iBerry

I just got back from the Project Bamboo workshop at Princeton University.  This was basically a two and one-half day brainstorming session that brought together people from five areas:  arts and humanities research, computer science, information science, libraries/archives, and central IT.  The topic was cyberinfrastructure to support arts and humanities research.  I'm going to try to put together some bullet points from my notes when I get a chance.  As a central IT guy I found it refreshing to get the chance to interact with faculty, and the discussions I participated in were very lively.  For more information, check out the project web site:  http://projectbamboo.org.

As the temperatures rise in a typical Washington summer, so grows the pressure on some online advertising firms. 

Yesterday the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee held a hearing on the questionable methods for advertising currently being used by some Internet service providers (ISPs).  The hearing was entitled, “What Your Broadband Provider Knows About Your Web Use: Deep Packet Inspection and Communications Laws and Policies.”   Panelists included: Bob Dykes, the CEO for NebuAd, David Reed, an early Internet pioneer and professor at MIT, Alissa Cooper, the Chief Computer Scientist for the Center for Democracy and Technology, Scott Cleland, President of Precursor, LLC, and Bijan Sabet, a General Partner at Spark Capital. 

Committee members expressed concerns about ISPs working with third party advertising firms that monitor their customers’ web habits for advertising purposes.  Several people compared deep packet inspection techniques on the Internet with the United States Postal Service opening people’s packages.  They said a basic level of privacy is violated when an ISP employs DPI for the sake of increasing revenue, especially when unwitting customers are not aware their web browsing is being monitored. 

DPI is a computer network packet filtering that allows for the inspection of data for viruses, spam, or other content.  In other words, this inspection process would provide an ISP or other entity with the power of conducting data mining, eavesdropping or even censorship.  While DPI has benefits, panelist Bijan Sabet said the Comcast/BitTorrent debacle demonstrates that is also has its drawbacks.  A few weeks ago, it was revealed that Comcast was blocking BitTorrent on its network through the use of DPI technology.

This marks the second week that advertising firm, NebuAd, has testified before Congress on its “robust” security practices.  Last week, NebuAd faced questioning by the Senate Commerce Committee.  The firm says targeted advertising “provides consumers with significant benefits, serving them with more relevant ads, which they want, while ensuring they have robust privacy protections and control over their online experience.” 

Taking NebuAd to task, Chairman Ed Markey said DPI “can indicate every site a user visits and much more.”  He said he would not expect the postal service or UPS to open up his packages, and believes tactics used by firms like NebuAd are subjecting Americans to unwarranted invasions of privacy.  Furthermore, he said the notices that are provided to users are lost in the fine print or ignored. 

“When people use the world wide web, they don’t want it to turn into the wild, wild west when it comes to their personal information,” said Markey.

Ranking Member Cliff Stearns, on the other hand, urged Members to use caution when approaching this issue, saying the FTC testified last week that no new regulations were needed for the online advertising arena.  

“As the overall economy continues to take a downturn, the government shouldn’t be contemplating how to make it harder for small businesses to succeed.  Targeted advertising may be essential for small businesses to compete with larger ones,” said Stearns.  “Let’s look very closely at these issues before we leap to legislative proposals that even the FTC is not calling for at this time.”

Other Members said a policy of opt-in should be the norm, rather than the current opt-out choice.

“Why is the burden [of opting out] on me?” asked Representative Greg Walden.  “I think for the Internet to succeed as an instrument of commerce,” people need to opt-in to the system.

Citing another issue, Representative Hilda Solis said she was concerned that vulnerable populations, like the elderly or those who cannot speak English, may be targets for predatory advertising tactics. 

WHAT THEY SAID:  Here is a brief summary of the panelists’ testimonies.

Bob Dykes (NebuAd)- Dykes said his company, which he says does not use personally identifiable information, has designed a service “so that no one- not even the government- can determine the identity of our users.”  Dykes said they do not store raw data that can be linked to individuals.  He also said they provide users “with prior, robust notice.”  Dykes, who faced tough questioning from Chairman Markey and others, said they continue to innovate on privacy controls, including the development of better notices.  He said the Internet “is more than 50% supported by advertising,” so it is imperative that firms like his have access.

David Reed (Professor, MIT)- Reed, who began working on the Internet in the late seventies, said he believes DPI is “not at all necessary” for operating the Internet.  He said DPI technologies “actually violate long-agreed standards and principles that have been part of the Internet’s design from the beginning.”  Furthermore, Reed said they “pose major risks to the economic successes of the Internet … by normalizing non-standard and risky technical activity on the part of telecom operators who may choose to exploit captive customers.”  He said DPI is particularly harmful for unwitting customers, especially when they do not know how their information is being tracked (or even that it is tracked in the first place).  Reed said users must have informed consent and know exactly how their data is being used. 

Alissa Cooper (Chief Computer Scientist, CDT)- Cooper said that while DPI is benign and even beneficial at times, it “runs the risk of violating the trust of consumers for the Internet.”  She said this technology allows networks to see the political or religious sites a user may visit, while providing little notice they are doing so.  Cooper suggested that current online advertising techniques may violate federal wiretapping laws and might also interfere with normal Internet use.  She urged Congress to seek more information from ISPs and other companies about how they are using DPI, and asked that they consider a larger, comprehensive privacy bill to protect consumers.

Scott Cleland (President, Precursor, LLC)- Cleland said the hearing should have focused on the search engines like Google and Yahoo, which he says have a double standard when it comes to consumer privacy.  He said the committee should focus on “a comprehensive approach to Internet privacy,” rather than attacking the ISPs alone.  He said firms like Google are truly “Orwellian” in that they have access to a full spectrum of people’s information through Google searches, Gmail, Picasa pictures, Google health, Google calendars, etc…  Cleland said, “We are worried about perfect blinds on the windows when there are no walls on the house.”   For full disclosure purposes, he noted that his business involves working for ISPs, but said he was speaking on his own behalf.

Bijan Sabet (General Partner, Spark Capital)- Sabet said DPI is a significant technology breakthrough, which provides consumer and economic benefits.  But he said DPI could be used to thwart net neutrality, since it allows ISPs to slow down or turn off third party services or applications.  Sabet warned that a closed Internet will not thrive as incentives for innovation decrease.

In a press release, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned consumers about the “privacy landmines inherent in DPI.”

“The expanding use of DPI is increasingly sophisticated, complicated and lacking in transparency.  The risk to Americans’ privacy is massive,” said Timothy Sparapani of the ACLU. “Every time we visit the Internet, everything we read, everything we see- all of it is up for grabs with DPI. … Congress must be Americans’ firewall on this issue.”

In a letter delivered this week, EDUCAUSE and several other groups have asked that Congress pass the Broadband Data Improvement Act and the Broadband Census of America Act before the 110th Congress ends. The groups say this legislation "would improve information-gathering about current broadband deployment and assist in targeting resources to areas in need of such services." Learn more, and access a related press release regarding EDUCAUSE’s proposed new approach to making high-speed Internet services available across the country.

The call for proposals is now open for the 2009 Southwest Regional Conference, "Balancing Acts: Making IT Work for Everyone,” February 24–26 in San Antonio. Note: This year, the conference begins on a Tuesday and ends on a Thursday.

The deadline for submissions is September 9.

The program for this leading event in higher education IT will follow these tracks:

• Act 1: Balancing IT's Role in the Enterprise
• Act 2: Balancing Innovation and Operations
• Act 3: Balancing Learning 2.x
• Corporate and Campus Solutions

I'm not a visual person. Ok, not totally true. I'm a visual person, but I lack skills to express myself visually. I love concept maps. I thoroughly enjoy level images. I even signed up with Gliffy in a desperate bid to improve my ability to create visuals (I've been using Fireworks, but I don't have the time or patience to perfect it). I've tried to increase visuals in my presentations over the last year. And I appreciate Robin Good's injection of images and organization of text with my newsletter. See this edition, for example. I'm convinced of the value of visuals. I just don't usually take the needed time to communicate well in visual manner. It is, after all, easier to simply state the facts than tell a story, or to write a paragraph than to create an image. The difference, however, is that "stating the facts" has a short life span. It's not very memorable. A story lasts far long. And images can communicate far more effectively. Which is why I enjoyed reading this short article on Visual Literacy and Visual Thinking.

You might as well start a new tag on your del.icio.us profile for cloud computing. It is the terminological heir of web 2.0. And it's meaning is equally vague. Cloud computing means many things right now - ranging from a way to move data and applications around (or to scale them) without impacting quality for end user...or to applying supercomputing to the masses and the web (using a mesh network instead of only supercomputers)... or to purchasing computing power on demand...or to fluid data exchange and interaction regardless of devices. Basically, it's about the web. Everything on the web. Usable by any device. Or platform. With the complexity and technical challenges being managed without end-user awareness. The mess of different devices and distributed data don't inconvenience the end user. To a degree, it's an attempt to make technology more transparent and data access more flexible, reducing computing to utility status. Nicholas Carr equates cloud computing with spice trails of centuries gone by offers this lovely quote by Eric Schmidt: "When the network becomes as fast as the processor, the computer hollows out and spreads across the network."

Dabbawala's are a 5000 person collective involved in the complex delivery of meals in India. They are renowned for extreme efficiency in their work and organization, with an error rate of only 1 per 6 million deliveries. And they do it without technology. The cult of the dabbawala looks at this organization from the perspective of management on organizational effectiveness. An important concept: "Most of our modern business education is about analytic models, technology and efficient business practices...The dabbawalas, by contrast, focus more on human and social ingenuity".
I'm not sure why people find it surprising that dabbawala-level efficiency is possible without technology. Technology serves largely to augment and extend humanity. And it does so on a technical (duh) and conceptual basis. The conceptual basis of this extension, however, has existed in numerous forms long before computers. Tablets, pencils, paper, and machines have been a focus of philosophers and theologians for thousands of years. Yes, technology makes certain things possible, but, as Postman states, it gives and takes away. Human and social ingenuity is involved in a reciprocal relationship with technology - both forming and being formed.

EDUCAUSE Review and Publisher/Editor D. Teddy Diggs recently gained honors from two prestigious publishing awards programs. Read more in the press release.