Essays in the Category "Internet and Society"
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2015: The Year "Doxing" Will Hit Home
Those of you unfamiliar with hacker culture might need an explanation of “doxing.”
The word refers to the practice of publishing personal information about people without their consent. Usually it’s things like an address and phone number, but it can also be credit card details, medical information, private e-mails—pretty much anything an assailant can get his hands on.
Doxing is not new; the term dates back to 2001 and the hacker group Anonymous. But it can be incredibly offensive. In 2014, several women were doxed by male gamers trying to intimidate them into keeping silent about sexism in computer games…
Over 700 Million People Taking Steps to Avoid NSA Surveillance
German translation by Yuri Samoilov
There’s a new international survey on Internet security and trust, of ‘23,376 Internet users in 24 countries,’ including ‘Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey and the United States.’ Amongst the findings, 60% of Internet users have heard of Edward Snowden, and 39% of those ‘have taken steps to protect their online privacy and security as a result of his revelations.’…
The Battle for Power on the Internet
Distributed citizen groups and nimble hackers once had the edge. Now governments and corporations are catching up. Who will dominate in the decades ahead?
We’re in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace. On one side are the traditional, organized, institutional powers such as governments and large multinational corporations. On the other are the distributed and nimble: grassroots movements, dissident groups, hackers, and criminals. Initially, the Internet empowered the second side. It gave them a place to coordinate and communicate efficiently, and made them seem unbeatable. But now, the more traditional institutional powers are winning, and winning big. How these two sides fare in the long term, and the fate of the rest of us who don’t fall into either group, is an open question—and one vitally important to the future of the Internet…
The Court of Public Opinion Is About Mob Justice and Reputation as Revenge
Recently, Elon Musk and The New York Times took to Twitter and the internet to argue the data —and their grievances—over a failed road test and car review. Meanwhile, an Applebee’s server is part of a Change.org petition to get her job back after posting a pastor’s no-tip receipt comment online. And when he wasn’t paid quickly enough, a local Fitness SF web developer rewrote the company’s webpage to air his complaint.
All of these ‘cases’ are seeking their judgments in the court of public opinion. The court of public opinion has a full docket; even brick-and-mortar establishments aren’t immune…
Power And The Internet
This essay appeared as a response to Edge‘s annual question, “What *Should* We Be Worried About?“
All disruptive technologies upset traditional power balances, and the Internet is no exception. The standard story is that it empowers the powerless, but that’s only half the story. The Internet empowers everyone. Powerful institutions might be slow to make use of that new power, but since they are powerful, they can use it more effectively. Governments and corporations have woken up to the fact that not only can they use the Internet, they can control it for their interests. Unless we start deliberately debating the future we want to live in, and information technology in enabling that world, we will end up with an Internet that benefits existing power structures and not society in general…
Our New Regimes of Trust
Society runs on trust. Over the millennia, we’ve developed a variety of mechanisms to induce trustworthy behavior in society. These range from a sense of guilt when we cheat, to societal disapproval when we lie, to laws that arrest fraudsters, to door locks and burglar alarms that keep thieves out of our homes. They’re complicated and interrelated, but they tend to keep society humming along.
The information age is transforming our sociey. We’re shifting from evolved social systems to deliberately created socio-technical systems. Instead of having conversations in offices, we use Facebook. Instead of meeting friends, we IM. We shop online. We let various companies and governments collect comprehensive dossiers on our movements, our friendships, and our interests. We let others censor what we see and read. I could go on for pages…
When It Comes to Security, We're Back to Feudalism
Some of us have pledged our allegiance to Google: We have Gmail accounts, we use Google Calendar and Google Docs, and we have Android phones. Others have pledged allegiance to Apple: We have Macintosh laptops, iPhones, and iPads; and we let iCloud automatically synchronize and back up everything. Still others of us let Microsoft do it all. Or we buy our music and e-books from Amazon, which keeps records of what we own and allows downloading to a Kindle, computer, or phone. Some of us have pretty much abandoned e-mail altogether … for Facebook…
News Media Strategies for Survival for Journalists
Those of us living through the Internet-caused revolution in journalism can’t see what’s going to come out the other side: how readers will interact with journalism, what the sources of journalism will be, how journalists will make money. All we do know is that mass-market journalism is hurting, badly, and may not survive. And that we have no idea how to thrive in this new world of digital media.
I have five pieces of advice to those trying to survive and wanting to thrive: based both on experiences as a successful Internet pundit and blogger, and my observations of others, successful and unsuccessful. I’ll talk about writing, but everything I say applies to audio and video as well…
Social Networking Risks
This essay appeared as the first half of a point-counterpoint with Marcus Ranum.
Are employees blogging corporate secrets? It’s not an unreasonable fear, actually. People have always talked about work to their friends. It’s human nature for people to talk about what’s going on in their lives, and work is a lot of most people’s lives. Historically, organizations generally didn’t care very much. The conversations were intimate and ephemeral, so the risk was small. Unless you worked for the military with actual national secrets, no one worried about it very much…
Here Comes Here Comes Everybody
Book Review of <cite>Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations</cite><br />
In 1937, Ronald Coase answered one of the most perplexing questions in economics: if markets are so great, why do organizations exist? Why don’t people just buy and sell their own services in a market instead? Coase, who won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Economics, answered the question by noting a market’s transaction costs: buyers and sellers need to find one another, then reach agreement, and so on. The Coase theorem implies that if these transaction costs are low enough, direct markets of individuals make a whole lot of sense. But if they are too high, it makes more sense to get the job done by an organization that hires people…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.