whilst there is law to protect the boundary between public and private. 

Redefining Public

Public meant everyone and still does. Public means TV, radio, Broadcast, newspapers and the internet.  However, conceptually public meant here today, gone tomorrow.  Yesterday’s news is now old and is therefore not new and has less value.  You throw away yesterdays newspapers.  If you want last weeks news your can go to the library, if desperate there are specialists who will search microfiche for really old materials.  The idea of public was acceptable as you could eventually hide and be forgotten.  I am coming to the opinion that the issue is not about erosion of the boundaries or what is acceptable but our definition of Public.

My business policy lecturers back in 1992, George Luffman and Stuart Sanderson had their phrase “so what”.  It was a rhetorical question to ask whenever you though you had unearthed something new from analysis, as a method to expose if there is any value in the revelation.   The definition of Public needs updating – so what?

The obvious “so what” is that the Internet brings longevity and ease of access. There is now no hiding and it is this fundamental shift is that redefines Public which I believe is the conceptual problem we are struggling with.  Public, as a phrase, is evolving into three distinct concepts: permanent (internet public) temporary (news, broadcast) and available (certificates)

Why is Public important to Digital Footprints

Privacy, and the erosion thereof, easily sparks debate.  Big Brother ideals spread fear, but we are will to leave our digital data with everyone.  Understanding longevity of Public may could change a persons view of privacy.

I thought it was time to revisit Spokeo http://www.spokeo.com and  http://pleaserobme.com/ - as you can now find out if they are out and worth robbing, adding Google maps street level enables you to plan the escape route. PleaseRobMe has made its point, however, Spokeo has not moved on. Trying a few friends in the US, I personally found the data was inaccurate (white and not back sort of level) or hopelessly out of date and a few have managed to hide their data.

Spokeo is not new launched in 2005 (USA) says it is a search engine specialized in organising people-related information from phone books, social networks, marketing lists, business sites, and other public sources. Most of their data is publicly available on the Web.  For example, you can find people’s name, phone, and address on Whitepages.com, and you can get home values from Zillow.com.  Spokeo’s algorithm can piece together (however not that well reading some of the reviews and my test) the scattered data into coherent people profiles, giving you the ‘some’ intelligence about anyone you want to find.

Time to revisit a few others I think….

This post is more about a question that I am struggling with than insight, the rhetorical question is “can you hear me thinking/”. Ignoring the obvious difference and the all TCP/IP arguments, yes voice can be VoIP and data is clicks are IP packages, I am interested in why our response to voice recording (the recording and interpretation of what you said) differently to data gathering from location, attention, clicks, content creation etc)

It seams that we generally accept that our digital footprints will be recorded (collected and stored), this data will be analysed and value will be created from new service discovery or improvements to existing services. We give up the rights to our click data, our blog post creations and facebook entries in exchange for free services (in general)

There appear to be 3 types (broadly) of data that can be gathered or harvested from your conversations (voice)

·         “Meaning” what is the meaning of the words spoken.  Hearing the whole conversation and recording it, or using human mediated TTS or STT as in the case of SpinVox or Relay Services – The issue here is that humans will interpret the meaning not machines, they can not only understand but could act on the information. . Often we are forced to cede our rights if we want to have access to services e.g. financial services call centres recording for ‘training purposes’.  As always with identity data, if the value exchange benefits the customer enough he or she will cede their privacy. SpinVox is therefore quite odd in reality.  I pay for a service; that service is to allow me to record your voice and get your message.  I am asking you to give up your rights so that I get a more convenient service

·         “Identification” using your voice to open up locked services. This is understood in the same privacy framework as other biometrics and accepted by users.  After all, they keep control of the key data in this instance so the privacy parameters are different

·         Intent, Phrases, volume, speed, mood and redundant information.  Can be interpreted by machines and can be de-personalised to extract value.  For example you might use a combination of these to interpret mood and add further contextual information such as location, last action, social context to personalize services or off next best actions.

When we consider something listening to our conversations to provide the same value added service argument as digital footprint data we go off the deep end about privacy. Example Voice to Text or Text Relay Services.  Although there has been controversy about the company’s use of humans to train and support the technology, it is clear that the level of privacy infringement experienced by Spinvox customers is nothing compared to that which deaf and hard of hearing customers experience every time they place a call. “

Why is this?  Is it that the voice is ours and can be uniquely identified, it could be replayed out of context, we say things for effect that we don’t mean, it is more personal or is it that this is what we are used to.

Voice is certainly personal, I think from a user perspective, it goes back to voice being a human interaction, conversation, relationship, hence our expectations are that you will not be able to recall word for word what was said, voice/audio is non-persistent in the mind for humans.  For this reason ‘phone bugging, recording, or listening & then using out of context is a very clear risk, but this is also not where the value is for most companies.    When we type we try to be explicit, social media is changing that as it becomes more like voice and is reactionary or not meant and therefore could easily loose context later in time. 

Do we believe that something listening to our conversations is more easily misinterpreted than the binary click? The question is could equal value could be created from looking at our email and listing to our voice calls and if so, why do we hate with such passion the idea of listening or snooping. 

Most would agree that more personal, human information can be gleaned from voice. There is a discipline of Voice Analytics which is mostly focused on call centres so out of scope.  Also Content mining is scary for customers if we know something they don’t know, and they know we know it.  There are the usual privacy arguments around this, but awareness appears fairly low in the (mass) market.  Is anyone really doing this and apply the patents in this area e.g. for targeting advertising based on mood.

This appears to be a very complex area as an individual’s perception of privacy changes depending on social context and the nature of the transaction or information conveyed and there is a need to retain a sense of privacy.  If there is clear user-consent and controls, all will be well but is the potential abuses of voice are more significant. 

So what is the link to Google Buzz and is it important – more thinking required.

Jean Paul Satre:  “…as speech is the expression of thought.  Speech is thought made outward in sound.  Can you hear thinking?  Perhaps speech is the nearest possibility.”  Book Link