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Digital Rights

Exciting SSI announcement was not well received by some

Kaliya Young · December 17, 2018 ·

The Microsoft-Mastercard SSI alliance is great news, but some thought it was a bad thing.

By all accounts, Fast Company’s Cale Guthry Weissman is a good reporter who knows his audience. Informed that Microsoft and Mastercard were partnering to create a new kind of digital identity, he went to get some answers, assessed the situation, and wrote an article that called the alliance “frightening”

But the solution they offer–a one-stop, universal identification for any and all applications–would mean that every citizen would be entering into a system built by private companies that centralizes all of their personal data. Every digital company wants to be a data hoover, and this program seems to underscore the extent of this pursuit.
[…]
Overall, this announcement speaks to a common tone-deafness among large companies when it comes to privacy. While proving digital identity can certainly be onerous, some solutions may only imperil us even more.

  • Microsoft and Mastercard have a frightening plan to create “digital identities”, Fast Company 12/04/18

Weissman can be forgiven for such a sentiment; tech companies have a well earned reputation for turning their users into unwitting laborers  on data farms. But it should be noted that Mastercard isn’t “a tech company”. When Weissman reached the global credit card company for comment they explained their bold new venture with excitement, emphasising that they’re going to use trusted sources to give control to the user, who will “share only the information needed to conduct their transactions,” but it didn’t really seem to take. They came off like someone who walked into a party wearing a set of Google Glass, then tried to use the uncomfortable pause that it created to explain how his dork goggles weren’t just a mass surveillance tool, they were also going to change the world! The spokesman would have done better to explain that SSI applications are explicitly NOT “centralized” as Weissman came away understanding, but they appear to have got a bit carried away.

“The next update will let me see into your soul, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

It seems like a good solution because it is a good solution, but Mastercard won’t be able to sell it themselves

We have no reason to doubt that Mastercard’s excitement is earnest. Credit card companies live the third-party verification problem every day, because they’re third party verifiers. Mastercard sees ease-of-use and fraud prevention savings in this project that are meaningful, and are excited about being able to achieve them without having to handle customer data. They’re telling their merchants and cardholders: “Look! You’re going to FINALLY have control of your own verification process! No more 2 pieces of ID with a credit card, and we don’t even have to hand the process over to a data-harvesting behemoth to get it done! (You just know Facebook or Amazon would have underbid anyone to get their hands on card verification contract, and for all the wrong reasons.) But Fast Company isn’t inclined to take them at their word. After all, they are partnering with Microsoft, who would surely know what to do with a bunch of cardholder and merchant data.
Microsoft, for their part, declined comment, which is interesting since they have so many good people working on this project who could comment eloquently including Daniel Buchner, Pamela Dingle and Kim Cameron among others. Perhaps from the PR department the silence is born of experience. Microsoft is the butt of the funniest tech jokes, and is aware of the shadow they cast. There isn’t anything they say to the general public to convince them that an identity play they’re making isn’t just another way to sink their tentacles into their users a bit further. The process knowledge just isn’t out there. Best say nothing until it’s ready.

Microsoft have good reasons to be this helpful.

The Microsoft that dominated the 90s and early oughts got their lunch eaten by Google, Facebook and Amazon, who cornered users into a Faustian bargain that they didn’t even know they were making. Microsoft’s unbreakable hold on the enterprise software market financed attempts to compete in the data and advertising realm, but it’s clear by now that beating data harvesters at their own game isn’t in the company’s DNA. This identity play may be Microsoft doing the next best thing: taking them out at the knees by giving the data control back to the customers.
Facebook is able to give access Cambridge Analytica and others access to user data by virtue of the fact that they have it. They could (and still do) broker access to users via their data, because they have ongoing user consent. If the user revokes that consent, nobody is checking if they’re honouring that revocation.
But they can’t sell what they don’t have. A user-centred permissions system would allow individuals to give Twitch streaming access to their X-Box ONE account, or not. LinkedIN could offer seamless work history verification, which would allow for an easy transition into the corporate HR services business, handling payroll, insurance and benefits for enterprises – all newly simplified user centric verifiable credentials. There are all sorts of places Microsoft can organically grow their core software business once the framework is in place to allow users and organizations to provide and revoke data from each other… once they can get over concerns people have over how the system actually operates.
There is not yet an SSI killer app. While Microsoft would no doubt like very much to develop one, they’re probably just as happy having someone else strike the discovery vein that gets the public’s attention. Once the user base gets wise to their new-found control, a self-sovereign-ID-enabled Microsoft will be in a position to enter the 2020s as a major player in this new market place of decentralized identity and credentials under the true control of the user.
(With files from Braden Maccke. Feature image courtesy Humans Unlimited Blog.)

Talk at TEDx Brussels

Kaliya Young · October 19, 2016 ·

I was invited to give a talk at TEDx Brussels.
I explain Identity in the context of the Future. Enjoy!

Rethinking Personal Data: 3 WEF reports

Kaliya Young · October 19, 2016 ·

I met Marc Davis at SXSW in 2010, we instantly clicked and began working together. He was on contract to develop pre-reading material for a WEF meeting in the fall about Personal Data. I contributed significantly to the document which became the basis of the first Rethinking Personal Data project Report, Personal Data the Emergence of a New Asset Class. [click on the image to download the report].
wef1
 
I remained actively engaged in the project and two of the Appendixes in the 2nd report were authored by me.  The MindMap of Personal Data Types and the Value Network Analysis of the Exploitive Personal Data Ecosystem (Both of these are in the My Data, My Value, 6 Sense Making Diagrams) [Click on the image to download the report PDF]
wef2
 
Diagrams that appeared in the third report I helped sketch out with Bill Hoffman. Here is the Third WEF report PDF [click on the document image].
wef3
WEF Report #3 write up on my Blog.
 

WEF Report #3: Unlocking the Value of Personal Data!

Identity and Social Justice

Kaliya Young · October 18, 2016 ·

I co-presented Identification and Social Justice with Bob Blakley who is the Global Director, Information Security Innovation at Citi as the closing keynote at the Cloud Identity Summit in Colorado.
I gave this presentation in 2012 at the Cloud Identity Summit as the Closing Keynote address. It highlights issues that surround the rich having privilege and able to manage their identities more favorably then the poor.
 

Identification and social justice from Kaliya “Identity Woman” Young

Facebook so called "real names" and Drag Queens

Kaliya Young · September 25, 2014 · Leave a Comment

So, Just when we thought the Nym Wars were over at least with Google / Google+.
Here is my post about those ending including a link to an annotated version of all the posts I wrote about my personal experience of it all unfolding.
Facebook decided to pick on the Drag Queens – and a famous group of them the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.  Back then I called for the people with persona’s to unite and work together to resist what Google was doing. It seems like now that Facebook has taken on the Drag Queens a real version of what I called at the time the Million Persona March will happen.
One of those affected created this graphic and posted it on Facebook by Sister Sparkle Plenty:
MyNameIs
Facebook meets with LGBT Community Over Real Name Policy  on Sophos’ Naked Security blog.
EFF covers it with Facebook’s Real Name Policy Can Cause Real World Harm in LGBT Community.
Change.org has a petition going. Facebook Allow Performers to Use Their Stage Names on their Facebook Accounts.
 
 
 
 

We "won" the NymWars? did we?

Kaliya Young · September 23, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Short answer No – I’m headed to the protest today at Facebook.
A post about the experience will be up here by tomorrow. I’ll be tweeting from my account there which is of course @identitywoman
 
______
Post from Sept 2014
Mid-July,  friend called me up out of the blue and said “we won!”
“We won what” I asked.
“Google just officially changed its policy on Real Names”
He said I had  to write a post about it. I agreed but also felt disheartened.
We won but we didn’t it took 3 years before they changed.
They also created a climate online where it was OK and legitimate for service providers to insist on real names.
For those of you not tracking the story – I along with many thousands of people had our Google+ accounts suspended – this posts is an annotated version of all of those.
This was the Google Announcement:
[Read more…] about We "won" the NymWars? did we?

Another Bill of Rights

Kaliya Young · March 13, 2013 · Leave a Comment

I did a collection called the Bill o’ Rights o Rama. 
Here is a new proposed one a Gamers Bill of Rights  based on another gamers bill of rights (this one looks beautiful)
Preamble
Gamers are customers who pay publishers, developers, and retailers in exchange for software.
They have the right to expect that the software they purchase will be functional and remain accessible to them in perpetuity.
They have the right to be treated like customers and not potential criminals.
They have the right to all methods of addressing grievances accessible by other consumer.
They have the right to the game they paid for, with no strings attached beyond the game and nothing missing from the game.
Gamers’ Bill of Rights
I. Gamers shall receive a full and complete game for their purchase, with no major omissions in its features or scope.
II. Gamers shall retain the ability to use any software they purchase in perpetuity unless the license specifically and explicitly determines a finite length of time for use.
III. Any efforts to prevent unauthorized distribution of software shall be noninvasive, nonpersistent, and limited to that specific software.
IV. No company may search the contents of a user’s local storage without specific, limited, explicit, and game-justified purpose.
V. No company shall limit the number of instances a customer may install and use software on any compatible hardware they own.
VI. Online and multiplayer features shall be optional except in genre-specific situtations where the game’s fundamental structure requires multiplayer functionality due to the necessary presence of an active opponent of similar abilities and limitations to the player.
VII. All software not requiring a subscription fee shall remain available to gamers who purchase it in perpetuity. If software has an online component and requires a server connection, a company shall provide server software to gamers at no additional cost if it ceases to support those servers.
VIII. All gamers have the right to a full refund if the software they purchased is unsatisfactory due to hardware requirements, connectivity requirements, feature set, or general quality.
IX. No paid downloadable content shall be required to experience a game’s story to completion of the narrative presented by the game itself.
X. No paid downloadable content shall affect multiplayer balance unless equivalent options are available to gamers who purchased only the game.

Real Names vs Nyms at Quora & Unconferences

Kaliya Young · July 30, 2012 · 1 Comment

I am again in a #nymwar [wikipedia & Botgirl’s Scoop.it] situation that I actually care about. I have been denied full participation in Quora for a long long time now because my last name was listed as IdentityWoman (ironically my answer to why having control over your identity and personal data online matters did go through but then was put into suspension when they insisted on changing my name to a WASPonym).
Now there is a thread all about an unconfernece for women of Quora and they have mentioned both Unconference.net my business and She’s Geeky that I founded in the threads. I for this one important conversation bow to the “feudal lord”  of Quora as their humble “content producing servent” share my so-called real name…and help them have a good unconference and raise the issues of real name requirements within the context of real human beings who engage with the site all the time and hopefully staff as well.  Until we have the freedom to choose our names for public interactions on the web – to define our own identities based on our context and how we wish to appear where – we do not live in a free society.
 
Before they “banned” me for having the wrong color skin name. I got to write an eloquent to this question (posted below since it isn’t on their site).
Why does owning one’s own online identity and personal data matter?
and was voted to the top (with 5 votes) by others…but now that answer isn’t there cause I didn’t use my real name.
So now you can’t see it…this is akin to not letting me sit somewhere in a public space because the color of my skin is the wrong one OR I happen to sit in a wheel chair to get around and there isn’t room in our restaurant and they are in violation of American’s with Disabilities Act.
The women of Quora are talking about organizing an unconfernece and found two of my organizations/sites and are enthusiastic about them. I am totally unable to talk to them about their ideas or my sites unless I pass their “real names” test….you know like a pole tax … that Bob and I talked about in our Cloud Identity Summit closing Keynote about Identification and Social Justice (slides and videos will be online soon).
My answer to:
Why does owning one’s own online identity and personal data matter?

We own our own bodies – we have freedom and autonomy to move around the physical world.  We have rights and freedoms; If our physical lives are terminated there are consequences.
In the digital world many people are not the primary “owner” of their own identity (in digital space the equivalent of a physical body is a persistent identifier like an e-mail address or a URL or phone number).  Most people’s identity on the web is “under” terms and conditions of a private company and they can terminate people’s accounts, their identities, without recourse.
Many companies with which people have their identities “under” choose to in exchange for providing identity provisioning services and things like e-mail. They also track and aggregate user’s activities on their services and across the web via cookies and other beacons.  This profile of activity has real value and is being used by the companies to profile them and then sell abstract versions of the profile information on ad exchanges.
Some have said we live in an age of digital feudalism, where we are serfs on the lords’ manors (the large web portals).
Having the freedom and autonomy to choose who we are online and how we express ourselves is important to ensuring a free society  with rights and liberty.
Adding some more: About one’s social graph… The links in your social graph in the current architecture of the web exist within particular contexts – you have friends in Facebook or Followers on Twitter or Professional Contacts on LinkedIN. Those links, those connections in a “social graph” are ulitmately owned by the company within which you made those links. If you choose to leave any one of those networks – all your links to those people are terminated.
This is an architecture of control. You are locked into those systems if you don’t want to loose the links to others in them. To own your own identity would be to have an identity that would give you the freedom to not loose the links to your contacts, they would be peer to peer autonomous of any particular service.
The next time there is a major social revolution like in Egypt governments are not going to try and turn of the internet or mobile phone system it is likely they will simply call facebook ans ask them to terminate the accounts of dissidents.

 
 

Is Google+ is being lynched by out-spoken users upset by real names policy?

Kaliya Young · August 28, 2011 · 5 Comments

Following my post yesterday Google+ says your name is “Toby” not “Kunta Kinte”, I chronicled tweets from this morning’s back and forth with  Tim O’Reilly and Kevin Marks, Nishant  Kaushik, Phil Hunt,  Steve Bogart and Suw Charman-Anderson.
I wrote the original post after watching the Bradley Horwitz (@elatable) – Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) interview re: Google+. I found Tim’s choice of words about the tone (strident) and judgement (self-righteous) towards those standing up for their freedom to choose their own names on the new social network being rolled out by Google internet’s predominant search engine disappointing.  His response to my post was to call me self-righteous and reiterate that this was just a market issue.
I myself have been the victim of a Google+ suspension since July 31st and yesterday I applied for a mononym profile (which is what it was before they insisted I fill out my last name which I chose to do so with my online handle and real life identity “Identity Woman”) 
In the thread this morning Tim said that the kind of pressure being aimed at Google is way worse then anything they are doing and that in fact Google was the subject of a “lynch mob” by these same people.  Sigh, I guess Tim hasn’t read much history but I have included some quotes form and links to wikipedia for additional historial context.
Update: inspired in part by this post an amazing post “about tone” as a silencing/ignoring tactics when difficult, uncomfortable challenges are raised in situations of privilege was written by Shiela Marie.  
I think there is a need for greater understanding all around and that perhaps blogging and tweeting isn’t really the best way to address it.  I know that in the identity community when we first formed once we started meeting one another in person and really having deep dialogues in analogue form that deeper understanding emerged.  IIW the place we have been gathering for 6 years and talking about the identity issues of the internet and other digital systems is coming up in mid-October and all are welcome.  The agenda is created live the day of the event and all topics are welcome.
Here’s the thread… (oldest tweets first)
 Note all the images of tweets in this thread are linked to the actual tweet (unless they erased the tweet).  [Read more…] about Is Google+ is being lynched by out-spoken users upset by real names policy?

Google+ says your name is "Toby" NOT "Kunta Kinte"

Kaliya Young · August 27, 2011 · 21 Comments

This post is about what is going on at a deeper level when Google+ says your name is “Toby” NOT “Kunta Kinte”. The punchline video is at the bottom feel free to scroll there and watch if you don’t want to read to much.

This whole line of thought to explain to those who don’t get what is going on with Google+ names policy arose yesterday after I watched the Bradley Horwitz – Tim O’Reilly interview (they start talking about the real names issue at about minute 24).

[Read more…] about Google+ says your name is "Toby" NOT "Kunta Kinte"

Lets try going with the Mononym for Google+

Kaliya Young · August 27, 2011 · 6 Comments

Seeing that Google+ is approving mononyms for some (Original Sai, on the construction of names Additional Post) but not for others (Original Stilgherrian Post Update post ).
I decided to go in and change my profile basically back to what it was before all this started.  I put a  ( . ) dot in the last name field.  In my original version of my google proflile my last name was a * and when they said that was not acceptable I put my last name as my online handle “Identity Woman”.
[Read more…] about Lets try going with the Mononym for Google+

Cybersecurity report covers Identity

Kaliya Young · December 11, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Lucy Lynch posted this “The CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency ” to the ID-Legal e-mail list.
We are actually going to discuss it on our upcoming call along with figuring out our steward to Identity Commons. Lucy and I will be spending 2 days at the end of December face to face in Eugene planning strategy/execution/deliverables around having at least event in DC this winter/spring before the next IIW.
The CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency has released its final report, “Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency.” The Commissions three major findings are:
1. Cybersecurity is now one of the major national security problems facing the United States;
2. Decisions and actions must respect American values related to privacy and civil liberties; and
3. Only a comprehensive national security strategy that embraces both the domestic and international aspects of cybersecurity will improve the situation.”
There is a section on: Identity Management for CyberSecurity (page 67) that folks will want to read. CSIS is a Washington think tank, so this
is only advisory, but interesting to see some old models coming around again.
“CSIS was launched at the height of the Cold War, dedicated to the simple but urgent goal of finding ways for America to survive as a nation and prosper as a people. During the following four decades, CSIS has grown to become one of the nations and the worlds preeminent public policy institutions on U.S. and international security.”

Saving Kids from Predators – parents blog their e-mail addresses

Kaliya Young · January 15, 2008 · 1 Comment

NYTimes:

From Connecticut’s attorney general, Richard Blumenthal: “If for nothing else, this set of principles is a landmark and milestone because it involves an acknowledgment of the importance of age and identity authentication and a commitment to explore and develop those means,” he said. “If we can put a man on the moon we can do age and identity authentication. Today we form a partnership that will protect children , purge predators and expunge inappropriate content including pornography.”

I could highlight my usual point when it comes to sexual predators online….kids are far more vulnerable to being sexually abused AT HOME by people the know including family members. This fetish with predators online is a mass projection to avoid looking at this real fact.

Scientists must give up privacy rights

Kaliya Young · November 29, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I just found this in SlashDot – quite disturbing…

“Wired is reporting that all NASA JPL scientists must ‘voluntarily’ (or be fired) sign a document giving the government the right to investigate their personal lives and history ‘without limit’. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists this includes snooping into sexual orientation, mental & physical health as well as credit history and ‘personality conflict’. 28 senior NASA scientists and engineers, including Mars Rover team members, refused to sign by the deadline and are now subject to being fired despite a decade or more of exemplary service. None of them even work on anything classified or defense related. They are suing the government and documenting their fight for their jobs and right to personal privacy.”

Will Netizen rights be protected?

Kaliya Young · September 22, 2007 · Leave a Comment

From Slashdot:

“The NSA has a new assignment. No longer merely responsible for signals intelligence, the NSA now has the task of defending against cyber attacks on government and private networks. ‘The plan calls for the NSA to work with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to monitor such networks to prevent unauthorized intrusion, according to those with knowledge of what is known internally as the ‘Cyber Initiative.’ Details of the project are highly classified. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, a former NSA chief, is coordinating the initiative. It will be run by the Department of Homeland Security, which has primary responsibility for protecting domestic infrastructure, including the Internet, current and former officials said. At the outset, up to 2,000 people — from the Department of Homeland Security, the NSA and other agencies — could be assigned to the initiative, said a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.'”

Yeah! for the Fourth Amendment

Kaliya Young · June 18, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I have been worried about this for a while (see this post from Dec 2006 and way back when in August 2005 when I first was alerted to this issue) Just when things were looking really grim on the online privacy front this ruling came in…..from Wired Blogs:

The ruling by the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio upheld a lower court ruling that placed a temporary injunction on e-mail searches in a fraud investigation against Steven Warshak, who runs a supplements company best known for a male enhancement product called Enzyte. Warshak hawks Enzyte using “Smiling Bob” ads that have gained some notoriety.

The case boiled down to a Fourth Amendment argument, in which Warshak contended that the government overstepped its constitutional reach when it demanded e-mail records from his internet service providers. Under the 1986 federal Stored Communications Act (SCA), the government has regularly obtained e-mail from third parties without getting warrants and without letting targets of an investigation know (ergo, no opportunity to contest).

It is sort of odd that it is about penis spam but hey – freedom is freedom is freedom.
To reach its decision, the court relied on two amici curiae that presented compelling arguments for shoring up current privacy law with respect to e-mail. The article is worth reading in full.

Age and Idetntity in Second life

Kaliya Young · June 14, 2007 · 1 Comment

I just found this from someone linking to my WoW piece. It seems that Linden Lab will be doing age verification – from their blog:

We will shortly begin beta testing an age and identity verification system, which will allow Residents to provide a one-time proof of identity (such as a driver’s license, passport or ID card) and have that identity verified in a matter of moments.
Second Life has always been restricted to those over 18. All Residents personally assert their age on registration. When we receive reports of underage Residents in Second Life, we close their account until they provide us with proof of age. This system works well, but as the community grows and the attractions of Second Life become more widely known, we’ve decided to add an additional layer of protection.
Once the age verification system is in place, only those Residents with verified age will be able to access adult content in Mature areas. Any Resident wishing to access adult content will have to prove they are over 18 in real life….
Landowners are morally and legally responsible for the content displayed and the behavior taking place on their land. The identity verification system gives them new tools to ensure any adult content is only available to adults over 18 because unverified avatars will not have access to land flagged as containing adult content…..
The verification system will be run by a third party specializing in age and identity authentication. No personally identifying information will be stored by them or by Linden Lab, including date of birth, unless the Resident chooses to do so. Those who wish to be verified, but remain anonymous, are free to do so.

There is an extensive FAQ in the blog post. It seems that online life is going to get more complex. I wonder what vendor they are going to use for this. I wonder how it will work internationally.
The other thing I wonder about is how necessary is this. I kids are exposed to so much already. I am currently reading GenerationMe: Why Today’s Young American’s are more Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable Than Ever Before by Jean M. Twenge. Some of the book talks about the current attitudes about sex and the sexual practices of young people. The Monica Lewinsky was all happening when they were in elementary school. They know what sex is and many many of them are doing it – lots are having oral sex (mostly the girls giving it to the guys) in middle school and by highschool many are sleeping around with a lot of partners ‘hooking up’ without really being in boyfriend girlfriend relationships. Yes they are doing it with their peers and not other adults but it is not like it is news to them. I am not condoning this trend of hyper sexually active young people. The number and range of these surveys means it is real not imaginary. I also don’t think they should have access to adult areas of Second Life. The issue is serious and I think there is a social dialogue about sex, its meaning would be a good thing to foster. It is a disconcerting to learn how casual it is being taken by youth however as the author points out imitating the way it is portrayed in the media. So what is the big deal with Avatars in a virtual world I wonder. I hope this question is not to much to ask and that I will not be harshly judged for having asked if we should ask this question.

Personally I gave up on SL 9 months ago for other reasons. I was fed up with downloading a new massive client to wander around an aimless 3D space. Then to top it all off the were hacked and you had to call them to get a new password. I also was annoyed the first thing you had to do was pick your name with some strange last name from a list they determined. Once you picked your name you couldn’t change it….it was the one thing persistent about you. I think online 3D has potential but I am convinced there will be worlds that leapfrog SL.

Here are some of the comments about the proposal on their site

I do not wish to have my personal information – my SSN or anything else, in the hands of a 3rd party organization – or even in the hands of SL. I am very cautious about what info I put out there – and considering how easily sites can be hacked, this is a security issue. Some of us have RL clearances and do not want more info out there – and as such – we will now be unable to access adult content? Let’s face it that’s why many of us put up a credit card for premium membership – to prove our age. Further proof is a burden on the players that we should not have to bear.

First, you should be aware it is illegal to require an individual to provide his/her social security number as a means of identification to anyone but the Federal Government. Second, if driver’s license and or SSN is provided to you or your agent you may become legally liable for the misuse, loss, or theft of that information for the purposes of fraud or identity theft. Good Luck.

A third party that LL trusts and isn’t giving us who this third party is, I’m taking issue with. The moment I give them my driver’s license, they will now own my name, address, license number, AND because I live in a state that puts the Social Security number on the driver’s license, they will have that as well. I’m not impressed with this action nor do I trust LL’s belief in this third party that they will not keep this data. Prove it!

“Driver’s license, passport or ID card” are you joking?
I think you need to come to grips with a few things. Half the residents in SL do not live in Puritanical America. Your ‘immature’ attitude toward sex and alcohol are not shared by the majority of people on Earth. There is no drinking age in most of Europe and Asia and most people look upon sex as a normal human activity.

What about those of us without passports, drivers’ licences or any form of national ID? You falsely assume that all adults have one of these things – not all of us drive, go abroad or live in countries with Big Brother-style ID card schemes.

The best bit IMO is we’re now expected to pay for the privilege of being treated like adults. Are we not mature enough to be given the responsibility of ignoring things we don’t want to see? The way I see it this system is good in theory but completely flawed in practice.

Once again, Linden Labs adopts a US-sentric attitude. US players only have to provide the last 4 digits of their Social Security numbers, while non-US residents have to provide a full National ID Number (whatever that is, and whatever countires use them) or a full passport number! What about people who have no National ID, or passport? What are they to do?

This sounds very heavy handed. It sounds like a roomful of lawyers, FBI Agents, and other law enforcement put the fear of Gawd in to Linden to have them take the extreme step of seeking partial social security numbers, and age verification via key documents. I believe the point has been raised the credit card verification is typically enough to meet age requirement guidelines.

As a UK resident, I do not feel comfortable about giving personal details to an as yet unamed data collection company, which I assume is US based.
With the current climate in the US as regards to Bush’s evesdropping on data communications to aid the War on Terror(tm), I do not want to end up on some US government database as belonging to a virtual porn-ridden community run by a bunch of subversive godless burnt-out californian commie hippies (Ann Coulter is hawt!!).

Flickr SUCKS

Kaliya Young · March 31, 2007 · 2 Comments

They are forcing us to merge our identities. I thought they decided not to do this. They let us keep our old way of logging in.
I joined FLICKR not YAHOO.
I really don’t care that they got bought. I do care that my login is being merged.
Does anyone know a good alternative to Flickr/Yahoo that uses openID?

2. On March 20th, 2007 we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.
We’re making this change now to simplify the sign in process in advance of several large projects launching this year, but some Flickr features and tools already require Yahoo! IDs for sign in — like the mobile site at m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles, available at http://go.yahoo.com.
If you still sign in using the email-based Flickr system (here), you can make the switch at any time in the next few months, from today till the 15th. (After that day, you’ll be required to merge before you continue using your account.) To switch, start at this page: http://flickr.com/account/associate/
Complete details and answers to most common questions are available here: http://flickr.com/help/signin/
If you have questions or comments about signing in with a Yahoo! ID, speak up!

Credit Checks by the Government 'legal'

Kaliya Young · January 24, 2007 · Leave a Comment

More privacy invasion by the Executive Branch:

Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday the Pentagon and CIA are not violating people’s rights by examining the banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage in the United States.
Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said his panel will be the judge of that.
National security letters permit the executive branch to seek records about people in terrorism and spy investigations without a judge’s approval or grand jury subpoena.

Corporations plan to contribute Open Source OpenID

Kaliya Young · January 2, 2007 · Leave a Comment

This was a great to see from James McGovern:

In terms of my own planned 2007 contributions to open source, I will be commiting to contributing to the authorization specification as part of the OpenID community. The funny thing is that I will be going against my better judgement in that enterprises tend to desire to contribute to things that are measurable like implemented software as we really can’t do anything with ideas alone. Ideas need to be turned into software. What I fear the most is folks from Sun such as Pat Patterson, Sara Gates,Simon Phipps, Robin Wilton, Don Bowen and folks from Microsoft such as Kim Cameron and Jason Matusow openly supporting initiatives such as OpenID but not taking deliberate steps within their respective employers to actually implement the OpenID specification and any resulting authorization enhancements. I too am somewhat constrained in that the perception of anything that isn’t implemented will be perceived as an academic exercise that was a waste of time that will put the ability to contribute to open source projects in the future at risk…

Tracking content online

Kaliya Young · December 23, 2006 · Leave a Comment

Attributor Corp is launching a product that combs the entire web for ‘unauthorized uses.’ From the WSJ:

They claim to have cracked the thorny computer-science problem of scouring the entire Web by using undisclosed technology to efficiently process and comb through chunks of content. The company says it will have over 10 billion Web pages in its index before the end of this month.
Attributor analyzes the content of clients, who could range from individuals to big media companies, using a technique known as “digital fingerprinting,” which determines unique and identifying characteristics of content. It uses these digital fingerprints to search its index of the Web for the content. The company claims to be able to spot a customer’s content based on the appearance of as little as a few sentences of text or a few seconds of audio or video. It will provide customers with alerts and a dashboard of identified uses of their content on the Web and the context in which it is used.

(if the link to the WSJ goes ‘unfree’ follow the ‘read more’ at the bottom of this post to read the full text)
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