confusion
17,524. One thousand, five hundred and twenty four. Hours. In meetings.
Man-hours mind you, not my hours, but; holy shit. Can you imagine if I represent the average employee of my company? My company has about 20,000 employees. 20,000 * 17,524 is 350,480,000 man hours per month. (P.S. These numbers are for this month and many of my meetings are scheduled only a few days in advance…) When the fuck does the work get done?
The Voyager spacecraft is the furthest man-made object in the universe. There’s a chance it could be found by another civilization. The Voyager record was designed as an album that conveyed information about planet Earth. It was an analog device. Digital is harder for long-term storage.
There’s a common belief that things that get put online always stay there. But “the Internet never forgets” is simply not true. The Internet forgets all the time. Intuitively we don’t think there is a problem. But if we are trying to tell stories and leave a legacy online it’s a real problem.
Anytime Mickey Mouse is in danger of following into the public domain, copyright law is extended. If your content came after Steamboat Willy, you can have copyright forever.
Luke Wroblewski’s notes [lukew.com] All Our Yesterdays a presentation by Jeremy Keith at An Event Apart in Boston, 2011
All the notes are worth reading… so go read them, I’ll be here when you get back.
Done? Good. So the second quote reminded me of my post The Internet Never Forgets [confusion.cc] (You can see how that would remind me, yea?)
I still stand by what I said in that post — the internet never forgets, and you should never commit anything to writing you would not want read back to you in court. But maybe the law of the Internets’ memory should be, in the spirit of the Internet, mashed up with Murphy’s Law; The Internet never forgets things you wish it would and you can’t be sure it will remember the things you want it to.
I wonder if the compulsory voting will work against the PAP [pap.org.sg]? My thought process: the PAP is analogues to the “Conservative Party” in most democracies — e.g. the Tories in the UK or the Republicans in the US. Conservative parties tend to do better with older voters. Singapore seems to be a society with a lot of younger people. In most places without compulsory voting older voters tend to be disproportional represented in voter turn out… Younger people don’t vote as regularly as older people. More seats are being contested by opposition parties in this general election than in any past election in Singapore. Ergo, will compulsory voting work against the PAP in this election.
I haven’t done any research other than Facebook, TV and water cooler conversations but it seems that the SDP [yoursdp.org] and the NSP [nsp.sg] seem to be credible opposition. By credible I mean they offer an alternative view on things more then they sling mud at the PAP. The workers party — from what I have seen — just bitches about the PAP not offering any solutions in any meaningful way.
I must say I didn’t pay much attention to previous elections I’ve been in Singapore for they just kind of happened and nothing changed. This time it feels different; like people give a shit and many people are struggling to make a choice between the PAP and the opposition in their district — I suppose this will work in the PAP’s favor; better the devil you know when it comes down to it on polling day. It’s also interesting to observe a vibrant — and young — election process as an outsider. I can only imagine what it must be like to watch the US presidential election as someone with no direct influence, it must be the best reality show ever.
I will venture a bit into specific politics: I hope that the voters in Bishan-Toa Payoh vote DPM Wong out of office over the Mas Selamat thing [wikipedia.org]. As the politician in charge it was his job to fall on his sword when the most wanted man in Singapore escaped via a bathroom window. He didn’t and his petulance as the suggestion that he ‘take responsibility’ smacks of complacency, of being in power an unquestioned too long, of being right or at least of not being questioned for so long that he has forgotten what responsibility is. Considering how highly paid public servants are in Singapore you’d think they would at least stand up and say “the buck stops here.” In the Mas Selamat case that would mean Wong — the minister ultimately in charge of it — would resign.
Finally; taxi drivers get really uncomfortable when you talk about all this.
The whole ‘iSpy’ issue (iPhone’s logging your location — see here [confusion.cc]) reminded me about the data. What good is the data?
According to Gizmodo;
Security expert, Kevin Mitnick says he’s “Quite shocked and disturbed” by the revelation, noting that the logged data could be of great interest to a variety of entities—prying spouses, private investigators, and, he reckons, the government. He speculates that the existence of the log itself “could have been at the request of the government,” as such data “can’t be used for advertisements. It seems to me more to be a governmental request.”
Sam Biddle in Your iPhone is Secretly Tracking Everywhere You’ve Been [gizmodo.com] on Gizmodo
The story has been defused somewhat since a few people have suggested that the logging of location data is a bug [gizmodo.com].
But… let’s say it’s not a bug. Lets say it’s invitational. Let’s go further and say that there are similar files showing who you called and who you messaged. All of this can be correlated with the timestamps so we can see who you called, when you called them and where you were. Now Apple has the same data that your phone service provider has about you (well, they have billing address too if you’re not pre-paid. The again Apple most likely has a credit card on file for iTunes or the App Store so they know where you live too…)
Why would someone want all this data? I said it was most likely for advertising before. But Mitnick says that can’t be what it’s for. I disagree. First of all because location is one of the basic data points for traditional ad selling; Age, Sex and Location or ASL is the triumvirate of advertising. It’s the minimum info you need to attract advertisers. So if Apple could get your Age and Sex — maybe from your credit card data — and combine that with your location (I know that your credit card gives them an address but they can make a more detailed determination of where you actually frequent from the log data than just your home address. For example; if you live in Brooklyn but are actually in Manhattan from 8AM to 8PM every day then maybe your a better target for Starbucks in Manhattan than Einstein Brothers Bagels in Brighten Beach.)
The second and more compelling reason I think the data could be good for advertising is related to Social Graphs. A Social Graph is basically a digital representation of you, the people you know, the people they know and so on. Facebook, and all social networks are Social Graphs. And the reason Facebook launched Places is because it can add location to the graph. And every additional data point added to the graph allows it to profile users better and sell more targeted advertisements. The better the targeting the more it can charge for ads.
Facebook’s Social Graph is founded on the friends that each user has. Then Facebook adds additional layers of data on top of this; everything your ‘Like’, every place you check in to, etc. etc. All of this is used to provide a richer set of profiling data to improve the targeting of ads. But all of it is based on who you say your ‘friends’ are. This is the Explicit Social Graph.
There is another type of Social Graph however, the Implicit Social Graph. This would be a Graph built up not by who you say your ‘friends’ are but by who you actually interact with. This Graph would be developed not by asking you but by observing you, and while hiring a PI to follow everyone around would be expensive there are more passive ways of getting this data. Your phone service provider knows who you call and message and who calls and messages you, as well as were you where any time your phone is turned on. This data could be used to create an Implicit Social Graph showing who you actually interact with in the real work better than who you ‘friend’ online. This Implicit Social Graph could be augmented by other data in the same way that Facebook augments their Social Graph and for the same purpose, better profiling; better advertising.
So maybe Apple is not using the location data and it’s all just a bug. But I think they will want it if they can get it, and they want those call logs and messaging logs. Once they build their Implicit Social Graph for you they will augment it with purchase data from iTunes and maybe Safari Browser history and any other data point they can get no matter who trivial it seems. All to sell more ads.
One final note; To get this data Apple would have to jump through some hoops; collecting it on the handset and sending it back to them from time to time. And I don’t doubt that they or some one else will do it at some point. Your phone service provider has the data already, it’s a byproduct of providing your mobile phone service. They don’t seem to be doing anything with it. I’ve seen several project discussed over the past few years about how to use it, how to create these Explicit Social Graphs and sell advertising, but I am not aware of any that have come to fruition yet. I think it’s only a matter of time till someone like Apple beats the phone companies to the prize. As usual the culture of phone companies will get in the way and they will let another revenue stream slip past them because they just can’t do it. They’re too risk averse, to cheap and to old-fashion. Silicon Valley is going to have their lunch and the ISPization of the phone companies will be one step closer.
What’s the difference between the image on the left and the image on the right?
The image on the left is the recently posted map [gizmodo.com] of the data that is being stored in your iPhone (and your computer that your iPhone syncs with). That data amounts to all the locations you have taken your phone since you upgraded it to iOS 4.
The image on the right is basically the same type of data — though it’s presented as an animation so you only see one spot in the image above. That data is from the your phone company — and it does not matter what phone you have, just having a phone on the network is enough for the operator to collect the data, and in many places they are required by law to keep this data for some period of time. (The map on the right also shows all the calls and messages to and from the phone; in this case stripped of the details but be assured the raw data that your phone company has does show who you are calling, I wonder if Apple is creating a log of this data on your iPhone too? I bet they are.) I ranted about this map a while back [confusion.cc].
There seems to be a lot of concern about the fact that your iPhone is logging this type of data. The FCC want’s to know why. Congress wants to know why. (See here [politico.com]). But there does not seem to be anywhere near as much concern about the fact the your phone company has the same data, more detailed data in fact. There should be. In fact, if privacy is your concern, or fear of Big Brother, you should be much more concerned about what your phone company knows than what Apple might know.
The big difference to me between the two is that the historical data that Apple is collecting is on the device and backed up to your computer. While the data that is collected by your phone service provider is on their servers and therefore subject to Lawful Intercept. According to Wikipedia Lawful Intercept [wikipedia.org] is:
obtaining communications network data pursuant to lawful authority for the purpose of analysis or evidence.
That means that all that data; including locations, calls made, calls received, messages sent and received, as well as who those calls and messages where to or from, is available to law enforcement if needed. This is generally a good thing; if it helps to catch murderers or sexual predators or other criminal types. But it’s not hard to image it being used for less savory purposes like tracking dissidents or in more authoritarian places tracking political opponents or protesters. This is the kind of data that warrantless wiretapping was collecting, and it’s done by just making a request to your phone service provider —if the provider or the government is good enough they could collect this data in real time. Meaning we are all carrying around Big Brother approved “bugs” in our pockets.
It’s also worth noting that the data collected by your phone company is required for it to provide the service you are paying for. There has been speculation about what Apple wants this data for; I imagine it will come down to advertising or something, some way to make more money off of iPhone owners; in the end Apple is a company interested in making money. In this case consumers will quickly forget the issue while privacy advocates piss into the wind about for much longer.