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pfir | 2 Jul 2008 02:09

Google Pilloried For Fighting Blog Spam


                   Google Pilloried For Fighting Blog Spam

                http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000397.html

Greetings.  As the "Google conspiracy freaks" seem to be gathering
with increasing frequency, I find it necessary to once again note a
new situation where it appears that good deeds by Google don't go
unpunished ( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000361.html ).

In today's saga, anti-Obama bloggers are essentially accusing Google
of censorship, by virtue of supposedly permitting Obama supporters
to manipulate Google's blogging platform and block anti-Obama blogs
( http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/01/business/google.php ).  

That the Google system apparently misclassified the blogs in
question is seemingly not a matter of dispute, but the evidence
suggests that the problem was caused by an unintended consequence of
Google's aggressively effective anti-spam mechanisms, which like all
other complex mechanisms created by mere humans, can be subject to
error.

In fact, if Google didn't aggressively filter for spam-related
materials in that environment, the entire related infrastructure
could quickly fall into useless chaos and people would be screaming
at Google about that, we can be sure.

As anyone who has worked with spam filters knows, there is a
complicated balance involved in spam detection, and it's inevitable
that sometimes mischaracterization of traffic will occur.  In very
(Continue reading)

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pfir | 3 Jul 2008 20:53

Vint Cerf Comments On Government's Role In Internet Broadband Access


     Vint Cerf Comments On Government's Role In Internet Broadband Access

                 http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000399.html

Greetings.  Some offhand comments by Google's Vint Cerf at a recent
event seem to have a triggered a panicky "Vint Cerf proposes
nationalizing the Internet" buzz that's been ramping up fairly
rapidly.  

Holy BitTorrent, Batman!  Army paratroopers seen dropping into
parking lots at AT&T and Comcast, while the Transportation Security
Agency orders us all to remove our shoes before surfing the Web! 

Settle down, everyone.  As usual with these kinds of stories, the
truth is significantly different from the breathless buzzing.  

Here's how Vint described his thinking on this issue to me last
night, presented verbatim.  And I'll note right here that I agree
100% with his analysis.  If the Internet is really the essential
infrastructural and economic pillar that is claimed all around, it's
time that we started treating it that way. 

 - - - 

   [ Comments From Vint Cerf ]

  "In a NYC event called Personal Democracy Forum, the question of
   broadband access came up.  There isn't enough facilities based
   competition in broadband and in my opinion there isn't likely to
(Continue reading)

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pfir | 4 Jul 2008 03:13

Lesson from Viacom: How to Get YouTube Users to Hate Your Guts


        Lesson from Viacom: How to Get YouTube Users to Hate Your Guts

                http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000400.html

Greetings.  When a large corporation shows a lack of respect for the
public, it shouldn't be surprised if the public at large shows an
increasing disrespect for them.  The media giant Viacom seems well
on the way toward providing the world with an object lesson of how
to take an already bad situation and stab oneself in the heart with
it.  

By now you've probably heard that Viacom has convinced a judge to
order that Google turn over comprehensive records of who watches
which videos on YouTube ( http://tinyurl.com/59lt2x ).  We're
talking tens of terabytes of log data, apparently.  Viacom claims
that since only "made up" login names are involved, and IP addresses
that (at least in the case of dynamic addresses -- statics are
another matter) don't directly map to individuals without additional
data from ISPs, there are no privacy concerns. 

This is bull of course.  I assume Viacom has smart enough technical
people involved in their ongoing battle with YouTube to know that
there are a variety of ways in which those frequently interlinked
login names, and even dynamic IP addresses that may be stable for
months at a time or longer, can be used to dig down to the point
where fully-identified dossiers of viewing habits would be entirely
feasible.  And video viewing habits are among the most personal of
entertainment choices that we make.
(Continue reading)

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pfir | 6 Jul 2008 18:26

Moaning About Google Street View -- While Her Majesty's Eyes Are Everywhere


  Moaning About Google Street View -- While Her Majesty's Eyes Are Everywhere

                 http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000401.html

Greetings.  Well, if there's one thing I've come to expect from the
United Kingdom's "Privacy International" and its sometimes amusing
leader Simon Davies, it's a sense of disproportion straight out of a
bad LSD trip regarding some key privacy issues.

Not that Simon is always wrong.  He's upset about Viacom's demand
for YouTube log data.  I agree that this is a matter of great
concern ( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000400.html ).

But often PI seems to be largely engaged in an anti-Google agenda,
and Simon's latest target seems to be the upcoming launch of Google
Street View in the UK.  Even with Google planning to obscure faces
and license plates for local images there, Simon is setting
deadlines for Google to respond to his queries and threatening
complaints to the British Privacy Overlords -- well the "Information
Commissioner" in any case.  Various other observers in England have
suggested that Street View would be entirely legal there, by the way.

I argue in favor of Google Street View -- I consider it a very useful
service with acceptable privacy parameters as currently deployed
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000380.html ).

But for PI to complain about Street View in Great Britain has all
the hallmarks of a bad joke.  The UK is utterly saturated with over
four million highly-intrusive, real-time, live, and frequently
(Continue reading)

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pfir | 8 Jul 2008 17:10

Firefox 3's Step Backwards For Self-Signed Certificates


            Firefox 3's Step Backwards For Self-Signed Certificates

                 http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000402.html

Greetings.  If you've switched over to Firefox 3 as your Web browser
already -- and in general it's a fine upgrade -- you may at some
point discover that rather than encourage (or at least not overly
discourage) the use of self-signed security certificates, Firefox 3
makes it *less* likely that anyone other than an expert user
will ever accept a self-signed certificate.  This is particularly of
concern to me since I've urged an expansion of self-signed certs
deployment as a stopgap measure toward pervasive encryption
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000339.html ).

Compared with Firefox 2, version 3 throws up so many barriers and
scary-sounding warnings to click through to accept such certs, that
it would be completely understandable if most persons immediately
aborted.

What's going on is that Firefox is now putting so much emphasis on
identity confirmation that it's making it even harder for people to
use the basic encryption functionality of the browser, which works
just fine with self-signed certificates (which admittedly are not
good carriers for identity credentials).

But in many situations, we're not concerned about identity in
particular, we just want to get the basic https: crypto stream up
and running.
(Continue reading)

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pfir | 10 Jul 2008 21:17

Google, Network Neutrality, and Bomb #20


                    Google, Network Neutrality, and Bomb #20

                  http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000403.html

Greetings.  A recent op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, penned by
a frequent apologist for ISPs, casts dark aspersions on Google's
support for Internet network neutrality efforts 
( http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/08/EDBH11LNQS.DTL ).

Just as a theoretical for the sake of the argument, let's assume
that Google "has been the prime organizer and source of funding" for
various network neutrality causes, as the op-ed's author posits. 

In such a case, I say, "Hurrah!  Keep It Up.  Go Google!" 

During the wonderful 1974 John Carpenter film "Dark Star," a
starship crew member attempts to talk planet-destroyer "Bomb #20"
into not exploding while still attached to the ship 
( http://youtube.com/watch?v=qjGRySVyTDk ).  (Assignment: Go rent the
movie to learn how the ship reached this bizarre state in the first
place.)  

He trys to convince the bomb that the detonation countdown order it
received never actually occurred, and that the bomb cannot trust its
own senses regarding absolute reality.  The bomb then asks how -- if
its senses are unreliable -- it can know that it's presently even
actually discussing the concept at that moment?  

The crewman replies that the concept is valid no matter where it
(Continue reading)

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pfir | 15 Jul 2008 04:06

Google Kills Kittens! Google Censors Critics! And Other Paranoid Falsehoods ...


Google Kills Kittens! Google Censors Critics! And Other Paranoid Falsehoods ...

                 http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000404.html

Greetings.  Over the weekend, and spilling over into this morning,
the blogosphere and a variety of mailing lists were abuzz with
accusations and speculation that Google, a vocal supporter of
network neutrality issues, was "censoring" -- by tagging as
potential "malware" (virus, etc.) sources -- pages of an
organization's Web site that tends to take the ISP-centric stance on
these issues, often opposite from Google's positions.

This noise was amplified by a pair of vocal pro-ISP, anti-Google
personalities, who jumped with both feet into the opportunity to
promote a theory that's about as reasonable as network neutrality
actually being a plot to take over the world's communications in
preparation for a mass UFO invasion (oops, did I just spill the
beans?)

To the credit of the Web site under discussion, they quickly moved
this morning to announce that in fact they had indeed suffered a
database injection attack, Google's malware warning
characterizations regarding the pages were accurate, and Google was
not censoring the organization's site.

Story retractions by bloggers followed almost immediately, with the
general theme being "better check out these stories more effectively
in the future."
(Continue reading)

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pfir | 26 Jul 2008 09:30

More Shameful Days at the FCC


                        More Shameful Days at the FCC

                http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000406.html

Greetings.  The FCC's approval of the XM / Sirius merger with only
trivial conditions required, in direct contradiction to their
explicit license grant terms that the two services *never merge*,
has again shown the Federal Communications Commission to be a paper
tiger, a political pawn, and a shameful example of promoting
absolute monopolies while ignoring genuine public interest
considerations.  

One hopes that the National Association of Broadcasters proceeds to
take this decision to court, where there's at least a chance that
some element of concern over the public's standing in this matter,
as opposed only to the wallets of satellite radio stockholders, will
have some chance of receiving fair play.

Simultaneously, word has come down that the Commission will shortly
issue their official "condemnation" of Comcast's P2P blocking
procedures, but in a manner that apparently won't even rise to the
level of a "slap on the wrist" punishment -- just a bit of minor
tongue lashing that most likely won't require Comcast to so much as
dip into petty cash.

Such decisions by the Commission are a disgrace.  They demonstrate
again that the public should have no faith in the FCC to care about
most public concerns within the official FCC purview, and why in
particular it would be foolish to depend on the Commission to
(Continue reading)

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pfir | 28 Jul 2008 22:33

Chuckling at Cuil: Not Ready for Prime Time


                  Chuckling at Cuil: Not Ready for Prime Time

                  http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000407.html

Greetings.  "The New York Times" today ran something of a fluff
piece ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/technology/28cool.html )
about a new search engine named "Cuil" ( http://www.cuil.com ),
which includes among its founding staff some former Google engineers.

Cuil (yeah, pronounced as "cool" -- too cute, eh?) appears to be
trying to position itself as the "anti-Google" -- particularly by
trumpeting a "we don't keep search logs" privacy policy
( http://www.cuil.com/info/privacy ).

I've spent some time experimenting with Cuil.  I'm afraid that my
initial impressions may be classified as "cruel" rather than cool by
some readers ...

Let's start with that "anonymous searches" privacy policy.  First
off, let's all keep in mind that what Cuil is doing is throwing out
data that they might otherwise collect, and that at any point --
either on their own volition or under orders from on high --
collecting identifying search information would typically be as
simple as changing a few lines of code.

Perhaps more to the point, I've never been opposed to the collection
of such data for reasonable periods of time in raw form.  It's
useful not only for personalized search implementations and tuning
of search algorithms and services over time, but also can be
(Continue reading)

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pfir | 30 Jul 2008 23:55

Flimflam and the ISP Man


                          Flimflam and the ISP Man

               http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000408.html

Greetings.  As some ISPs increasingly seem to approach the operation
of the Internet with something of the egalitarian finesse
reminiscent of a medieval warlord, an urgent issue moves ever more
toward the center stage -- either the Internet is a crucial resource
 -- and getting more important every day -- or it isn't. 

If the latter, we can let ISPs do pretty much whatever they want --
and subscribers will just have to make do and pony up for whatever
the ISPs deem fit to offer. 

On the other hand, if we view the Internet as an infrastructural
necessity, we need to start thinking in the same terms as power and
water, and strike a balance between the commercial interests of
network operators vs. society's needs. 

As for bandwidth caps, historical surveys of past news items are
instructive.  Go back to 2002, or 1998, or even earlier, and you can
find stories warning of the imminent need for caps due to concerns
over "bandwidth hogs" and the like.  I remember similar scare
tactics back when the ARPANET backbone was 56 Kbps! 

The big ISPs' newly resurrected infatuations with bandwidth caps are
often disingenuous at best.  The DOCSIS 3 data standards are going
to provide a whole lotta bandwidth for the cable ISPs.
(Continue reading)

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Gmane