Security

Google gets “worst” privacy rating

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Disclaimer: I worked at Yahoo! and a large part of my responsibilities as a member of the security group included protecting privacy for consumers.

The news from the BBC on search engine company privacy practices should not be underestimated:

Google has the worst privacy policy of popular net firms, says a report.

Rights group Privacy International rated the search giant as “hostile” to privacy in a report ranking web firms by how they handle personal data.

Google naturally put their legal team forward to fight back, rather than a senior executive or a founder. Personally, I have been inside Google several times, have met with senior Google security staff, and I would not trust my data to their systems. Then again, that’s just me and I might be a Paranoid, if you know what I mean.

Privacy International placed Google at the bottom of its ranking because of the sheer amount of data it gathers about users and their activities; because its privacy policies are incomplete and for its poor record of responding to complaints.

“While a number of companies share some of these negative elements, none comes close to achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy,” read the report.

Responding to the report Nicole Wong, general counsel for Google, said in a statement: “We are disappointed with Privacy International’s report which is based on numerous inaccuracies and misunderstandings about our services.”

Endemic threat to privacy? I guess it’s not just me.

Ironically, Google is extremely private about its services. They might argue that this is a defensive tactic to ward of corporate espionage, protect their IP, etc. but the bottom line remains that consumer privacy is threatened and their love for opaqueness simply adds to the danger as evidenced by the rippling results of disclosure laws like California’s Shine the Light, AB1950 and SB1386.

Why do I mention the legal versus founder difference in the public message? Because I worry that this is a leadership issue more than one of legal wrangling. Remember when Yahoo! originally tried to make a statement that they had no choice but to abide by local laws of a country they operate in? It had to do with a critical decision moment when they were involved in the conviction of a Chinese reporter. Yeah, the “we’re just interpreting the law” went over like a lead balloon and today they have a new message:

“Yahoo is dismayed that citizens in China have been imprisoned for expressing their political views on the Internet,” the company said in the statement faxed to The Associated Press, which asked Yahoo to comment on Shi’s lawsuit.

The Internet company, based in Sunnyvale, California, also said it has told China that it condemns “punishment of any activity internationally recognized as free expression.”

However, Yahoo added that companies operating in China must comply with Chinese law or risk having their employees face civil or criminal penalties.

Naturally, it gets confusing when a company tries to comply with a foreign law and gets sued domestically as a result. I do not think the problem is easy, nor do I propose that I have the answers. More importantly, I think it shameful that we have to wonder about the moral fiber of companies, especially wildly successful global companies with armies of lawyers at their disposal, who refuse to stand stand up for freedoms and the people who fight for them.

Yahoo! is doing the right thing now both economically and philosophically speaking, albeit maybe not politically, by trying to influence and disrupt consumer constraints in the market in which it wants to operate (e.g. more freedom of speech = more/better flow of information online). Perhaps Google will follow their lead…again.

History, Poetry

Strange Fruit

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MySpace is best when it’s showing off talent. Not just any talent, and definitely not the sort marked by a giant “approved by WalMart” advertisement, but the sort of talent that jumps forth and exceeds expectations. The value of the record industry is turned on its head when you pare back the layers of smarmy marketing, like eschewing the circus in favor of a troubadour act at the local cafe or pub.

Straight, no chaser, in drink terms, Maya Yianni is one of those to watch. I can’t get over the clarity of her voice.

Interesting that she includes videos of her idols on her page, perhaps for comparison. First is Ella Fitzgerald:

She also has Billie Holliday’s rendition of Strange Fruit, a poem by Abel Meeropol (1903 – 1986) written under the pseudonym Lewis Allan:

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

The hidden irony of this particular song is that while Strange Fruit was popular after Holiday first sang it in a New York club in 1938, the major recording companies refused to produce it. Too controversial for her label, Columbia Records, a small record company (Commodore Records) finally published Holiday’s rendition. Today it is considered her signature song. A recent documentary tells the full story.

Another little bit of trivia is that a record company under the name Strange Fruit was formed in the UK the same year that the poet, schoolteacher and union activist Abel Meeropol passed away.

History, Poetry, Security

The Rape of Europa

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I just saw this, on the recommendation of a friend, and I have to say it was an excellent film.

The Rape of Europa tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during the Third Reich and World War II.

On the one hand it’s a fascinating modern tale of tragedy. The movie does a fine job working within a narrow band of time. However, I couldn’t help but wonder on the other hand about the larger picture (pun not intended) of conquest throughout the ages. For example, many of the items in modern galleries around the world, such as the British archives, were looted from foreign lands during times of conquest and conflict. But I guess the point is that if we limit our scope to the 1930s and 1940s, the Germans (and maybe the Russians) turned out to be the undisputed bad guys of the (art) world.

Needless to say, the movie also focused in on physical objects of treasure but not the ideas of art or the intellectual capital. Countless brilliant poets and their poems were destroyed, but the film made no mention of their fate…

Poetry

A Poem Beginning With a Line by Pindar

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by Robert Duncan

[…]

      On the hill before the wind came
the grass moved toward the one sea,
      blade after blade dancing in waves.

[…]

      the information flows
         that is yearning. A line of Pindar
      moves from the area of my lamp
         toward morning.

      In the dawn that is nowhere
         I have seen the willful children

      clockwise and counter-clockwise turning.

Duncan has numerous interesting comments on political and historical themes in his poetry, but I especially liked these bits most relevant to information security.