A student (thanks, Gui!) pointed me to this Financial Times story about how Google Earth is fueling the push towards a more egalitarian society now that poorer citizens can spy on the massive and extravagant properties of the wealthier class:…
Category: Information Ethics
Security Analysis (and Response) of Diebold Voting Machines
Ari Feldman, Alex Halderman, and Ed Felton released an amazing paper on the security of Dielbold's e-voting technology. The paper is accompanied by a ten-minute video that demonstrates some of the vulnerabilities they've uncovered. Here is the paper’s abstract: Security…
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Sanger to Fork Wikipedia into Citizendium
Larry Sanger, first editor-in-chief of Wikipedia, announced yesterday his plans to fork the project into a competitor to Wikipedia called The Citizendium. Sanger describes it as "an experimental new wiki project that combines public participation with gentle expert guidance." The…
Google Celebrates Your Freedom to Read, Unless, of Course, You’re in China
Leslie Burger, the president of the American Library Association is helping Google celebrate Banned Books Week, taking place this year Sept. 23-30. Her post at Google's blog encourages us to visit google.com/bannedbooks, where we can use Google Book Search to…
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Wikipedia Defies China’s Censors; Challenges Google
Wikipedia has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries. Jimmy Wales also challenged other Internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with…
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User-provided Labor on Web 2.0
Putting the cart in front of the horse, I'm starting to think about my post-dissertation research which will focus on the value & ethical implications of the emerging Web 2.0 infrastructure. One issue that seems to frequently emerge is the…
FBI shows off huge, multi-source linked database
The Washington Post reports on the FBI's new counterterrorism database to help the war on terror: The FBI has built a database with more than 659 million records -- including terrorist watch lists, intelligence cables and financial transactions -- culled…
Amnesty Blasts Google, Microsoft, Yahoo
Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have undermined the rights of Chinese to freedom of expression through their actions in China, according to Amnesty International."All three companies have, in one way or another, facilitated or colluded in the practice of censorship in…
YouTube’s new policy says “we own your content”
Recalling past issues surrounding MySpace's terms of service claiming ownership of user's uploaded content, it appears YouTube has updated their TOS with similar language. See the discussion at BoingBoing.
Matheson: The Original Privacy Position
David Matheson has posted an excellent essay on the blog*on*nymity research blog suggesting a merger of Nagel and Rawls into a theory of "the original privacy position": Perhaps we can make use of a privacy version of the Original Position;…
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