Eli Pariser, of MoveOn.org, gave a TED talk on why some people walk through a city looking for the same thing over and over again (the familiar comfort of a Starbucks) while others might seek out new and different tastes and ideas. In his presentation the former represents the opportunity for personalised service while the latter does not.

Ask yourself (especially if you are sipping on the Frappa-Mocha-Latte-Lowfat-Vente made just the way you like it) how a restaurant you have never seen before could give personalised service. Is it even possible? It might seem like a legitimate question today, but it used to be the other way around. Restaurants used to have trained staff to guide you to a meal selection. People used to ask how a restaurant that serves people over and over again (at least in name — the franchise) from an industrialised menu could ever feel personal.

To be fair he is speaking only about search engine results, not the food examples I give above. So the presentation is billed as a new issue with information technology. However, I do not see why this warning would not fit within any service industry.

Some people seek out a genuinely personal experience despite the risk while others actually want to be identified and served in a consistent and predictable manner. If you want something that is not “highly tailored”, you actually do still have options. You can choose not to use Facebook just like you choose not to eat at KFC.

An example he gives of online personalisation is NetFlix, so here’s my view on that specific site: I struggled so much with their suggestion system it made me quit. It not only guessed preferences incorrectly but it started to annoy me to the point where I ended up researching why I was given some discs quickly but others took weeks to arrive.

What I figured out over a few months of opening different accounts was that if I sent movies back too quickly (more than four a month) an algorithm started to “throttle” my next selections. They were pushing suggestions to me not only on an “interest” level, but also on a demand model of profit — the slow accounts (e.g. higher-profit) were given priority on popular titles and the fast accounts received suggestions of unpopular ones. Pariser does not bring this profit element of personalisation up at all, although you might guess it by looking at his Egypt news example.

Omitted from his presentation also is the fact that preferences always shift over time. It may be highly desired by the first generation to experience the latest ideas of personalisation, yet the next generation could easily reject it as a boring, lame or lazy habit and seek out the opposite — non-personal stuff is cool again. “Check me out, I’m anonymous”

The adoption of personalisation therefore may not be assumed to be a constant linear risk at all. We no sooner would approach a “web of one” than we should see all grandparents and grandchildren singing the same tune.

Consistency too could grow out of fashion as people seek sources of information that push self-challenging or contradictory view points.

So while I sympathise with Pariser’s lament and warning about search engines, I don’t think he explains the risk in a historic or broad social context.

Finally, although his Google example mentions 47 points for user identification, there is no mention of why it grew to such a high number. They obviously were not satisfied with fewer data points as users became more mobile, more virtual, more multi-user, multi-platform and harder to recognise. It seems to be intended to be a shocking example of how a search engine really know it’s you, but it also could be seen as a hopeful statistic. It’s hard now and there are many ways it could get even more complex for a site to figure out who is really who — he could have suggested we build a reverse filter bubble.

A new best practices document is available from Visa. It is meant to address questions related to mobile phones accepting card payments.

…a set of mobile acceptance best practices for merchants, software developers and device manufacturers who are using consumer mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet computing platforms to facilitate the acceptance of card payments. Visa best practices call for important security considerations such as encryption and tokenization of cardholder data and are designed to foster a better understanding of the merchant and service provider responsibilities related to securing cardholder data when a mobile phone is used as an acceptance device instead of a traditional terminal.

The emphasis on encryption and tokenization is a long time coming. Will this be extended soon into every POS? With the infrastructure in place for mobile, the addition of POS seems very likely in the near term.

It also begs the question of whether strong authentication measures, the entire emphasis of chip-based payment cards, will garner less attention now from Visa (non-chip transactions under 30% used to mean they did not force the PCI requirements).

Perhaps most interesting is Visa’s re-emphasis of a standards role for the industry that clearly is independent of the PCI SSC.

…Eduardo Perez, head of global payment system risk, Visa Inc. “As a payment technology leader, Visa is well positioned to provide the industry security guidance for emerging acceptance solutions.”

News is breaking right now that Intelligence operations led American forces to kill Osama bin Laden. Navy SEALs attacked from helicopters 30 miles North of Islamabad in Abbottabad, Pakistan a wealthy suburb and regimental center of the Pakistan Army. Simple human intelligence (HUMINT), such as tracking couriers, is said to have unraveled his location. Ironically the hideout was betrayed by its enhanced security — much larger with more control (taller fences, waste incinerators, no obvious sources of income) compared with other houses in the area.

President Obama’s speech indicated the operation started in August 2010. The timing coincides with deployment of US military helicopters to Ghazi, 30 miles north-west of Islamabad, to provide humanitarian assistance).

A shipload of U.S. Marines and helicopters have arrived to boost relief efforts in flooded Pakistan.

The “USS Peleliu” arrived off the coast near Karachi along with helicopters and about 1,000 Marines.

While that was public news, this operation was kept secret even from the Pakistan authorities after several previous operations were known to have leaked — suspects fled the target buildings before US soldiers arrived.

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Although the killing will stir controversy related to positive identification, let alone the dual-edge of humanitarian assistance or America’s relationship with the Muslim world, there is another reason to pause and review the details.

Like the recent black helicopter AH-6 operations in Somalia, which I have written about before, (this operation is said to have used the MH-60) America has been focused recently on development of a more effective approach to asymmetric threats — rapid response by very small teams to kill and extract high-value targets in foreign territory.

This is not the automation of smart bombs, laser shields, drones or nuclear deterrence. This news is America’s demonstration of classic intelligence and exceptional human capability.

The fact that it happens deep within the confines of another country means there is also a more traditional long-range global military support and supply chain element to the story — the helicopters were said to be launched from Ghazi, the site of a humanitarian mission. But the small team and low or no civilian casualty count suggests that America’s operational capabilities have evolved significantly in just a few years.

These aren’t the drones bin Laden was expecting.

Update: Some reports say one of the four helicopters in the mission was destroyed. Other reports, including eye-witness accounts, say only two helicopters were involved and they came from Jalalabad, Afghanistan; 200 miles East of Abbottabad. Perhaps there were two on the ground and two in a higher-elevation support role? The official line has been that a mechanical failure was the cause of the crash. A forced landing inside of the compound also could have been expected or even planned, similar to the 1970 Operation Ivory Coast in North Vietnam, designed to get troops on the ground as quickly as possible and distract from others.

The landing was a hard one, but successful. Rotors contacted some of the tall trees which bordered one side of the landing area. It was anticipated that damage would occur and the plan provided for the HH-3 to be considered a loss. By means of an explosive charge with a timing device, it was to be destroyed upon departure of our troops from the compound.