A little bit of insight from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Category Archives: History
Francis Picabia
I have a growing fascination with Francis Picabia, not least of all because of some of the quotes I have found attributed to him:
“Who is with me is against me.”
“What I like least about others is myself.”
“The world is divided into two categories: failures and unknowns.”
“My ass contemplates those who talk behind my back.”
His poetry is strangely inspirational:
IN ORDER TO LOVE
SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO
HAVE SEEN IT OR HEARD ITFOR A LONG TIME YOU BUNCH OF IDIOTS
I find it fitting that he challenged order and reason in a way commonly associated with the term “hacker” today. So sad he has already passed. He would have been an amazing keynote to Blackhat, unlike the inanely boring LSE professor who was chosen for this year.
My early thoughts were to resist Dada-ism, but I wonder if with age I might be sliding into it nonetheless.
A Caucus Race and a Long Tale
Written in 1865, before the typewriter, this is from Alice in Wonderland, Chapter III, “A Caucus Race and a Long Tale” by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson):
"It _is_ a long tail, certainly," said Alice, looking
down with wonder at the Mouse's tail; "but why do you
call it sad?" And she kept on puzzling about it while the
Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the tale was
something like this:----"Fury said to
a mouse, That
he met in the
house, `Let
us both go
to law: _I_
will prose-
cute _you_.--
Come, I'll
take no de-
nial: We
must have
the trial;
For really
this morn-
ing I've
nothing
to do.'
Said the
mouse to
the cur,
`Such a
trial, dear
sir. With
no jury
or judge,
would
be wast-
ing our
breath.'
`I'll be
judge,
I'll be
jury,'
said
cun-
ning
old
Fury:
`I'll
try
the
whole
cause,
and
con-
demn
you to
death'."
The case for and against personal surveillance
Bruce Schneier thinks an article in the London Review of Books is “nice”.
It’s hard to disagree with nice, but I will try. Take for example, this quote from the article about sharing mobile data:
Such services are obscure, and barely legal, but it’s about to be brought home to the majority of mobile users that what they’re up to isn’t private information
This needs some perspective.
I have heard from engineers working on this functionality for at least five years, and I first used Helio’s buddy finder system years ago.
At one evening social in 2004 I remember a bright young engineer from Berkeley who told me he was building a system that would reveal “hot spots” for dinner and nightlife by mapping the concentration of mobile devices. For example, he said you would want to go to the dance club once a certain threshold of people had arrived. Although I could imagine alerts based on certain conditions (e.g. Bob and Alice are on site, Charlie has not, therefore it is time/safe to arrive) I instead pointed out to him how I would game the system.
A restaurant, depending on his system’s authentication and authorization, could easily create high numbers of bogey attendees as a form of marketing. If people started showing up on site soon after, their presence would either confirm what they saw on the map or drive them to question the accuracy of the system. I asked him whether trust was critical to the success of his system.
He walked away with a worried look.
Perhaps more to the point I had to work extensively with an army of lawyers to build privacy protections into “public info” mobile services at least two years ago.
The pressure from mobile carriers to share user information is intense, because data is where the mobile companies and the software vendors derive and push value to you, the ever-demanding customer. They think you will buy more “stuff” from them if it can tell you more about your communities and friends.
While the author of this article dismisses the “approval” message control as insufficient, there is no mention of the usability balance (curse?). Most users are statistically challenged when it comes to security. They want ease-of-use and the mobile companies are all too willing to oblige.
A few people, like myself, are hired by software and mobile companies to argue on behalf of consumers. We say the usual things, such as privacy is paramount and controls need to be tough to circumvent.
In response, we inevitably are faced with a series of user feedback studies and support-queue reports that suggest the majority of users really just want the easiest interface possible (which also just happens to be the least cost solution to the provider) with a data-rich source at their fingertips.
I am not surprised that we are moving towards the capability of a private and open surveillance society. In fact, I think that has always been the trend. I am only surprised when people try to pretend that this is a new problem, and that there is no precedent or case to be made for giving people fair and balanced governance system. If you leave decisions to mob rule, or a benevolent dictator…hopefully you get the picture. I met with Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Helio and others about these issues years ago and it was always fun to draw upon concepts like economics, ethics and political systems to resolve the security disputes.
We’ve been here before. Designing protections against abuse related to mobile device data should be like designing the next wheel — new technology, same old concepts.