Securing Internet Freedom is a short thirty-page essay by Milton Mueller that I received at Fifi 2008.

1. The Dream
Mueller begins by killing off the dream of the Internet as a free and utopic device. He believes that the list of infringements to our freedoms is getting too long defend ourselves from: “For every innovation, there is an impostor…and we cannot escape it because it is invading our pockets through our mobile telephones.” “As long as we cling to that fallacy we will lose what is worth keeping about the original dream,” says Mueller.  Therefore, we need to redefine what we mean by “Internet freedom”. (13)

2. Rights
“The relationships between privacy, security and freedom are double-edged”, explains Mueller. An excess or lack of privacy or security can sacrifice our freedoms. Mueller concludes that “One cannot talk sensibly, much less scientifically, about privacy and security on the Internet without grounding the discussion in a commitment to clearly defined individual rights.” Therefore, we need to begin with a discussion of individual rights so that we can avoid messy inconsistencies where the law attempts to justify rights based on whim or group circumstance. More to the point: freedom needs to come first.

3. Order
Mueller contrasts the writings of Lawrence Lessig and Friedrich Hayek to exemplify how we might begin to discuss the laws and institutions necessary for building freedom on the web.  Lessig’s “code is law” implies the hierarchical influence of information technology over the user, or as Mueller has paraphrased: “code and law express the power of some people over others”. Hayek, on the other hand, uses the example of language and patterns of grammar to exhibit that these “rules and conventions are constraints”, while at the same time the rules of language enable freedom. Mueller sides with Hayek’s model and adds that the code of TCP/IP was law in Hayek’s sense of the laws of language, and not Lessig’s hierarchical law.

4. Institutions
Institutionalism is Mueller’s social science approach in his research that refers not to the organizations, but to the rules and roles of individual actors. Here he addresses two major problem issues: (1) the problem of nation-state vs. global governance and (2) the responsibility ofISPs. Mueller also questions the ISPs

I’ll nonsequentially (is that the right word?) update this list from time to time as I find more examples.  Feel free to add suggestions in the comments.

1. Cop seen on video knocking over bicyclist has been indicted

The following is thanks to BoingBoing.net:

No wonder police officers sometimes confiscate and destroy the cameras of people who videotape them committing illegal acts — the officers occasionally end up having to pay for their crimes, just like civilian law breakers do.

Remember the video I posted of a Critical Mass bicyclist who got knocked over by NYPD officer Patrick Pogan? Fox News reports that Pogan’s been indicted and must report to the Manhattan prosecutor’s office next week.

Police said Long was obstructing traffic and deliberately steered his bicycle into an officer. Charges were dismissed.A video of the body-check that knocked Long over was posted on YouTube and has been viewed more than 1.6 million times.

Pogan has been stripped of his badge and gun and been assigned to desk duty.

As Radley Balko says, “If not for the video, the guy on the bicycle would probably still be facing charges.”

There is only one proper answer to that question. If you ask a white person, what percentage of African Americans Should be Living in Your Neighborhood? The answer is 100%. If people are going to be non-discriminatory they aren’t paying any attention to it, and the answer is 100%. - George Akerlof on Thomas Schelling’s 1971 “Models of Segregation” research in which Schelling demonstrates that even a small preference for one’s neighbors (75%, 90%) leads to total segregation.

*personally I think the answer “it doesn’t matter” would be an acceptable answer as well

Schelling, Strategy, Industrial Organization - Explanation starts at 18:47

Facebook Connect officially launched on Thursday and gives its members access to third-party sites using their Facebook login/password.  This feature is available to all FB’s members on (so far) 24 partner sites including: Digg, Twitter, Citysearch, CBS, CollegeHumor, Hulu and others.  In addition to instant access, Facebook Connect promises data portability: taking your friends, profile pics and privacy settings with you as you transverse the web. Facebook Connect will give us a well needed rest from profile-fatigue, but at what cost?

The data portability debate has been going on for some time now. The DataPortability Project has been promoting open source standards for data portability since 2007.  They encourage use of the well known OpenID authentication protocol which has already been adopted around the web by Google’s Blogger, AOL, Yahoo, etc - as well as having been incorporated into open source platforms like Drupal and Wordpress.

It seems now that it may be Facebook Connect (with their 120 million users), and not OpenID, that will lead the data portability movement. This is alarming news for privacy advocates. Facebook has had controversial privacy issues in the past with its Beacon failure, misleading delete buttons, and opt-ing out.  If Facebook Connect does eventually become the standard ID for the internet, then one of the obvious question is: Do we trust our online identity to the Facebook corporation, with almost every page on the Internet arguably becoming a Facebook page, or serving as some extension of the Facebook platform?

Chris Saad from the DataPortability Project helped answer a few of my questions about Facebook Connect’s departure from open source standards. “Facebook Connect does not use open standards. So we do not endorse their implementation”, Saad explained. “Facebook Connect is much like Microsoft’s Passport/Hailstorm project from a number of years ago. It’s an attempt to provide a proprietary single sign-on for the web”.

I asked, “How does Facebook Connect differ from OpenID?”

Saad: “OpenID is a key building block towards an open data portability ecosystem that will rival Facebook in both size and scope. A solution that no one owns and is open as the document web is.  OpenID is a piece of technology that is critical to the data web. It’s not a complete solution by itself however. What’s needed is agreement on the methods and protocols for a user to control the sharing of their data as well. The community is working hard on all of these issues, however, we’re just at the beginning of the story.”

We seem to be staging the next format war for our digital identities[1] - and as history has shown us, the best standard doesn’t always win.  In the famous  QWERTY vs. Dvorak keyboard battle,  the “inferior” QWERTY keyboard had already gained widespread adoption by 1936 when the “better designed” Dvorak layout was developed - here it is often said that the early adoption of a standard, or as many say “luck”, influenced the market’s choice.  In the famous VHS/BetaMax battle it has been said that Sony, despite  releasing the BetaMax one year prior, lost out to JVC’s VHS due to JVC’s “aggressive licensing” techniques[2].  The point being that independent of the quality, the commercial sector can greatly influence standards. Yet, the VHS/BetaMax battle is an interesting metaphor here for Facebook because perhaps the first one out the gate doesn’t have to prevail in light of a better alternative.  Futhermore, on the web we’ve seen dramatic format switching take place over only a few years (ex. Friendster -> MySpace ->Facebook).

So another way of thinking of it: Facebook Connect may be Facebook’s Achilles’ heel. This war might play out more like the Internet Explorer vs. Firefox debate, where open standards, open source and customizability can slowly triumph over evil corporate ownership.  If Facebook is unwilling to evolve - or if Beacon-esque privacy troubles arise - there could be backlash.  IF we are optimistic, Facebook Connect may actually be one of the “best things to happen to OpenID” and data portability in general.

1- Yahoo, MySpace and Google have also launched similar data portability projects this year
2 - In addition, BetaMax had better quality, but shorter record time than VHS
* - Get OpenID: http://openid.net/get/

Pownce has been acquired by Six Apart (Movable Type, TypePad and Vox) and will close their doors on December 15th.  Pretty lame if you ask me.  People spend a lot of time developing communities, updating profiles, pictures etc etc, only to have the founders (Leah Culver and co.) bail after a year and a half.

I think this shows the volatility of investing too much time and energy in Web 2.0 projects.  And Pownce wasn’t just any social network, just last year The NY Times called Pownce “the hottest startup in Silicon Valley”, Digg founder Kevin Rose threw his reputation at the site, and invitations were being sold on ebay.

Data portability would be really helpful for these situations.  And it seems a bit serendipitous that Facebook Connect has launched on the same day.  Personally I’m routing for the open-source protocols like OpenID, but any move towards data portability is a move in the right direction.

www.pownce.com/castig