Michael Zimmer.org

Yet another blog meme, courtesy of folks at Chronicles of Dissent (by way of Threat Level). This time I’m supposed to grab the nearest book, open to page 123, go down to the 5th sentence and type up the 3 following sentences. Not sure why, or if someone is going to be patching all these together into some kind of mash-up, but I’ll play along…
The book closest to me is “Libraries, National Security, Freedom of Information Laws and Social Responsibilities,” an amazing report published by the IFLA/FAIFE detailing how libraries …

In more chilling news, it has been reported that Google reached a settlement with a group of Israeli council members and will voluntarily turn over the IP address of a blogger accused of slander to a court overseeing the case. From the report:
For more than a year, the anonymous blogger slandered three Shaarei Tikva councilmen: local council chairman Gideon Idan, Shaarei Tikva director general Haim Blumenfeld and council member Avi Yokobovich. The blogger accused the men of criminal acts, such as pretending to be handicapped in order to receive discounts …

[This thought piece appears on the On The Identity Trail project's blog, blog*on*nymity. Thanks to the amazing folks there for the (second) invitation to contribute to the project. -mz]
This post is an attempt to collect and organize some thoughts on how the rise of so-called Web 2.0 technologies bear on privacy and surveillance studies. After presenting a few examples of unintended consequences of Web 2.0 that bear on privacy and surveillance, I will introduce the term “netaveillance,” which might provide a useful concept around which a more robust theory of …

A new meme has germinated the blogosphere: 5 Blogs That Make Me Think. The fine folks at Chronicles of Dissent (a production of Pogo Was Right) included michaelzimmer.org among 5 privacy-related blogs that make them think. Thanks for placing me in such impressive company!
Here are 5 (mostly random) blogs from my blogroll that really get me thinking on a daily basis:

Sivacracy.net: Siva Vaidhyanathan & friends on media and culture

Schneier on Security: Bruce Schneier on security and security technology
Infothought: Seth Finkelstein on censorware, search, Wikipedia, and much more
Rough Type: Nicholas …

Siva Vaidhyanathan says “no thanks” to Time magazine naming “you” Person of the Year. From his essay on MSNBC.com:
… Well, thank you, Time, for hyping me, overvaluing me, using me to sell my image back to me, profiling me, flattering me, and failing to pay me. As soon as I saw myself on my local newsstand, I had to buy a copy of Time.
Notice that Time framed the Person of the Year as “you.” That should sound familiar. Almost every major marketing campaign these days is about empowering “you.”
“You” have …

Seth Finkelstein has tagged me with the “five things you don’t know about me” meme spreading through the blogosphere, and I figure if Seth is game enough to play, I can too

About 8 years ago, before I returned to academia (and, eventually, privacy advocacy), I worked for an electronic payment processing company (we made the credit card machines at stores & restaurants work). While there, I developed an Age Verification system (similar to this) where liquor stores and bars could swipe mag-stripe equipped drivers licenses through their credit …

Just a quick meta-post about the blog:
While I am committed to keeping the blog ad-free (no Ads by Goooooogle, thank you), I have decided to add some buttons for a few campaigns that I believe in:

Individual-i:
Today, the rights of individuals are being eroded: by government, by corporations, by society itself. This icon — the Individual-i — represents the rights of the individual.It represents the right to privacy and anonymity in the information age. It represents the rights to an open government, due process, and equal protection under the law. It …

Nicholas Carr has posted a thoughtful essay on “The Great Unread“, describing the relationship between the powerful and the powerless in the blogosphere:
What we tell ourselves about the blogosphere – that it’s open and democratic and egalitarian, that it stands in contrast and in opposition to the controlled and controlling mass media – is an innocent fraud.
It’s an excellent read, and has generated some good comments as well.

The Boston Globe has a story today about plagiarism in blogs. I’ve previously commented on blog plagiarism – blogiarism – in terms of stealing content in order to drive readers to your site to capitalize on advertising revenue. The Globe’s story, however, addresses a different motivation for online plagiarism – personal blog plagiarism, where someone actually takes personal content and pretends it’s from their own life:
Last month, an alert reader informed Beth that her blog was being plagiarized. Dozens of Beth’s blog entries had been stolen, word-for-word, over six …

There’s been quite a bit of discussion lately across the blogosphere on “blogiarism,” the practice of cutting and pasting content from one blog onto your own without any link, attribution, editing or commentary in order to drive readers to your own advertising revenue.
Clearly, such practice amounts to plagiarism and is unethical. While the blogging medium certainly makes it easy to cut & paste & post to your own site, as if the words were your own, proper attribution is always required. Even for blogs that don’t add any new commentary …

Daniel Solove (guest blogging at Balkinization) writes about privacy norms in the blogosphere, citing a case where a Korean woman who didn’t clean up her dog’s waste was subject to highly critical and invase online treatment. As one blogger described what happened:
Within hours, she was labeled gae-ttong-nyue (dog-shit-girl) and her pictures and parodies were everywhere. Within days, her identity and her past were revealed. Request for information about her parents and relatives started popping up and people started to recognize her by the dog and the bag she was carrying …

There’s a discussion at Jeff Jarvis’ Buzzmachine about what term should be used to describe “blogs” (the assumption being, apparently, that “blogs” is too techie, or has a negative connotation, or something like that). Jeff has frequently used the term “citizens’ media,” but Bill Keller suggested perhaps “peoples’ media” is a better fit. Jeff’s current offering is Volksmedia: “I like that. It has a funky, retro, populist, Volkswagen feel, of course, with that buggy attitude.” An almost certain response was the connotation between “volks” and Hitler. So, toss that out.
I …

Just came across Langdon Winner‘s blog, Technopolis:
Technopolis, a weblog by Langdon Winner, offers occasional reflections on historical, philosophical, and contemporary questions that involve the perplexing intersection of human ends and means.