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My comments

• This sort of invasion of privacy happens all the time, it's just that most of the time the victims are just plain folks who can do nothing about it. There is also a vicious cycle where the mainstream media picks up the story, prints names an personal information, and then those articles are reposted and quoted on the Internet. Nothing is easier these days than making someone a target of public discussion and Google ensures that discussion will have an eternal record for any prospective employer or other important decision-maker who wants to find the dirt.
  
  It doesn't matter how "careful" and "secure" people are with their own private information. If someone else decides to print your name or post your picture, they can ruin your privacy with impunity.
  
  I have yet to see one good suggestion about how regular folks can protect themselves. Wealthy people and celebrities have lawyers, and they may be able to push through policy that will defend their privacy. However, what about the people who can't afford lawyers? What about the people who are regarded as "nobodies", so even mainstream media privacy-invaders don't bother to fix what they've done?
  
  There is only one solution I can see, though it's draconian. Private individuals should be able to request immediate removal of a web page (not a whole site) from a search engine if their is a question of privacy invasion. While the page can be restored if no privacy invasion has occurred (with the victim receiving benefit of the doubt) and/or if the matter is shown resolved (private information deleted). This policy should apply even to government web sites and mainstream media web sites.
  
  If possible, deletion of pages that display personal information should take place at the touch of a button (to be propagated to all mirror servers). It should be a required feature of all Internet search engines.
  
  Perhaps such radical privacy protection will be used to protect people who abuse power in high government and corporate positions from public scrutiny. If this is the case, then there needs to be more channels of recourse to demand an investigation for such wrongdoing. Allowing normal citizens to protect their privacy should come first. In reply to: "If Palin's e-mail can be cracked, yours can too"

  September 18, 2008

  1 reply

• The failure of any institution to protect citizen's rights in regard to official commercial media exacerbates the consolidation-access problem. I was personally the victim of journalists and tv news reporters who twisted a situation I was in to write an utterly false story that they regarded as "hot" for their readers. In the case of the TV news, the local NBC station spliced parts of an interview with their own questions to invent a situation, and other news stations just copied NBC and pasted my picture everywhere.
  
  There was nothing I can do about this. No journalism oversight agency existed to intervene, and no heroic lawyer bothered to intervene to protect my rights (especially since the media lie already put me on the bad side of public opinion). This official media was copied by bloggers, who of course added their own outraged opinions based on completely false information.
  
  Because of the Internet and Google, this false story will define my life forever. I'm unemployable. There's no chance of even temp work turning into something permanent once my colleagues and boss start Googling me. If I never even get an interview in the first place, there's no way I can prove that I was excluded through Googling, so I would have no legal recourse even if a chronically unemployed person could afford a good lawyer.
  
  I often wonder how many other people are in the same situation. I wonder how many people with a name similar to mine might also be affected by invisible Google-based prejudice. Perhaps this seems extreme, but the only solution I can see is some power of information-freezing reverting to the individual citizen. That would mean that upon any personal information leak complaint, any web page (not whole site) would be rapidly blocked by the web host (and expunged from Google) until complaint is resolved or shown to be spurious (i.e., no identifying information, intent to harass web site owner). Because of what happened to me, I include in "official media", such as newspaper web sites under this blackout power. Newspapers would be required to resolve any non-public-figure complaining about how they were used for story before the story can return to be posted on the web. It seems to me that any important story can be told without using the names of non-public figures, and if they are doing the right thing journalists are likely to actually get permission to publicize names.
  
  If this seems like some radical call to block freedom of information, think of the people like me whose prospects in life and relation to society have been utterly controlled and ruined by the agendas of powerful information purveyors. The rights and protections of the individual should be the most basic of society. Unless my behavior is posting some dire threat to others (re: I'm wandering around waving a knife at random people) then there is absolutely no reason society in general needs to know *anything* about me. I should be able to support myself through work based only on my skills and qualifications. I should be able to meet people and make friends based on my interaction with them, not a Google dossier.
  
  Of course the right to privacy decreases surveillance of society, and could ease the commission of crimes. Because of this, the increased protection of privacy should be balanced by increased options to *privately* arbitrate disputes and convey information to law enforcement personnel. Right now the collapse of privacy is being accompanied by decreasing access to justice for the "little people". Most people can't afford even minimal use of the legal system, and everything done there goes into the "public record", and potentially the Internet. This is a recipe for human rights disaster. This can only be reversed by actively protecting privacy while increasing means for problem resolution and access to justice at the lowest levels. In reply to: "The Internet--a private eye's best friend"

  September 10, 2008

  0 replies

• Wal-Mart Manipulates Digg
  I saw some blatant Digg manipulation by Wal-Mart right before "Black Friday". An article about Wal-Mart "accidentally" posting its Black Friday prices got 700 diggs almost instantly. Anyone who tried to point out it was spam got voted down instantly. I also saw a Wal-Mart splog pointing to the Digg article. I found the splog while I was looking for other bloggers with an interest in recent Wal-Mart PR escapades. I left several comments on these blogs, but no one seemed interested. I also left TWO notes for WOMMA about it. I don't understand why everyone would see the Wal-Mart flogs as shady but no one is pursuing their Digg click-farming.

  December 8, 2006

  0 replies

• Kaiser's On a Roll!
  Find out about all sorts of recent Kaiser shenanigans here: http://corphq.livejournal.com
  
  And if anyone wants a system where it's safe for Kaiser employees to speak up about problems, then do your part to stand up for whistleblower Justen Deal! In reply to: "Kaiser members warned of possible data theft"

  November 28, 2006

  0 replies

• Not a laughing matter
  I was accused of Googling-while-a-public-citizen, too. In fact a CA State agency, the DMHC, publicly denounced me for it, and they got away with breaking a settlement where they had agreed to revise the statement on their web site. This wasn't even their jurisdiction - they just wanted to exploit the hot button issue of "hackers" and "bloggers", to get some PR for themselves.
  
  I had to go through a year of legal hassles, exacerbated by what the DMHC did. The Governor's office has never addressed this, and they don't seem to mind that the DMHC broke a legal settlement. Consituents without their own legal teams apparently don't matter.
  
  The irony here is I wrote Angelides to ask what he would do to address this situation if he were elected Governor. He didn't reply.
  
  Now his own campaign workers stand accused of Googling, too, and it looks like his reply is to turn his back and ditch the bad photo op. At least the campaign workers weren't named in grandstanding press releases like I was.
  
  At least now we have an answer over whether Angelides would protect the rights and freedoms of individuals in CA. The answer is no.

  September 23, 2006

  0 replies

• AOL will use the Kaiser Permanente strategy
  Since the data has been widely mirrored, AOL will next find a scapegoat so the public will be more worried about those villains that dared to point out the problem and mirror the evidence.
  
  Here is the instant recipe:
  
  1) PR department reaches out to their media contacts. Journalists then tell sensationalist story of "hackers" or "bloggers" who mirrored *your* private data. AOL worms out of responsibility for letting the data loose in the first place by declaring war on the evil bloggers.
  
  2) Now that there's no public support for the blogger, AOL can safely trick a government agency into publicly denouncing the blogger. Since the blogger is clearly a danger to public safety, the government is allowed to ignore all applicable law. After all their heart was in the right place, and that matter's more than an individual's rights. Also, since the press is already committed to portraying the blogger as a villain, the government knows that they will never have to apologize if they make a mistake. The press has a vested interest not to report the error.
  
  3) Next AOL's team of corporate lawyers will file a lawsuit. It doesn't matter if the lawsuit is frivolous - they are after the PR value of "prosecuting on behalf of the public", and reinforcing to the media that the blogger who dared link to the info is the evil one. If the blogger is poor, weak, and has no media platform of their own, then AOL might actually win the lawsuit by default, adding further legitimacy to their "public defender" posture.
  
  4) The public doesn't understand that killing the messenger only guarantees successful cover ups in the future. And as far as I can tell, they don't care that there is a layer of people who corporations can calculate as having no Constitutional rights in this country (if a person can't defend their rights, they might as well not exist). AOL's "issues management" team is weaving these assumptions into their strategy.
  
  Scapegoating worked for Kaiser Permanente. It'll work for AOL.

  August 7, 2006

  0 replies

• Google Threat to Livelihood
  //I also somehow doubt they will type his name into Google to do a background check...//
  
  Less than a month ago I read an article in an HR magazine about how recruiters now regard a basic Google search as a standard tool to gather information on candidates. The increasing role of Google in hiring has also been brought up recently as a threat to discourage college students from using Facebook and similar networking systems.
  
  The problem is not so much lack of quality control on Wikipedia: there's a lack of quality control plaguing the media in general. It's almost impossible for private citizens to get corrections from the press - and reporters themselves don't even understand the big deal since they see their medium as ephemeral. Moreover, increasing pressure on the media to woo back their readers has led to a quest after sensational stories. And when those stories don't exist, the media just makes the story up by creatively editing clips with new questions. One news outlet will copy content from another, and the falsehood spreads. Even if there is a correction, there's nothing to stop the original bad article from coming up first on Google.
  
  In the Wikipedia case, a private citizen's privacy was invaded, and there's no taking it back. He WILL be Googled by other people and this information will be online forever. This is a situation that will affect more and more people, and anger will mount as their public participation, even unwanted public participation in the form of being "outed", will be used to screen them out of job interviews.
  
  I'm a fan of Wikipedia's and I think their stance is generally right in dealing with this case, but pretending that a private citizen won't be harmed by his sudden Google presence is *crazy*. It makes Wikipedia look sly and disingenious to pretend this isn't a problem.

  December 16, 2005

  0 replies