Recently I did an opening interview for the On Demand Conference here in New York. As part of the conversation we discussed intermediary liability for platforms and I suggested that complete transparency was a good trade for intermediary liability. Someone from the audience became quite upset and asked, “so you mean Uber should have no liability for a rape by one of their drivers?” I was reminded of that moment when I read the medium post about “Living and Dying on Airbnb.” So let me explain ...

Recently I did an opening interview for the On Demand Conference here in New York. As part of the conversation we discussed intermediary liability for platforms and I suggested that complete transparency was a good trade for intermediary liability. Someone from the audience became quite upset and asked, “so you mean Uber should have no liability for a rape by one of their drivers?” I was reminded of that moment when I read the medium post about “Living and Dying on Airbnb.” So let me explain ...

Keeping this short because I am on family vacation but there have been two stories this past week that we should all take note off. First, there was the revelation that the NSA had installed spying software deeply in the firmware of hard drives. Then, details about the breach of SIM card maker Gemalto were published that show how GCHQ and NSA obtained encryption keys for cell phones. Yet we keep insisting that somehow these crypto wars can be won. That somehow we can build a “trusted” computi...

Keeping this short because I am on family vacation but there have been two stories this past week that we should all take note off. First, there was the revelation that the NSA had installed spying software deeply in the firmware of hard drives. Then, details about the breach of SIM card maker Gemalto were published that show how GCHQ and NSA obtained encryption keys for cell phones. Yet we keep insisting that somehow these crypto wars can be won. That somehow we can build a “trusted” computi...

The Wall Street Journal had an opinion piece earlier this week with the tantalizing title “Metadata Liberation Movement” that reflects some of my thinking on network analysis. The column asks an important question: “With respect to the […] metadata surveillance, why is it conducted by a secret agency at all?” If this kind of analysis works then we should use it for a lot more than fighting terrorism. Possible use cases include fighting crime more generally, human trafficking and organized cri...

The Wall Street Journal had an opinion piece earlier this week with the tantalizing title “Metadata Liberation Movement” that reflects some of my thinking on network analysis. The column asks an important question: “With respect to the […] metadata surveillance, why is it conducted by a secret agency at all?” If this kind of analysis works then we should use it for a lot more than fighting terrorism. Possible use cases include fighting crime more generally, human trafficking and organized cri...

Standard & Poors downgrade of the US has generated much discussion, with some blasting S&P such as Robert Reich and some defending S&P such as Henry Blodget. Whatever you may think about the downgrade, I have a different proposal: let’s eliminate ratings agencies. By that I mean specifically a government sanctioned oligopoly on rating debt. Ratings agencies as they exist today are a distinct leftover from a pre-Internet era. They act as aggregators and evaluators of information which in the p...

Standard & Poors downgrade of the US has generated much discussion, with some blasting S&P such as Robert Reich and some defending S&P such as Henry Blodget. Whatever you may think about the downgrade, I have a different proposal: let’s eliminate ratings agencies. By that I mean specifically a government sanctioned oligopoly on rating debt. Ratings agencies as they exist today are a distinct leftover from a pre-Internet era. They act as aggregators and evaluators of information which in the p...

I love the duality of the Jeffrey Rosen piece about the End of Forgetting in the NY Times Sunday magazine with the release of the Afghanistan files via Wikileaks. Citizens and governments are faced with a fundamental challenge to privacy and secrecy. This is not a change in degree, like the advent of photo copiers compared to hand-cranked ink paper (yup, old enough to have used that!). It is a completely different world and many individuals and almost all institutions are in denial about how ...

I love the duality of the Jeffrey Rosen piece about the End of Forgetting in the NY Times Sunday magazine with the release of the Afghanistan files via Wikileaks. Citizens and governments are faced with a fundamental challenge to privacy and secrecy. This is not a change in degree, like the advent of photo copiers compared to hand-cranked ink paper (yup, old enough to have used that!). It is a completely different world and many individuals and almost all institutions are in denial about how ...

About a year ago, I wrote a post with the same title, except that it ended in a question mark. Since then I have become convinced that solving the problem of our ever growing data trails will require a reshaping of what we mean by and expect from the idea of privacy. Two things happened this week that brought this issue back to mind:On Monday in our partners meeting we got to talking about EZ Pass and how it creates a trail of a car’s movement (and by implication people movement). We talked b...

About a year ago, I wrote a post with the same title, except that it ended in a question mark. Since then I have become convinced that solving the problem of our ever growing data trails will require a reshaping of what we mean by and expect from the idea of privacy. Two things happened this week that brought this issue back to mind:On Monday in our partners meeting we got to talking about EZ Pass and how it creates a trail of a car’s movement (and by implication people movement). We talked b...

When I wrote that we need protest and change rather than more crypto many people accused me of being naive and/or not proposing concrete enough alternatives. Well here is one thing you can do immediately: donate money to Barrett Brown’s defense fund. Why should you do this? Because Barrett Brown is currently facing 105 years in prison primarily for posting a link to materials already available on the Internet. The link in question was to information that had been obtained by someone hacking t...

When I wrote that we need protest and change rather than more crypto many people accused me of being naive and/or not proposing concrete enough alternatives. Well here is one thing you can do immediately: donate money to Barrett Brown’s defense fund. Why should you do this? Because Barrett Brown is currently facing 105 years in prison primarily for posting a link to materials already available on the Internet. The link in question was to information that had been obtained by someone hacking t...

The FBI is asking for an update to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) which mandated a backdoor for communications gear. This revised version known as CALEA-II is asking for such a backdoor to be extended to all software communications services. I have been meaning to write about why this is a bad idea but Bruce Schneier does such an outstanding job explaining it that I simply recommend you read his post. The only thing I want to add is that all the evidence at...

The FBI is asking for an update to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) which mandated a backdoor for communications gear. This revised version known as CALEA-II is asking for such a backdoor to be extended to all software communications services. I have been meaning to write about why this is a bad idea but Bruce Schneier does such an outstanding job explaining it that I simply recommend you read his post. The only thing I want to add is that all the evidence at...

The Internet makes possible unprecedented levels of transparency. That is why it all the more disconcerting that large government programs operate entirely in secret. Nick Grossman has an important post up today on the USV blog about starting by giving companies the right to disclose government information requests and also requiring government to provide the same information. Here is a key section:We can start to do this by being open about the extent of data sharing between internet compani...

The Internet makes possible unprecedented levels of transparency. That is why it all the more disconcerting that large government programs operate entirely in secret. Nick Grossman has an important post up today on the USV blog about starting by giving companies the right to disclose government information requests and also requiring government to provide the same information. Here is a key section:We can start to do this by being open about the extent of data sharing between internet compani...

China is going through a crack down on social media and is apparently now requiring verified real identities online. This is very clearly an attempt to silence criticism and suppress unrest by making it easy to track down who said what online. I am strongly in support of pseudonyms which is one of several reasons why I prefer Twitter to Facebook. It is also why recently proposed bills to outlaw online impersonation are potentially problematic. But what about going the opposite direction? What...

China is going through a crack down on social media and is apparently now requiring verified real identities online. This is very clearly an attempt to silence criticism and suppress unrest by making it easy to track down who said what online. I am strongly in support of pseudonyms which is one of several reasons why I prefer Twitter to Facebook. It is also why recently proposed bills to outlaw online impersonation are potentially problematic. But what about going the opposite direction? What...