Blogosaurus Lex

Google Buzz, a new social networking site, was launched last week. Originally, it was an opt-out service, which meant users of Gmail were automatically signed up and their most frequent email contacts were automatically added as friends. These contacts were automatically granted access to Readers – including any comments – and Picasa photo albums. Furthermore, Buzz revealed the real names of many people using pseudonyms in email contact.

This caused a huge outcry. People were not pleased with having their information exposed to the world. While some people were simply annoyed their contacts found out about the embarrassing blogs they subscribe to, others faced huge risks by having their information exposed.

Many of those outraged were journalists who wanted to protect their sources and contacts. Protecting the confidentiality of sources is an important part of journalism and something journalists in Canada are fighting to protect at the Supreme Court.

Others faced a very real threat to their safety, especially people who are trying to keep their location and other information private from abusive ex-partners. Someone may have their abuser as an email contact, but that does not mean they want to share personal information with them.

These are not small concerns. One of the LRC sites which has seen a large growth in visitors in the past six months is VIOLET: Law & Abused Women. One third of all homicides in Alberta are related to domestic violence and one of the most dangerous times for someone in an abusive relationship is when they leave. Email contact can present a safer way of communicating with an abuser, but not if your information is exposed.

To its credit, Google has responded to the criticisms and taken steps to improve Buzz’s privacy. However, it may be too little, too late. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt may claim “nobody was harmed” by having their contacts, blog subscriptions, and photos made available to the world, but many people disagree.

In the US a class action lawsuit has been launched and a complaint has been made to the Federal Trade Commission.

Here in Canada, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart released a statement asking Google to explain how it has addressed privacy concerns since its launch.

“We have seen a storm of protest and outrage over alleged privacy violations and my Office also has questions about how Google Buzz has met the requirements of privacy law in Canada,” Commissioner Stoddart said. She also chastised Google for not consulting with her office before launching Buzz, “My Office has a variety of resources available to help companies build privacy into their products and services. When companies consult with us at the development stage, they can avoid the problems we’ve seen in recent days.”

In my last post on privacy issues and social networking, I wondered if people wanted to protect their privacy on the Internet, or if social networking sites were changing the way people feel about it. Based on the reaction to Google’s recent foray in to social networking, I’d say privacy is something people want – and in some cases need – to protect.

Click here for information on how to disable Google Buzz

The Legislating Sexualities in Alberta panel is today from 12-2pm in FAB 220 on the U of A Main Campus. I’m looking forward to going, but if you can’t be there, don’t worry. CJSR’s Gaywire is recording it and you’ll be able to download the audio.

In my last post on LSA, I mentioned my hope that there would be some discussion on the use of social media around Bill 44. Therefore, I was very excited to see that Edmonton blogger MasterMaq, with Edmonton Journal columnist Paul Simons (who won a Civil Liberties award from the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre for her coverage of the Bill),  complied some data on the Twitter stream around Bill 44 for May and June 2009. There isn’t much analysis yet, but there is a lot of raw data just waiting for it.

I started reading blogs because I love to learn and I’m happy to find that writing for blogs provides similar opportunities.

When I first read the description for the Legislating Sexualities panel, I assumed ‘declaration of pride in Edmonton’ was referring to the fact that Edmonton, while by no means free of discrimination, is a fairly open city. Former City Councilor Michael Phair was the first openly gay politician elected in Canada. The Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services grew out of one of the first university LGBT ally groups in Canada and provides U of A with “an interdisciplinary ‘hub’ for scholarly work in sexual-minority studies,” runs  CampfYrefly for sexual minority youth and has been running the InsideOut Speaker’s Series since 2003. The Exposure Festival had a successful third year and is now one of the city’s established summer events. And Gaywire brings Edmontonians an awesome hour of LGBT news and event every week. I look around me and think, “Well of course there’s pride in Edmonton.”

When I looked at the event description a little bit later and a little bit closer, however, I realized it referred to the mayoral declaration of pride in Edmonton. I had no idea what that meant. I did a little bit of research (ie: Googling) and discovered that Edmonton hasn’t always been so open.

Recently there has been a push to have cities officially recognize Pride events and that struggle continues.  There has been strong opposition from politicians and in some cases it has taken rulings by Human Rights Commissions to enforce recognition. In 2003, then-mayor Bill Smith said declaring Gay Pride Week in Edmonton would go against his religious beliefs. A complaint was filed with the Human Rights Commission arguing this decision was discriminatory and based on the mayor’s personal belief. Smith relented before a decision could be made on the case and Pride week was official declared by the city.

Canadians take pride in being one of the first nations in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, but often forget it was through the Supreme Court’s enforcement of the Charter, not because of political will. It’s only been 40 years since homosexuality was decriminalized, and 30 years since Operation Soap. Human Rights legislation exists to protect people from the tyranny of the majority and are a vital part of an open society. I’m glad Canada has such legislation and our courts and commissions are willing to enforce it. I look forward to a discussion of how such legislation has affected the lives of Canadians.

For more information about the history of homosexuality in Canada, check out the two part series Out in Canada on CBC Radio’s Rewind.

It was a Canadian decision, released by Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart in July 2009, that made Facebook change its privacy policy, but do Canadians know how – or even want – to keep their profiles private?

When Facebook’s privacy settings changed in December, users were given the option to keep their custom privacy settings or switch to the new defaults (check out Terms of Service Tracker for an excellent breakdown of the changes).  The new default settings, however, are not very secure. Users must customize various settings if they want their profiles to remain private. A recent article in the New York Times explains The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now (h/t Slaw.ca).

That is, of course, only if you want to make your profile private. According to Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook, not everyone does. In an interview with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington at the recent Crunchie Awards,  Zuckerberg claimed that social norms have changed and people are no longer as concerned with privacy as they once were.

Is this true? And if he feels this way, why has Zuckerberg made his own profile so secure? After the changes were made on December 9, Zuckerberg’s profile was briefly open to everyone. Whether this was on purpose or a result of a lack of understanding of the new default settings remains unclear. On December 11, he wrote on his fan page:

For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn’t see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)

Despite the lack of  “need to limit visibilty of pics”, Zuckerberg quickly changed his settings and his profile remains secure, with only his Wall and Info visible.

So does online privacy matter? Or is it true that are people are becoming less and less concerned? Some bloggers have claimed Zuckerberg is “more right than wrong”, while others have disagreed and raised questions about the motives behind the statements.

Some Facebook users do still care about privacy and were not impressed with the new defaults. On January 27, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) launched a new investigation in to Facebook in response to a complaint filed by an individual who claimed “the new default settings would have made his information more readily available than the settings he had previously put in place.”

Facebook had agreed to implement changes to address the concerns raised in the July 2009 report. According to the statement released by the OPC, however

Since then…changes to the site’s privacy information, settings and tools have sparked criticism from users who feel that personal information posted to the site is, in some instances, even more exposed now than before.

Perhaps social norms have not changed as much as Zuckerberg thinks.

What about you? Are you on Facebook? (The LRC is.) How secure are your privacy settings? Did you accept the new default settings? Is it important to keep this information private, or is it unreasonable to expect privacy online?

For more discussion on online privacy, including the implications of reduced privacy, check out this video (transcript) of Cory Doctrow, an author, journalist and technology activist, speaking at the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom 2008 Conference.

Here at the LRC, we try to keep abreast of what is happening with both technology and information management. Recently Jean-Claude Guédon spoke at the University of Alberta about his observations regarding what is happening in the world of digitization.

I’ll post an announcement when the recording of the talk is available on the U of A Library website. For now, here is a taste of what he had to say.

Beginning with the premise that a document or text can be approached as a technology, he went on to examine e-book readers, i-pods and the “One Laptop per Child” project as ways in which digital text is being handled. He reminded us of the importance of asking “who is going to control what about these digital texts?” He explored some of the pros and cons of Google’s massive digitization project. Consider that, although page images are available for anyone to download and read, the more powerful features of search, data mining and so forth are only available through Google. He pointed out the power of the network-distributed approach (e.g. open-source software, Wikipedia) to enhance both personal creativity and public productivity and speculated, “Could this approach be harnessed in the world of digitization?”