Reflection

IC and Data Portability

Kaliya Young · March 9, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Here are some question asked in a recent conversation on the dataportability.org lists about IC along with my responses.
Maybe the Identity commons should be trying to set boundaries as being purely about identity?

An “open identity layer” that touches so much and there needs to be a “common space” to nash through the vastness of the problem – to deal with the technical, social and legal issues around people sharing their information in community and business contexts. We have this ultra extensible form and broad purpose to enable this to happen – there is “no committee in charge” no “one” or “company” or “group” is deciding what we “do” – we are a loose conglomeration that shares vision and values. Working independently but connectedly and commited to collaboration. It It is an ‘unconventional’ model that that is working to supposed and connect diverse conversations and technical efforts together.
Can we instead resolve that we promise to incorporate any decisions made by Identity commons as being part of our blueprint?

There are no “decisions made by Identity Commons” read our principles – we are a cluster of working groups that work independently.
Your blueprint (as a side note why there is still ‘one blueprint’ and not ‘blueprints’ plural at the very least or preferably ‘reference implementations’ in the plural form is still a mystery to me) will likely draw on tech stuff groups in IC have been working on for a while. Why not be a part of the ‘commons’ that they are a part of?
My perception of IDCommons is that it’s about Identity, and in your words, interoperable user-centric identity.
Most of the people who have been involved for the past several years got involved to help people have control of their ‘data’ – their identity the informatoin about them is part of what composes their identity. they didn’t get involved to ‘invent’ an identifier layer that didn’t “do” anything
I see DataPortability being about data sharing (in a technical sense)Identity is clearly a very important part of that but I don’t see much at all on IDCommons about data sharing. It’s as though DP has a wider scope of which IDCommons is a major part.
The exceptions to this view are

Identity Schemas group
Photo Group
Data Sharing group

None of which seem to have much activity.
* OpenID has attribute exchange and Discovery in it – all about data sharing.
* Higgins & Bandit and the Pamela project ALL about infrastructure for card based tools that are all about data sharing for people.
* Project VRM all about how to create a new industry model to revolutionaize CRM and put individuals in charge of their data in radical new ways when relating to companies they do business with.
* I-brokers – their job is to stor data about people and have it be trusted.
* IRA – Identity Rights Agreements – all about how we create human understandable terms of service and norms in this area (it is a huge project and has interested folks but really needs a multi hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal work to ‘do it’).
* XRI and XDI two standards with roots in IC all about data sharing that can be applied to both peoples personal data and other forms of data that have nothing to do with people.
* OSIS is the Open Source Identity System and having its 3rd Interop event at RSA (The major security conference) in April with over 200 tests between relying parties, identity providers and (user-agents) card selectors. this group is ‘only’ a working group of IC (it does not have its own independent legal entity/or affiliation with another one as a project). People moving data around is what all this card stuff is about.
So. I am not sure where we have groups that are not in some way focused on this problem area.
DP is just the latest in a long line of initiatives that recognises the same underlying problem but none of the previous initiatives have captured mind share or really got traction.

Our goal is not to ‘capture [public] mind share’ (does the W3C, OASIS or IETF capture public mind share?) our goal is to facilitate the range of technical, social and legal initiatives that all need to happen to get and identity layer of the web – that shares people’s data in privacy protecing, conveninent and under their control. It is a huge problem – with many elements – having a loose community structure (with a slight bit of formalization) is actually working in some way to move this forward.
I think we’d be missing a lot if we scoped DP as a specialization of an “open identity layer”.
What do you think moving peoples personal information arournd – data portability is about. It is about building an ‘identity layer’ of the internet – for people and people’s DATA.
Chris has said a few times the scope of DP is to be narrow for now and focused on solving the data portability issue between mainstream social networks. This seems like something that fits into the purpose quite well.
Yes all data for all things needs to be moved around AND a good deal of data is created by people for people about people and the things the they do – hence the synergy.
Seems like semanitcs – when we wrote this purpose about two years ago this was the best we could do to describe this ‘vision’ it is VERY broad.
If DP wants to go beyond ‘people’ data that needs to move around GREAT – however much of that will be created by organizations and companies (that have identities).
Related Posts: What is Data Portability.org
What the Heck is Identity Commons?

What is Data Portability.org

Kaliya Young · March 9, 2008 · Leave a Comment

I have like many working for years on different aspects of building an identity meta-system where users have control. have been listening to and in some cases contributing to the conversations at dataportability.org for a few months.
There seems to me to be two different but interrelated energetic focuses in the DP group
* one is evangeslistic and pushing a message out – out into the mainstreatm.
* the other is technical – around what tech to use, how to implement it, what ‘action to take’. (much of the activity around technical side of the identity stuff needed has been happening in the context of the Identity Commons community for several years)
* the policy group is relatively quite in DP (and at IC) this critical aspect is needed but there has yet to be a center of gravity around this in the world yet. When I look out on the landscape I see several nascent conversations and hope that those nascnet conversation leaders can be brought together – so a gravitational center that is collaborative between all the trains of thought can form and really get this to happen (it requires significant funding – brain power etc).
One of the community leaders said “the value of DataPortability is that it is a brand that can represent multiple communities.”
Another leader stated this “DP has a very specific goal. To research, document for mainstream consumption and evangelize best practices for DataPortability.”
It got me wondering about what DP’s brand “is”, if the primary focus “building a brand” and what will/does the brand mean and what does the organization do? The following are some crystalized ideas based on listening to and participating in the conversation. They are all very interesting possibilities.
* Does having the logo on your site mean something about how much control you give ‘users’/people the ability to move their data?
* Does it mean that ‘shared’ user data – the relationship that one user has with another or a record of a transaction that I did with a company – do both parties ‘own’ that information and have shared control over where it is ‘ported’ around?
* is it a public rallying call for ‘netizens’ to rally behind to demand that they have ‘data portability’ and with this large netizen organization go to ‘social network providers’ nd ‘demand’ that they install technology to make it easy?
* is it a ‘trade’ association of technology sites that agree to adopt open standards, do testing and hold each other accountable in getting this to happen?
* does it innovate the strong ‘business case’ for companies with large numbers of users (and those starting to grow the number of users) might actually spend development dollars that enable DP rather then ‘do it later’ after other key features are rolled out?
* is it a movement of advocates and net early adopters who want to create a buzz and “move” large social network providers to invest in the standards and technologies needed to support people being able to move their data?
* is it a place where the technical issues in making this vision a reality are figured out and the ‘answers’ (reference implementations) are promoted?
* Is it an ‘open brand’ that anyone can point to and ‘define’ for themselves and say they do it?
* Is it a brand like OSI (Open Source Initiative)that has an a process that defines what is and is not qualified ‘open source’ licence?
* Is it a brand that holds events to talk about the broad subject of Data Portabilty – (a vast problem – with many potential solutions)?
* Is it a “Movement” lead by a charismatic leader or group that has ‘followers’ (think Free Software as an example of this kind of movement)?
* is it an umbrella/coordinating space for different sector groups to find each other and collaborate on the shared by different problem space (health care, insurance, retail, nonprofit groups, airlines etc – etc) in an extensible way?
There is a related post about Identity Commons and DP
and What the Heck is Identity Commons?

Your 'dead' but you are not really dead.

Kaliya Young · March 2, 2008 · Leave a Comment

From Slashdot:

According to MSNBC, thousands of U.S. citizens have wrongfully been declared dead, due to an average of 35 data input errors per day by the Social Security Administration (SSA). Many other agencies rely on the data provided by the SSA, such as the IRS. People who have been wrongfully declared dead face many problems, such as rejection of tax returns, cancellation of health insurance, and closure of bank accounts. The article states, ‘Input of an erroneous death entry can lead to benefit termination and result in financial hardship for a beneficiary.’ Apparently it is far easier to declare a person’s death than it is to correct the mistake. It continues, ‘Social Security says an erroneous death record can be removed only when it is presented with proof that the original record was entered in error. The original error must be documented, and the deletion must be approved by a supervisor after “pertinent facts supporting reinstatement” are available in the system.'”

From MSNBC:

In all, Social Security officials had to “resurrect” 23,366 people from January 2004 to September 2005. In other words, over a period of 21 months, Social Security was presented with irrefutable evidence that it had been “killing” more than 1,100 people a month, or more than 35 a day.

Garbage in, garbage out
The problem begins at the Social Security Administration, keeper of most of the records tabulating deaths in the United States. Like other government agencies, the IRS, with whom Todd has most recently tangled, relies upon Social Security’s database, said Dan Boone, a spokesman for the IRS.
When Social Security determines that an eligible current or future beneficiary has died, it closes the person’s entry in its Case Processing and Management System, or CPMS.
The system is only as good as the data it receives. Sometimes, that isn’t very good.
Todd, for example, was killed when someone in Florida died and her Social Security number was accidentally typed in. Since then, her tax returns have repeatedly been rejected, and her bank closed her credit card account.
“One time when I [was] ruled dead, they canceled my health insurance because it got that far,” she said.
Toni Anderson of Muncie, Ind., expired when someone in the government pushed the wrong button, making the records declare that it was she, not her husband, John, who died Nov. 8.
Social Security even sent this letter: “Dear Mr. Anderson, our condolences on the loss of Mrs. Anderson.”

Commentary:
This is just one of a huge set of issues that arise from massive government databases that are maintained by people (who make mistakes). It a reminder that the ‘massive government database in the sky that determines who is and is not ‘alive’ or ‘dead’ is or is not a person is not going really the answer to identity problems – increasing reliance on them could make things worse.
Daniel Solove makes this point that bureaucracies don’t take care of people’s information well because they are data systems full of abstractions.
Bob Blakley talks about the fact that

Privacy is not about keeping personal information secret. It’s about ensuring that people who handle personal information respect the dignity of the individuals to whom that information refers.

Killing people in government databases before they are dead is not dignified.

Multiple roles in school learning systems – patent upheald

Kaliya Young · February 25, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This claim made me wonder if there was any prior art in the Liberty work that might apply. Or if this would affect any identity system that allowed for multiple roles for people.
From Slashdot:

Blackboard, the dominant learning management system (LMS) maker, has won its initial suit against Desire2Learn. Blackboard gets $3.1 million and can demand that Desire2Learn stop US sales. (We discussed Blackboard when the patent was issued in 2006) This blog provides background on the suit. Blackboard has been granted a patent that covers a single person having multiple roles in an LMS: for example, a TA might be a student in one class and an instructor in another. You wouldn’t think something this obvious could even be patented, but so far it’s been a very effective weapon for Blackboard, badly hurting Desire2Learn and generating a huge amount of worry for the few remaining commercial LMSs that Blackboard has not already bought, and open source solutions such as Moodle (Blackboard’s pledge not to attack such providers notwithstanding).”

Kevin Kelly on Better then Free

Kaliya Young · February 16, 2008 · Leave a Comment

From Better Better Than Free:

The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it…..
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.
Well, what can’t be copied?
There are a number of qualities that can’t be copied. Consider “trust.” Trust cannot be copied. You can’t purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you’ll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.

He goes on to articulate the Eight Generatives Better Than Free:
Immediacy
Personalization
Interpretation
Authenticity
Accessibility
Embodiment
Patronage – people want to pay creators.
Findability

Olympic Athletes have 'right to blog' (with restrictions)

Kaliya Young · February 16, 2008 · 1 Comment

I have a posts in the wings about my experience of ‘security’ at Olympic like events – I participated in ‘the system’ for a few years of my life while on the Canadian National Water Polo Team.
I just found on slashdot. The restrictions they are putting on athletes freedom of speech. I was forced to sign a big legal agreement about what I would and wouldn’t do before i could attend the Pan American Games as an Athlete.
Is it the tone of things to come? Will people who attend certain kinds of events be forced to sign away their right to write about them to attend?

The IOC has given athletes the right to blog at the Beijing Games this summer, a first for the Olympics. They’re allowed, as long as they follow the many rules it set to protect copyright agreements, confidential information and security. The IOC said blogs by athletes ‘should take the form of a diary or journal’ and should not contain any interviews with other competitors at the games. They also should not write about other athletes. Still pictures are allowed as long as they do not show Olympic events. Athletes must obtain the consent of their competitors if they wish to photograph them. Also, athletes cannot use their blogs for commercial gain.”

That part at the end is just insulting to athletes too. If they made any money it wouldn’t be ‘that much’ and after a life time of sweat and training for the love of their sport. It would be a small gift. The whole system is set up to make money off athletes – they (the IOC) sells their performance to corporations to used to promote their products and services (worse still junk food (McDonalds) and sugar water (Coke) to the worlds children). Then some of that money goes to the National Olympic Committees. It bearly makes it back to the athletic programs that need money to train and prepare for the games. The budget of my National team was lower then that of my college varsity team. Mean while as an athlete – you make below what you would in a minimum wage job with the stipend they give you. I trained in Montreal and so couldn’t really supplement that with ‘work’ as I didn’t speak French and besides training takes up your life.

There are a lot of donkey's in my neighborhood (and I know who they are)

Kaliya Young · February 13, 2008 · 1 Comment

The Huffington Post had a new feature on their website the FundRace. It is an interactive map of the whole country that lets you search addresses, zip codes, cities, names, occupations and employers to find out who is giving to political candidates.
This is the map of my neighborhood. My husband and I are talking about sending Obama some money. If we had – we would be on this map. I am not sure how I feel about that.
When Brian first showed me the map – It was shocking – in another time and place this is a map to fuel Mob violence against neighbors. I thought of this in part because of what is going on in Berkeley with thousands of out of town ‘troop’ supporters showed up in town to show their displeasure with the Berkeley City council resolution regarding the armed forces recruiting center in downtown. Emotions are high in the city at what are day long processes. Those out of towners could use something like this to ‘target’ people who had contributed to campaigns they did not approve of.
If we are going to have this kind of radical transparency we are also going to have to have a mature society that manages to keep wacky group behavior under control.
COMMENT FROM MARY HODDER:

Hey Kailya,
agreed! although that info has always been available, locally and easily, it wasn’t online, which now makes getting it super easy.
the issue is that our personal addresses, searchable with our names, are now online, and that is new and different. those of us with private addresses are now findable if we participate in campaign donations.
my advice is to get a po box or a mailing address and just use that.
but it is a new level of exposure that is strange.
mary

Blog Back

Kaliya Young · February 12, 2008 · Leave a Comment

I guess this is sort of like ‘game on’ in street hockey.
A week ago my blog disappeared. Apparently it was hacked to death. It is now back and running WP 2.x. I would recommend if you are still on 1.x to do the upgrade to prevent this fate happening to you.

Is it time to commit Yahoo! (Flickr) suicide?

Kaliya Young · February 1, 2008 · 1 Comment

Learning about the MSFT – Yahoo! bid makes me ill.
From the NYT:

The bottom line: Yahoo will get sold to Microsoft.
Why my confidence? Because Microsoft is paying more than anyone else would be willing to pay for Yahoo. The bid is $44.6 billion, or $31 a share, in cash and stock. Thursday, Yahoo closed at $19.18, a market value of $25.6 billion. If you take out the value of Yahoo’s holdings in other public companies—which the company estimates to be worth $14 billion or $10 a share—that means that Microsoft is offering to pay more than double the value of Yahoo’s existing business.
This bid makes sense for Microsoft from the point of view of strategic survival. Its search and Internet operations are not getting traction. By far, its best option is to combine with Yahoo to create the dominant No. 2 in online advertising and Internet search. But even combining two big players probably doesn’t pan out from a pure dollars and cents point of view.

You know- I started using this cool little site Flickr – then it got sold to Yahoo! (bad enough) now it looks like it will be sold to MSFT. It really is a bit much for me to take.
I really don’t like MSFT – I had an IBM PC and could never “bond with it” or get it to work well for me – I was glad when I lost it. The next machine I got in college was a mac and I have been happy ever since. I don’t use their online tools AT all.
The thing that is so sad about all this is that Yahoo! for a while was the darling of the Valley – they bought the coolest web 2.0 startups. It felt like we were all cheering them on and then ‘nothing happened’ either to the products or their over all reality. My sense it that heart of the issue is that Yahoo! is an ‘older company’ and has the patterns of that kind of world. My sense is that It is bloated with bureaucracy and fiefdoms and the old way of doing things.
MSFT is even worse. At dinner last night we were talking about how they failed to ‘do the right thing with IE’ complying with web standards because their own products – Word, Excel etc. when you say ‘make HTML’ make bad HTML that renders ok in IE but not in other browsers. So being web standards compliant well isn’t good for them. If I was their boss I would just say go with the web standards – get that world of geeks to start trusting you and liking you that you don’t make their world more difficult by having to make sure every thing they make renders on your browser with extensive tweeks to make it work.
That inability to play nice in the web world is not really good for the web of for people. I thought Ray Ozy was supposed to fix all this?
Putting two companies together – both with ‘older’ cultures does not give you hip new web that people want to use. It just means they will fight between them in ways that are likely not productive for either and don’t get you good web tools/products that get them what they think the need which is Eyeballs. You know maybe they should think about their ‘relationships’ with their customer more. I had a relationship with Flickr (where they messed up was ‘forcing’ me to integrate that account with my YahooID) – I have one with other companies I use and am faithful to – 37Signals, WordPress, Twitter.
Having just ‘bashed’ MSFT. I must restate publicly that the people from MSFT that I know personally and have been working in the identity space are good folks and that MSFT has been a great contributor to the work of the identity community. The remarks about MSFT are not directed at them or their efforts around identity at all.

Yahoo whole heartedly supporting OpenID

Kaliya Young · January 17, 2008 · 1 Comment

Here is the Press Release. The announcement triples the number of OpenID accounts.
It should do a lot to encourage relying party adoption of OpenID.
It also means mainstream user education has just begun.
It is also interesting to see the narrative in the ‘media’ that get the story wrong
Clint Boulton on Google Watch has this quote “OpenID creator JanRain.” The story of community collaboration to get to OpenID2.0 to happen is quite remarkable (bringing together 4 different “competing” efforts) and I hope that some media outlet investigating what this all means actually gets it right.
He also goes on to say this

Okay (grumble, grumble) but I’m going to go back to standby that if humans can design something, humans can break it. It’s only a matter of time before folks find a way to break OpenID. If that happens, stick a fork in the emerging protocol. Until then, enjoy the digital convenience OpenID has to offer.

I thought the protocol had already been broken but the community is working very hard to address these problems.
The funny part for me is that my Yahoo! ID kinda sucks – it is ‘earthwaters’ from WAY back in college – I wanted a handle – and that was what I came up with. I don’t really want to use it as a handle around the web. I wonder if thy will have other users with this challenge and how they will address it.
COMMENT FROM SHREYAS:
I am the product manager for Yahoo!’s OpenID effort. One of the nice things about our implementation is that you don’t HAVE to use your Yahoo! ID (eg: johnsmith) in your OpenID URL. Also, if you are a Flickr user, you will be able to use the URL for your Flickr photos page (eg: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnsmith) as your OpenID URL. We are launching the service pretty soon and your feedback will be highly appreciated!
Also, if it helps other readers of your blog, I can post this comment there once the issue is fixed.
Exciting times ahead!

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Kaliya Young · January 8, 2008 · Leave a Comment

WOW! What an amazing film and depressing. I totally recommend you see it if it comes to your neighborhood or rent it on Netflix (or equivalent).
GM killed the electric CAR. It happened – and they killed it. They said there was not enough consumer ‘demand’ but that is patently false. They knew there was demand they had waiting lists. They didn’t want the car to happen BECAUSE it would be successful and threatened the Oil Industry.
The film ends on a hopeful note and there will be a sequel. Who Saved the Electric Car.

What have we answered? Reflections on Identity

Kaliya Young · November 27, 2007 · Leave a Comment

We have come a long way since our first identity gang meetings. One of the things the design committee came up with was to do an inquiry into the questions we are no longer asking ourselves.
Johannes and I are working on pulling together the answers to this question. along with what are the current questions and what will be the future questions. You can answer on your own blog (link back to us or just e-mail us so we know you answered) OR you can fill out the survey. If you could do this before Friday that would be great.
Thinking back to the first Identity Gang meetings 3 years ago and the first IIW 2 years ago in Berkeley, IIW a year ago….
What are the questions we are no longer asking ourselves.
* maybe we figured out the answer,
* maybe we figured out we couldn’t answer it,
* maybe we figured out it was a question we asked to soon and will surface again.
– would anybody think this is useful?
What are the questions we are asking ourselves now?
– how do identity providers make money?

What will be be thinking about 6-18 months from now?
– how to aggregate claims from multiple identity sources?

Links on the Web this week

Kaliya Young · November 18, 2007 · Leave a Comment

This is a fun little video/song rant … “Thou shalt not” related to pop culture and life of the young. It ends making an interesting contrasting commentary on the leadership of the united states of america.

——–
A good transition is this stunning and depressing set of photos of Iraqi Children.
——–
Which 100 Blogs should you read?
They figured it out using formulas for figuring out where to put detectors in water pipe systems to detect disease outbreak.
——–
Which side of the Brain do you use?
THE Right Brain vs Left Brain test … do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? (I saw it clockwise).
If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.
Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.
LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe
RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
“big picture” oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can “get it” (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

The last time the Red Sox won…

Kaliya Young · October 31, 2007 · Leave a Comment

This post by Doc got me thinking about the last time they won. It was my first DIDW and it was a total lunar eclipse and that evening they were giving out the DIDW Award and Doc was showing me the Eclipse via ‘Stary Night’. So much has blossomed in this field since then.

Will you let me give to you: PBS (and VRM)?

Kaliya Young · October 19, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I really Love Frontline. It along with the New Yorker is the only news outlet doing a good job of what is happening with this war and the country generally.
I just watched the first episode of Frontline of the season (ONLINE) [I have been eagerly awaiting it for weeks].
It says at the end of the show…Support (like a link to click)
Then it gives me this crap…..

I don’t want to join my “local station” I don’t want to “support PBS Kids” I want to give to FRONTLINE – Period. (Well maybe like 10-15% could go to some general fund but other then that just Frontline).
If you (Doc) can fix this you will make them money.
Until then I don’t give.
It should be noted I don’t own a television and have not watched in that format since I went to college in ’95. Online viewing is the only way I see shows. I know it costs money to give me this experience and I am willing to donate to keep it up and running for open public viewing (I will not pay if you charge me to watch it though).
I grew up listening to public radio in Canada (where it is just government funded) I love it. Like Sarah Vowel I am passionate about radio and love good television documentary. I want these things in my life. I want to contribute to make them happen but it is not in the ‘station donation form’
When listening to my local station I almost always listen online. (I don’t drive a car so I almost never listen to a real radio). I also when I really want a show I go to the ‘find a show’ tool that will connect you with a station broadcasting that program at that time. What is local any more when you can do this? I want to support the shows I love and really don’t want to feed the ones I don’t much care for. I like Freshair, Marketplace, This American Life.
as an added bonus
I would like to watch other news and documentary shows like Frontline but I don’t know where they are. Where are the people who like Frontline also like these other whose on PBS, NPR, PRI etc? So far the few I have tried to find don’t have as good online viewing as Frontline. But really I tried to find Now with Bill Moyers once – that was it. I don’t want to wade through the PBS universe of programming to find them.

Brussels (feedback way late)

Kaliya Young · October 18, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Apparently some of you had a terrible dinner experience in Brussels in April at the Identity Open Space. Well so did I.
It was one of the low points of identity community organizing involving logistics in a foreign city. I had an offer from a local in the (identity) community to help out with anything that I needed help with for the Identity Open Space. I asked him to help find a venue for our dinner. I trusted him to do this and it was not really a good choice. It was far away (although walking distance), the room was crowded, it was hot, we had a set menu, the food was not good and it was expensive. So I am sorry to all of you who endured it.
Lessons learned:
1) Don’t fully trust the local (get secondary confirmation from an additional person)
2) Tap more knowledgeable local sources – like hotel concierge to find venues for dinner.
3) Ask the co-coordinating organization for help too (that would have been Liberty Alliance in this case).
Sorry again to all of you who had a bad dinner experience. It was not my intention. I really wanted to be able to eat and talk together and discuss identity as a community. I know that my table had a good conversation so I hope that others did too.

Never thought THIS would happen CAN$=US$

Kaliya Young · October 7, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Doc just experienced in buying a 88.60 Canadian for $100 US what I experienced my whole life but the other way around.
I wrote this a few weeks ago…the day after “it” happened. When I was growing up in Canada the American Dollar was always worth significantly more then our dollar. Some time it cost as much as 1.35 Canadian to buy one US dollar. Recently the dollar has fallen to parity. I really never thought this would happen in my life. It is happening for two reasons. Demand for natural resources is going up in the global economy – Copper, Nickel, Lumber Oil etc. all are things Canada has in large quantities and exports. The other reason is the decline of the US because of …. well we don’t have to get into all those reasons here.

On "Democracy" in contemporary America

Kaliya Young · September 21, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I just picked up two books by ‘the’ Naomi’s today.
I saw them in the book shop and I was compelled.
1) The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot
by Naomi Wolff

Naomi Wolff is on the Colbert Report
We don’t have a lot of time free societies close down very quickly she points out and we need a democracy movement to restore the rule of law.
2) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
by Naomi Klein
This is a short film about the topic of the book.
3) I recently was pointed to the Century of the Self a film by the BBC. it is a documentary about the role of psychoanalysis, marketing, and public relations in the united states. The concluding installment covers the application of these techniques in the “democratic” political process.
It is well worth watching and is on the Internet Archive.

Computer ART becomes 'bomb strapped to chest'

Kaliya Young · September 21, 2007 · Leave a Comment

This story is shocking.

An MIT student wearing a device on her chest that included lights and wires was arrested at gunpoint at Logan International Airport this morning after authorities thought the contraption was a bomb strapped to her body.
Star Simpson, 19, was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and approached an airport employee in Terminal C at 8 a.m. to inquire about an incoming flight from Oakland, according to Major Scott Pare of the State Police. She was holding a lump of what looked like putty in her hands. The employee asked about the plastic circuit board on her chest, and Simpson walked away without responding, Pare said.
“She said it was a piece of art and she wanted to stand out on career day,” Pare said. “She was holding what was later found to be playdough.”
Affixed to the front of her black sweatshirt was a pale beige circuit board with green LED lights and wires running to a 9-volt battery. Written on the back of the sweatshirt in what appeared to be gold magic marker was the phrase “socket to me” and below that was written “Course VI,” which refers to the electrical engineering and computer science program at MIT.
According to the MIT website, Simpson is from Kihei, Hawaii, and is a sprinter on the school’s swim team. On Simpson’s personal website at MIT, she says she is studying computers and enjoys tinkering in a student-run machine shop.
“In a sentence, I’m an inventor, artist, engineer, and student, I love to build things and I love crazy ideas,” the website says.

So where the whole incident started from was the security gaurd who thought her art was suspicious. From my experience with those kinds of people in airports or otherwise they were likely not that educated – certainly not aware of the ways of computer geeks and how this sort of art would be really not be a-typcial. Seems like we have some ‘diversity training’ needs of our own as a culture.

When the 9/11 of the net happens what will we do?

Kaliya Young · July 31, 2007 · 1 Comment

I picked up a copy of the June 2007 issue of Release 2.0 at OSCON’s Executive Breifing – Lawrence Lessig is interviewed in there and it is SCARY.

What are you most worried bout now? That 9/11 event on the Net …what comes after it. Recently I was talking to a senior government official, someone who used to be close to policy decisions in the White House. WE were talking about the Patriot Act, how it was written in the 10 days between 9/11 and when it was passed by Congress. It was there, waiting. I asked him whether there was a similar act for the Internet. He said, “Yes- and Vint Cerf won’t like it.” Such radical policy making would change the character of the network. I am also worried about who is paying attention. All the progress in the Net happened when no special interest groups were rallying against its core values. First the content industries and now the phone and cable companies have strong financial interest in corroding the core values of a neutral network. Thanks to the economy of influence in Washington, it’s easy to buy cover for any ridiculous idea these industries would present. So many of their ideas would destroy the Net as an engine of economic growth. This imbalance between innovative technology on the one side and an extraordinary amount of money against that architecture on the other really terrifies me. These companies have no long-term interest in the success of the Internet. They just want a larger part of a smaller pie. We need bipartisan common sense around what makes the Internet work.

I got good news from my friend Karri Winn – Lawrence Lessig is going to be speaking at this years San Francisco Green Festival. Hopefully he will inspire the community gathered there to get more involved in these issues.
One of the things talked about at BlogHer by a few of us was organizing around technology/policy issues with. I also think that the tech community must be more politically aware and active.
This was also highlighted at OSCON with a presentation by Rick Falkvinge about freedom and the policial party fighting for net freedom in Sweeden – The Pirate Party. They have now got a wedge slice of the seats in the parliament and are seeking to weild power by giving the priministership to which ever party will give the cyberrights and policies they need for a free society. It is really cool.
WE NEED TO ORGANIZE POLITICALLY AND FAST!!!!