WEB 3.0 MUST MAKE INFORMATION MORE FREE, THE INDIVIDUAL MORE AUTONOMOUS

HotSpring.fm :: We are on the verge of a major communications and global economic revolution, in which major media, technological advances, cloud computing and dispersed optimization, adapt to and take over new models for living and producing in human society. The New Scientist magazine reports in its March 15-21, 2008 edition that “web 3.0 will be about making information less free”.

We must, as end-users, content creators, innovators and even pioneers in media and technology, consider that for very serious and transcendent reasons, this cannot be permitted to become true. Web 3.0 must be liberating, and it must expand, not shrink the freedom of information that stems from the First Amendment to the US Constitution, free and open society in general, a free press specifically, and the Internet’s empowerment of the individual.

If we are to be a global society, or a “globalized” society, if we are to have a planetary consciousness, or benefit from the “village” dynamic inherent in global trade and telecommunications, then we must ensure that individual freedoms are not limited by global media powers or by governments who think there is something expedient about limiting media freedoms. When freedom of information is restricted, human beings suffer, in real terms, and economic vitality is slowed and economic resilience damaged. [Full Story]

RFID TECHNOLOGY WILL BRING PERSONAL SPACE, TASTES UNDER CONSTANT SCRUTINY BY ANONYMOUS WATCHERS

Radio Frequency ID chips (RFID) are an increasingly popular technology for commercial and security application. They are used to provide information to those who need to check the provenance of an object or the identity of a person or that person's belongings. "Supply chain efficiency" is the great cause they take on, but their real commercial potential lies in the way they can be used to aggregate information and identify tastes and market trends.

It is believed that RFID will soon be commonly used as a way of assisting marketers in providing "personalized" advertising to people, by matching —for instance— the constant presence of a cereal brand in a home, with that family's address, then sending related information via mail, e-mail or telemarketing. When we sit back to think of the implications, these "tags" could be emitting signals at all times, from quiet corners of our homes, providing invisible voyeurs with a dense fabric of information about our habits, tastes, even reading material.

Wired reports "RFID-enabled refrigerators could warn about expired milk, generate weekly shopping lists, even send signals to your interactive TV, so that you see 'personalized' commercials for foods you have a history of buying. Sniffers in your microwave might read a chip-equipped TV dinner and cook it without instruction." But such tags could combine with other tagged items to provide an all-too-intimate portrait of life in a given home.

For one, commercial items may be linked to credit cards or bank cards, jeopardizing the security of these vital accounts, and putting consumers at enhanced risk of identity theft. They might also facilitate the harvesting of time stamps, in which case information about one's movements and schedule would be scooped up along with other data (though in most cases, this information would be useless white noise).

Governments could use the technology as a way to gain access to information that would traditionally be subject to Constitutionally mandated judicial warrants and warranted searches. The slide away from evidence-based prosecution (in which evidence must be available before personal materials are seized), could jeopardize the basic liberties on which a free system is based.

Corporate-government collaboration in the area of in-home-spying is not fantasy: reference the NSA wiretapping program, which violated federal legal constraints by not using warrants, and the complicity of major telecoms in carrying out the illegal wiretapping, which allegedly affected millions of innocent citizens.

Also according to Wired, "With tags in so many objects, relaying information to databases that can be linked to credit and bank cards, almost no aspect of life may soon be safe from the prying eyes of corporations and governments, says Mark Rasch, former head of the computer-crime unit of the U.S. Justice Department."

There are many reassuring words put out by the institutions that want to implement these technologies, often major distribution networks or chain stores. For instance, the claim is often made that privacy is not under threat, because most RFID chips for commercial uses will carry only item-specific data, like a bar-code does, and would not be able to identify the consumer personally.

But, the US Government Accountability Office found in a 2005 report that "once a tagged item is associated with a particular individual, personally identifiable information can be obtained and then aggregated to develop a profile". So, while corporations may have a vested interest in keeping customer data private, the government may find the more intrusive applications of the technology a convenient way to circumvent important Constitutional procedures regarding personal documents, information and property.

• Wired: "Microchips Everywhere: a Future Vision"
• Malaysia Star: "Microtag to launch RFID tracking device"
• Sentido.tv: "DATA SHADOWS & IMPROBABLE CONSENT"
• Sentido.tv: "US STATE DEPT. MANDATES NEW PASSPORTS WILL CONTAIN RFID TRACKING CHIPS"
• Sentido.tv: "IS YOUR CEREAL BROADCASTING YOUR SECRETS?"

HYPER-CONVERGENCE OF MEDIA & SERVICES NECESSITATES NEW PARADIGM FOR SECURING PERSONAL DATA

IN PART, USER PRIVACY WILL HAVE TO BECOME PARAMOUNT TO ALL OTHER TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The potential for broad-scope "electronic agents" —preprogrammed service aggregators and self-organizing databases with proactive marketing capability—, aiding in everyday information-related activities, will require a new security standard to prevent identity theft, which could become one of the gravest threats to economic performance and individual liberty.

Digital IDs will have to be maintained through unbreakable private information management systems, entirely parallel to and separate from the information actually sent, which will behave as a single identifying set of characteristics for a given internet user, when ID is called for. [Full Story]

WARRANTLESS NSA WIRETAPS RULED UNCONSTITUTIONAL

FEDERAL COURT SAYS NO LEGAL OR CONSTITUTIONAL BASIS FOR ADMIN.'S CLAIM TO POWER TO DISREGARD JUDICIAL PROCESS

A federal judge in Detroit ruled early yesterday that Pres. Bush's NSA surveillance program, which uses wiretaps implemented with no judicial oversight, is unconstitutional. The ruling strongly enforced the point that there are "no powers not created by the Constitution" rejecting the AG's claim that the Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force (in Afghanistan) as a legal platform for sweeping new domestic powers.

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor specified that because there are "no powers not created by the Constitution" available to the president, "all 'inherent powers' must derive from that Constitution". This specifically takes issue with the attorney general's much criticized counsel suggesting the president can derive expansive new prosecutorial powers from laws specifically enacting Constitutional processes designed to permit overseas military action. [Full Story]

THE NET WIDENS: WHAT ELSE ARE THEY MONITORING?

NSA EXPERT HISTORIAN EXPECTS INTERNET COMPANIES ALSO COOPERATED WITH DOMESTIC SPY PROJECTS

Historian and expert NSA researcher Matthew Aid has told Salon.com that he believes it will be revealed in time that Internet service providers and cellphone companies also cooperated with the NSA spying and data mining programs. He offered no proof, but cited past examples of NSA overreaching and the key fact that the article exposing the collaboration of 3 major telecoms failed to explore the complicity or innocence of cable, cellular and Internet companies.

Aid is writing a comprehensive history of the NSA and has sources inside the agency, past and present. He noted that 30 years ago, as the nation was marking its bicentennial celebrations, the NSA scandal of the day was Project Shamrock, investigation of which had revealed that Western Union and other telephone and telegram companies had been passing information and content of communications to the agency, every day, for more than 3 decades. [Full Story]

DATA SHADOWS & IMPROBABLE CONSENT

NEW TRENDS IN 'COMPULSORY VOLUNTARISM' RAISE THE SPECTRE OF 'CONSENTING' TO INFRINGED LIBERTIES AGAINST ONE'S WILL

A contract is legally binding only when: all signatories freely and voluntarily agree to its provisions; all provisions are themselves legal; none of the provisions is inherently unreasonable or deceptively worded. Neither contracts nor "terms and conditions" including indemnities disclaimers, can be classified as legislation. They do not make or construct legal limits by themselves.

Obvious as this may seem, it is a necessary introduction to the problem of the trade in personal information and "soft surveillance". Another vital piece of information is the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which ensures "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects" and that such barriers cannot be breached except by judicial warrant, brought after providing evidence of "probable cause". [Full Story]

US STATE DEPT. MANDATES NEW PASSPORTS WILL CONTAIN RFID TRACKING CHIPS

The State Department has announced it will introduce new passports with electronic features such as Radio Frequency IDentification chips, intended to match information stored on these chips to the bearer's physical appearance, and to other information. Privacy advocates say the move is a giant leap toward a state of totalitarian interference in citizens' movements and personal information.

The chips will reportedly carry 64 kilobytes' worth of digital memory capacity, enough to be prepared to hold additional information, such as digital fingerprints and/or biometric iris scans, if it is decided such information should be included in future. Officials say they intend to implement security provisions designed to prevent unauthorized access, but it is unclear at present whether "skimming" technology, meant to hack into the chips' radio availability, can be stopped in all cases. [Full Story]