Looking through the 186 pages of the Facebook prospectus provides an insight into the internet today. Gone are the days when surfing the net was instructive, pleasurable and yes fun. We believed in internet neutrality. When surfing today we have to bear in mind that what we look at and what we do on the internet is being interpreted, packaged and sold. And this includes the content and destination of our e-mails and blogs. Our personal opinions and preferences. The buyers are not only advertisers but also employers, credit agencies and public services.
This looking over your shoulder is an invasion of our privacy and European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding is working to give us the right to opt out of this data collection and have our personal data deleted. Are we giving her enough support? And if she is successful how will we know it has been done? Both more regulation and giving powers to Europe are unpopular with the government. But the prospectus for this one company tells us what a huge task independent verification is – probably beyond the capacity to enforce our existing data protection regulations and our privacy laws.
The search for data about us has become a major business battle ground and this prospectus tells us that it is an asset valued more highly than most other business assets. This is why the value of Facebook’s shares is estimated to be 50 billion pounds. Google’s income from their data is greater than Facebook’s .
Another factor is that the collection and processing of this data is becoming cheaper and easier all the time. So more companies will do it as it is so valuable.
All this raises questions of how the digital age is changing the way the economy works, how the democratic process works and our place in all of this. This prospectus should stimulate Parliament to have another look at the internet because of the insights it provides.
Standard practice here is to regularly delete cookies, not give my true birthday to sites without a real need for it, and try not to post things that I’d rather keep private. I run my own email server, so my mail is not sitting on someone else’s machine for them to scan for targeted advertising. I avoid giving government departments and companies more than the minimum information they need, and challenge them if they ask for more. If they insist, then depending on the context, what they get might not be as accurate as they would like.
I’m happy to provide each government department with information as needed, rather than have everything stored in a central place, because the potential for abuse of that data is far too high.
You can knock a few cents off of Facebook’s valuation because the data they’ve got on me is incomplete and not 100% accurate.
Obviously you are savvy about your privacy on the internet. The rest of us need to catch up. Your point about the integrity of the data – also made by Lawrencevanrijn – makes one wonder about the valuation.
“This looking over your shoulder is an invasion of our privacy and European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding is working to give us the right to opt out of this data collection and have our personal data deleted. Are we giving her enough support?”
Since the EU requires ISPs collect data about our internet access the commission lacks credibility in standing up for ‘privacy’.
ISPs collect this data presumably for security purposes. But do they package and sell it also?
They are required to keep it for the claimed reasons you suggest. However we don’t accept the phone company recording all phone calls or the mail opening and photocopying all letters which is a not dissimilar intrusion into private activity. The authorities have to go and get a warrant for that so I’m not sure I accept the argument for internet activity being some how unique.
Certainly the authorities don’t sell our internet data unlike say our electoral roll data 🙁 but I’m not sure I see a major distinction between my data simply being taken by the state being acceptable because it’s not being sold.
DaveH: “If they insist, then depending on the context, what they get might not be as accurate as they would like.”
Lucky no parliamentary based sites ask us for our e-mail address to post then or we might all have to ‘invent’ an address 🙂
I have a load of email addresses. The one I use on here is the one I use for blogs in general. It’s not the same as my ‘main’ one, not the one I use when dealing with the tax people, or Tesco. If nothing else, if I get spam to a particular email address then I’ve got a good idea who leaked it.
Owning your own domain name, especially when it’s one where you can conceal your personal details from the whois database, gives one the freedom to use many different email addresses. Owning multiple domain names provides even more flexibility.
I’m not untrackable on the internet (if nothing else, the grumpy cat is common), I just expect those who want to track me to have to put in a bit of effort.
It is not necessarily who you are that is valuable but what you are and what you do. This is what is being analysed.
@Croft Obviously we have not yet caught up with the way the authorities can use data to predict what we will do and take some precautions.
t is not necessarily who you are that is valuable but what you are and what you do. This is what is being analysed.
============
Except if you are a peer.
1. What you do is kept a state secret.
2. Who you are is valuable and expensive. 2,700 a day to the rest of us.
My view, is that if you are in the public employ, you should have no rights to privacy when it comes to your public role.
When it comes to your private life, if you are hypocritical, then you are fair game. For example, if you do a Chris Huhne and push out your wife as an election prop, whilst doing otherwise behind her back, its game on. You can have no right to privacy in those matters.
In general, the assumption should be that all public business is public knowledge by default.
That includes who is getting benefits, to how much is spent on drink from the public purse up to the cost of nuclear power stations.
Politicians discussions like wise should be public. No stitch up deals in darkened corridors. All in public.
Certainly if you enter public life your private life becomes more public. So does your expenditure of public money. Hypocracy applies equally to public and private life.
The Commission and its ‘chair’ Viviane Reding has my support in all-round and in-depth defence & protection of
[“]Individual-Ownership of One-Human-Being’s-essential lifesupports[”]
and thereto of possession or use-of all information thereto pertaining
(e.g. of your name, address, income, personal, and all other lifesupportrive details about you and about your lifesupports);
and Lord Haskel’s above presentation of the main Topic of this Matter has me ‘resonating’ with it.
————–
(Dave and Croft, I sadly receive your initial thoughts as being quite ‘reactionary’, so far not adequately and constructively engaging with the Matter that Lord Haskel’s Topic evidently doers ‘grasp’ and invite charitable-participation with).
————–
[For thoroughgoing guidelines to
(a) logical-analytical-formal-argumentational thinking
and
(b) comprehensively investigative and creative thinking
please see
(a) “How To Win Every Argument” (Pirie)
(b) “Edward de Bono’s Thinking Course”]
——————————————
Under the dearth of Individual Human Development, Perceptual Self-Control Education, and Generic Method III Cooperative Problem Solving Training,
and under glut, run-away usurping and cuckoos-in-nests wasteful world-dominations, by Obscenely-Bloated Individual Capitalism & its Flawed-Economics,
and under both its Failing UN Aggregate Human Development Index and its Failing Human-Holistic-Health and Failing Earth-Lifesupports-Conservation Governances,
of which Facebook, Twitter, the Internet, the BBC, the Media, Educational and Democratising Institutions, and a wide array of “citizens participation” fronts and ‘movements’,
along with Career-Ladder-Drilling Universities, ‘Educational’ Academies, Colleges, Schools and even ‘Child-Care’ Kindergartens, and Hospitals,
have become entrenched Integral-Parts;
this is a majorly challenging Matter.
———
Time to really and very seriously clean-up, at least the World’s English Language:
to re-define “privacy”, “secrecy”, “security”, “earnings”, ”necessities”, “luxuries”, “Workplace versus Lifeplace; and workplace-individual-efficiency versus lifeplace-personal-efficiency”, “needs & hows”, “rights and “wrongs”, “duties”, “ownerships”, “sustainabilities versus sustainworthinesses”, “checks and balances”, “one-human-being: one-human-living versus one-human-deing: multiple-human-livings”;
and to start rightly and unequivocally informing, ‘re-training, or re-educating’ if you will,
All of the World’s Peoples, including in the three principles of Good-Communication & Honest-Argumentation:
Clarity, Charity and Self-corrigibility…
—————————–
Poor or Rich, as human-beings we need to advance into worthier and holisticly-healthier generic-services than the Facebook-cum-“Send-in-your-views-and personal-details” Big-Loving-Momma-Knows-Best, Hedonistic-Pseudo-Civilisational-Honey-Pots invading every domestic sanctuary through TV, Radio, Junk-Mail, and Telephone, and every public-place and goods-packaging through psycho-penetrative advertising, billboards, and leaflet-handouts, and ‘community-shared-gossiping’
——————
Please do launch a ‘Petitional-&-Proactive Individual Human-Lifesupports Protection’ Movement –
and I would be an up-front signatory and fully-active participant member thereof.
Thanks for your support.
I am conditionally ‘stipulating’, that my support will be first and foremost for our Human-Race’s and Individual-humans’ lifesupports
as are available from the Earth
whereafter
it is vital that Governance be on the basis of
One human being needs just One human living
the longest-term Sustainworthiness and Sustainability of which will come only after establishment of the neglected governance & life skills and processes major components of which are listed in my above.
I am always amazed how people regard the internet. It is a free service they say. Their claim of free of charge freedom is not stopped by those powers on the internet, because the reality is that nothing is free. Everything costs money! The people behind it want to see a Return on investment, and they will get it (I do not fault them for that).
Some people understand this, and many of them do not really care that much, as they get their Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Google mail and all these other services, all for free(?). Many realise that these companies are getting their money’s worth, but most have no clue on the long term impact.
Yes, many understand that we are faced with an invasion of privacy, but to be honest that is not even the worst part. It is how this is linked in subsequent data tiers that can really damage the people in an unaware way. We have all heard the stories of people who did not get hired because an HR department saw a photo on Facebook. We lose out on opportunities because we thought it was handy to link LinkedIn and Facebook and now we are not regarded as 100% politically correct.
This is becoming the age of ‘we are what we digitally do’ and this is a scary development. Online data never fades and it is never balanced; now add to this the knowledge that the integrity of the data becomes less and less as these social networks connect and interconnect more and more.
So it is not just about what is recorded or what is deleted. It will be about whether the interaction of different social media data sources should be allowed at all. It must remain important that this is because these links will be more and more done through ‘intelligent’ engine programming, and that’s where the things will go wrong and whatever they connect could haunt the people for the rest of their lives.
the reality is that nothing is free. Everything costs money
It is not so much that everything costs money as that millions of people are prepared to spend a great deal of time looking at computer screens which are manipulated in a way that most of them are (including myself) unaware.
It is the power of the nanobyte (I wish we could italicize some things here, since that is the key to the argument).
There is one thing about ALL the technological developments influencing the mass consumer market since the second world war, and that is the CRAZE factor. (strictly on the topic of facebook, google etc)
It has been the preparedness, of a mass of people, to become involved with buying,sequentially, over the years, tapes, Hi-fi, CDs, computer, emails, and so on ad infinitum, that makes the successful commercial development of what are really quite worthless gadgets, gizmos, possible!!!
The thoroughgoing dishonesty of google in stealing the Bookmarks from the clients file
that is making their business much, much more profitable.
The desire for these megalo-corporations to know wverything about your interests, has prompted them to do everything they can, to discourage the copying and pasting of the URL
done by the client himself.
Those two apparently small changes, applied across a mass of people can have very valuable commercial effects.
I am very grateful for the presence of linnux and open source businesses in Europe which are prepared to cooperate to counter the evil effect of the copyright merchants of the 21stC.
It needs to be observed that these merchants are no different from Stevenson and Watt of the late 18th/19thC Cornwall, the Silicone Valley of those days, in copyright terms.
I hope I shall get a sensible and well reasoned reply, which Lawrence is certainly capable of giving.
Emotional replies are not welcome, verbal effusion or other epithet.
Yes there is a price we have to pay for the internet. It is the value put on it that is so extraordinary.
right to opt out of this data collection and have our personal data deleted. Are we giving her enough support?
It is a bit rich for a politician or a film/music star ever to complain about the right to privacy.
Rihanna 49million followers
Cameron 47,000?(I have not looked; probably in the millions too)
If you do not want fans or supporters then don’t talk yourself up, or publish anything at all.
The HofL should become an online digital electronic set of pictorial chambers, so that nobody can claim big expenses for attending, just attendance online/screen. You enter the chamber by pressing on the map of the chambers; the moderator logs you in allows you to speak. It is as good as the NHS audio visual conferencing system for as many people as want to use it at once.
We are human too. There is a line between public life and private life.
“This is becoming the age of ‘we are what we digitally do’ and this is a scary development”
It is not so much “scariness” Lawrence as an awareness that these tools being used to exploit us are the tools of Globalism, Globalisation, and Globalistic technology.
Our understanding of the human brain, of the meaning of “memory” which has five different substantial meanings, has changed so much that Man in his anthropological taxonomy is now thought of as not just homo sapiens (hominini) but as Homo sapiens sapientia.
Many are critical of the idea that we have moved on from merely being knowledgeable, to knowing that we are knowledgeable… about knowledge, and deny that the taxonomy has changed at all!
In fact, if we do say that those who do believe they are sapientia and not just sapiens, then we may also have to accept a different caste of people which is entirely different from racialism, and yet, and yet….. the super class or caste, an elitism
which to the minds of Linnux supporters is totally unacceptable.
I hope somebody can understand these thoughts! Bring on the dancing girls!
St Teresa of Avila, in her writings about the sufferings of Jesus, prohibited, during her own life time, any connection with her name to be made, of what she said since, it was perfectly clear that her remarks were not “hers”, did not belong to her, not her possession but profound observations, that any man/woman might have made about the human soul.
We would do well, whether on the political right, or even the far left,(surprising how they can coalesce!) to observe this
care and concern for the workings of the human soul.
Mentioning “Majesty”, as she does, whilst at the same time requiring anonymity, is a contradiction, or a subservience, a deference
which does her argument, for concentrating entirely on “Content” and not “form”, no favours at all.
“Majesty” is preferred, and understood, by the political right, whereas anonymity, in a sense a co-operative effort, that it belongs to all of us, is a feature of the thought of the political left, then and now,in Anno Domini, in the year of our Lord, and today.
In a generation which now has a grasp of other kinds of measurement of time, as with the “Galactic Year”* rather than the “solar year”, with which we are so familiar(!),
perhaps the Doctor of the Church of the 16th Century will be forgiven, by us all,not least for the beauty of her diction and writing of her time, but not of ours.
* Galactic year (google) the time that the centre of the solar system takes to rotate around the galaxy, by contrast with the time that the earth takes to rotate around the solar system sun.
[We are human too]
Oh! I did not know that, noble lord!
Politics starts with two; it is when the third one comes along that the problems begin!
(Gareth Too)
there are times when the system does not work as fast as my brain. if this post is triplicated, please blame the system and not me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_year
The scientological bilge of the “cleared” merchant on this website should be seen in the context of the Astrophysical time line of the
above hyperlink.
@Lord Haskel:
Anyone who joins social networking site such as Facebook or Twitter with any kind of traceable and honest self data are out of their minds.
First of all these organizations are only interested in what they can get from you, and charge is not far off, as well as advert bombardment. Next, what possible satisfaction can you get from having thousands or millions of virtual contacts with androids who you have no guarantee are even mildly close to what they tell you they are. The photo’s could be as fake as the nonsense they write.
However, they floated as they know this is simply money for old rope and soon even the dullest of the breed will tire of it and go onto the next fad. You know. the next anorexic we are told is a beauty and is being followed for her style and clothing trends. Or, the footballer who is popping his wife’s sister, or, best ‘friend.’ after all it so all in consuming.
What is as sinister if not more, is government and officials who take your data and sell it on to ‘who knows who’? The passport office, the DVLA, the voters registration list and on and on. Mush of what I am certain the general public has no knowledge of.
Take this last census for example. It was given over to an American company to collate. and that is of every man woman and child in the country. Now in a hidden computer in the USA to be used by whoever decides to use it in a global database. And you had to give this information to a ‘foreign power’ at risk of being criminalised by your government. A government it is becoming harder to trust with each hour that goes by.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/18/lockheed-martin-targeted-census-protesters
How is that for a betrayal of us all?
The DVLA sells on your information to anyone who requests it. The NHS is now ready to do the same. Your medical records are already and have been for a long time, able to be accessed by the local council officers, as well as the police, and who knows by who else. All under the promise that your information is protected. Protected from who? Do you know who? From you, that is who cannot get into your file. You, Unless you go through a heck of a wait and a fee. and even then all you have to produce to get a stack of your most personal information is an ID card of some kind. Yes, fall on the floor with laughter.
I wish European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding every support, but, she is going to need a great deal of luck and savvy if she is really going to tackle this nightmare. For hasn’t the horse already bolted.
http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/reding/index_en.htm
One of the main European ‘human rights’ privileges is the right to ‘privacy,’ and yet, not one step is taken to ensure we have the smallest protection or right to accountability for abuse of those rights.
Even using your PC on the internet now leaves your telephone number and bookmark data with Google, who then sell it on for nuisance calls to invade your home day or night. by every country who is willing to pay them for it.
Hence akin to Dave H. I am very selective about my on line information and never ever join idiot concerns like those already mentioned.
Remember, the biggest give away is your date of birth. Never tell the truth. Mimic Zsa Zsa Gabor and refuse to divulge or take 5-10-20-50 years off for good behaviour.
And hammer your MP.
The NHS is now ready to do the same. Your medical records are already and have been for a long time, able to be accessed by the local council officers, as well as the police, and who knows by who else. All under the promise that your information is protected. Protected from who? Do you know who? From you, that is who cannot get into your file.
Now Maude is getting to it! the best words she has written for a long time, amid all her emotioned clap-trip, and i do read it.
SPOT-ON!
And now for the NHs next trick for it to be instantaneously available!
Where would the husband wife partnerships of the common bobby and SRN be without sharing ALL information about the patient with the
local shop, and without the local shop making judgements about what treatment should be for
patients needing independent advice!????
SPOT ON MAUDE!
Coppers on the ward and nurses on the beat, both *ucking up policing and nursing in their own sweetest of sweet ways!!!!!
Maude, Gareth:
“You can view your personal health records. You don’t have to give a reason to see them, just ask at your GP surgery and make an appointment to come in.”
http://www.nhs.uk/choiceintheNHS/Rightsandpledges/NHSConstitution/Pages/Overview.aspx
What is on record, and to whom:
http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/records/healthrecords/Pages/overview.aspx
Yes we can view our personal health records. The important point is that we have to give our permission for others to do so. Even medical researchers. The same should apply to our other personal data especially as we now know how valuable it is.
The important point is that we have to give our permission for others to do so
========
What a load of codswallop. There is no such thing as permission when it comes to people accessing your NHS medical records on the Spine.
Loads of people have access and you aren’t given the choice about permission to your SCR.
Lord Haskel, it is my understanding that the Secretary of State for Health owns our medical records. Consequently, the Government has the right to authorise access to data within its own guidelines.
@Maude Elwes What can your MP do? Insist on upholding the existing privacy laws? But an MP has constituents who are collecting and analysing data in order to run their business or do their work more effectively.
@LH:
Not exactly sure what it is you are saying here.
All citizens of the country, if they are worried about the government selling off their data, should write to their MP and let him know that they are unhappy about the selling of their information and ask him/her to make every effort to get all those involved to abide by the ‘human rights’ act on the grounds of violation of their privacy.
There is a conflict between our privacy and the use of our private data to help the economy. An MP will have to come down on one side – hopefully on the side of our privacy.
@LH:
Surely, as Privacy is a ‘human right’ MP’s are under obligation to come down on it’s side.
Not to do so would be unlawful!
Fully agree: the handling of personal data online is a deep and broad concern which the Facebook flotation brings front of mind.
One deep aspect of the problem is the wrong-headed notion, wholly embedded in the practice of online services to date, that only organisations be the storers, controllers and beneficiaries of structured personal data.
This is manifestly inefficient, unjust, inappropriate, and often arguably illegal (eg data sharing practices and EU DP law). The obvious missing component is infrastructure (technical & contractual) that lets individuals take control of their personal data, keep it accurate, share it only as they wish and under their control, and realise its value. This includes issuing auditable consents to data sharing where the individual wants it.
Help is at hand. We and others are working hard at this (but standing on the shoulders of giants (in terms of legal, technical work already done). Happy to elaborate.
Please maintain your interest and focus on this whole question of personal data. We’ve yet to see the real power and value that is unleashed when we start to get it right.
Glad that you are taking it seriously and help is at hand. Giving consent to use our personal data is a good idea but what about all the unstructured data that is being collected such as the words and images we use casually. Then there is the data collected by sensors. It is all becoming more understandable
The point being about St Teresa that the content ie in Lord Haskel’s terms the “data”
should have no value at all, although her subservience to “Majesty” entails that all those people like herself, monks and nuns, in defering to Him are also giving huge accrued value to him as well.
So it was with the creation of the 17thC nation of Spain, as it is today with the huge
accrued value to the likes of Facebook.
The deference ,of the Divine madness of Facebook users, in giving away so much unnecessary information about themselves, to a worthless organization,
ensures the creation of huge Globalistic Corporations in which the noble lord may be delighted to invest.
In the 17thC it was merely about the unity of
what are today only nation states of the European Union, and even that was a big deal,
their uniting small principalities in the name of “Christ and King” to form much larger enterprises.
So it is today with the manic consumer crazes
of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and a host of others who are prepared to accept data for nothing and then attribute huge value in the market place.
Amazon is making a success of Kindle (‘Swere
I’m reading St Teresa!) WHS/HMV/Waterstones
will make a similar success of the name
iRiverCoverStory, a gadget for the same purpose and a rather more honest literary and musical pursuit, than those previously mentioned.
the value of Facebook’s shares is estimated to be 50 billion pounds. Google’s income from their data is greater than Facebook’s
Google has at least had some integrity as a Search engine, which can’t be quite as easy to program.
So what does that work out as per client user of Facebook?? £50bn; Say 50m of them? Is that £1000 each? Ridiculous
The prospectus gives the number of users as 850 million but their definition obviously includes indirect users. So it is hard to work out the price per user.