Ross Graber Consulting

Who owns the data associated with a user’s account within an online service?

The answer isn’t simple. For example, email has a different status than an address book. In the case of a social network derived from an address book, the social graph is viewed by the business as a compilation of data with a unique arrangement, and therefore copyrightable.

However, many consumers don’t understand or fully agree with this data grab. Facebook was at the center of a recent scandal. A user wrote a script to pull our his social graph information. A FB script noticed the TOS violation and banned him. However, consumer groups are forming lobbying groups to advocate for more user rights in “data portability“.

There are startups developing “Social Network Aggregators”, and those were recently proposed as the 2008 killer app. The Open vs Closed debate will continue moving to center stage this year.

The spammers come to Facebook; there’s a highly viral applet that utilizes social engineering to spread spyware. My 2008 prediction: 20+ hot girls a day asking to be our “friend” on FB as with MySpace (to spread spam). A new social network emerges with a limited audience and the trendsetters start to abandon FB. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

This post is an ongoing collection of articles, surveys, and research about data governance and privacy.

General references:

• The EFF has a page that gives a status update on pending legislation and court cases related to privacy rights.

Specific references:

• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has a chronology that documents data breaches since 2005. The grand total - 216 Million records in the USA from 2005 to present. A number of these are organizations that sell information security products and/or services and have failed to “eat their own dog-food”.
• MySpace suffered a security breach recently that allowed hackers to download a massive amount of private photos. Those have recently showed up on BitTorrent.

This post is an ongoing collection of articles, surveys, and research about electronic voting.

General, non-partisan references:

• The National Campaign for Fair Elections also covers the electronic voting issue.
• The EFF has a great page dedicated to the subject.
• The New York Times Magazine has a great summary article.

General, partisan references:

• Bev Harris of Blackboxvoting.org is the authority on the challenges surrounding electronic voting.

Specific references by recognized, non-partisan experts:

• The Ohio Secretary of State recently issued the EVEREST report which also found numerous critical flaws in electronic voting systems.
• The California Secretary of State sponsored a “top to bottom” review of electronic voting and decided to decertify several models.
• The Colorado Secretary of state followed suit and decertified the voting machines on 12/18/07.
• One of the most respected security experts, Bruce Schneier, posted an insightful article about electronic voting.
• An AP article documenting the conviction of election workers for rigging the 2004 Ohio recount.

Specific, partisan references:

I don’t endorse the conclusions reached by the materials below, though I do find the information to be thought provoking. While the impact of the systematic weaknesses in voting systems is hotly debated and quickly devolves into conspiracy theories, the fact that they are inexcusably weak is not contested.

• Youtube has a controversial video of a programmer giving testimony that he designed a program to “fix” elections.
• The Washington Post summarized a controversial book by Professor Steve Freeman that compares the security and regulation over slot machines to electronic voting systems.
• Rolling Stone Magazine published two articles by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about electronic voting.