Are you a 'Data Absolutist' ?

[Michael Hardner]

And that is why the DA approach is dangerous. They have no idea about the societal impacts that would have.

Well, you finally have a reason. But it's not exactly true. They have an idea - that hypocrites won't be able to hide behind privacy.

I think the fact that there is a porn industry at all is indicating a direct and indirect harm to people in that business. What you want to do is go after the dealer, not the user.

I'm not interested in stopping the porn industry, just addressing hypocrites who want those who produce it to go away.

The notion of the DA is false. This porn analogy failed in my view.

So far you've posted 1 reason that they're wrong - that they have no idea what will happen if their ideas are followed. You can say that about any widespread social change that people are talking about, for example banning the NSA or adopting bitcoin.

[Michael Hardner]

To add:

Stating "the notion of the DA is false" is an ambiguous statement, therefore unclear.

You may be saying:

"The DA's ideas are wrong"

or

"The idea that a DA could exist is wrong"

[GostHacked]

To add:

Stating "the notion of the DA is false" is an ambiguous statement, therefore unclear.

You may be saying:

"The DA's ideas are wrong"

or

"The idea that a DA could exist is wrong"

I would not call it wrong, just a non starter. So it's a false notion. There are no DAs.

[Michael Hardner]

... just a non starter. So it's a false notion. There are no DAs.

Can you explain ?

[GostHacked]

Can you explain ?

Well, I guess the challenge is for you to actually find a so called Data Absolutist and start grilling them with questions. That would support your position in this thread.

[Michael Hardner]

An interesting opinion from a NY judge:

Posner likened privacy to a "superior good," one that is not something that is deeply ingrained in human nature, but rather a luxury.

The thrust of the argument is that privacy is a double edged sword because it essentially means concealment. Posner argues that privacy is simply protection to conceal that which we do not want others to know, like arrests, illnesses, etc. In his eyes, it's the right to present the most polished version of ourselves. He asks whether that is a social luxury we are willing to forgo in order to preserve something greater, like security.

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/blog/why-a-judge-saying-privacy-is-not-a-right-is-bad-news-for-the-internet

The idea of privacy as a type of concealment is attractive because it ties an abstract idea (information privacy) to basic human actions and attributes such as hiding, such as modesty, shyness or fear. That relationship gives us a reference point to McLuhan's idea of technology (in this case social technology) as an 'extension of man' (in this case one of "man" 's innate human instincts).

As such, it makes sense that through history the idea of privacy would develop as society progressed in design of its collective social mechanisms such as justice, trade, and education. With each leap in human communications, the idea of privacy and of lying, misinforming, concealing change too.

The development of mass media, for example, invented the public and the public sphere.

And now with the arrival of our digital personae, the lines between private and public life define online privacy. We have a kind of individual public - your public persona as projected through your online accounts. If it is a 'right' then it is a right that is openly traded by all of us every day.

Data Absolutists, according to the article in the OP, are strongly in favour of mining that information that exists in the online 'public' sphere. Actually, it doesn't seem so Absolute as it sounds.

[Michael Hardner]

Well, I guess the challenge is for you to actually find a so called Data Absolutist and start grilling them with questions. That would support your position in this thread.

The OP stakes out what they describe as a data absolutist position, but it's not really absolute.

[GostHacked]

The OP stakes out what they describe as a data absolutist position, but it's not really absolute.

I'll take that as a fail Mike.

[Michael Hardner]

I'll take that as a fail Mike.

Whether or not Data Absolutists exist as I describe them doesn't preclude us from discussing whether it's an interesting idea or even whether there is some collective "good" that can come from it. Marxism, for example,

John Lennon said "imagine no possessions", and sparked an idea. Can we say that the idea, or the song are worthless because he was wealthy ? I don't think so.

Marx advocated for the collective ownership of 'private property', ie. means of production. Collected aggregate information can similarly be used to improve the lives of the collective so there's an analogy there as well.

[Michael Hardner]

I think that Privacy and Secrecy really seem to go together in this discussion. You have a private conversation with another entity, and they now have a duty of secrecy. That's the convention in non-digital living, as it deals with you speaking to a friend, an acquaintance, an employer, a doctor, a company, a priest, or your government.

Any of those entities will aggregate the information that they receive from your conversation and bundle it as knowledge and experience. So, the doctor or friend may relate that knowledge in another conversation as long as it doesn't reveal you as the source of that knowledge, hence violating your 'privacy'. As such, I think it's reasonable that digital information in the form of health, marketing, and security information can be allowed to be aggregated and shared as long as there's an implicit or preferably explicit agreement understanding that this limited openness may occur. Those are rights that are given, or traded by the individual for benefits.

When do we get into tricky areas and areas in which the pure Data Absolutist would differ from the vanilla Data Absolutist ? When the collective has the means and will to violate these private conversations and transactions for the public "good" (not my term). Examples include the hypocrite bearing public false witness, the tax evader, the cheat, the terrorist plotter.

Are there equivalents in non-digital life ? I can think of one.

Subpoenaing people to testify as to the contents of private conversations. Even priests in a confessional could be compelled to testify as to such conversations. It's easier for governments to seize private property and digital records than to force testimony, but the precedent is similar.

Are there other examples ?

[GostHacked]

So, two types of absolutists? So the OP was 'Are you a DA', and now the question is 'which type of DA are you?' You do understand how that sounds right?

[Michael Hardner]

So, two types of absolutists? So the OP was 'Are you a DA', and now the question is 'which type of DA are you?' You do understand how that sounds right?

Not really. I will acknowledge that 'Data Absolutist' isn't a real term, ie. not used outside of the article I referenced.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=%22data+absolutist%22&oq=%22data+absolutist%22&aqs=chrome..69i57.3136j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8

The article is the only thing on the first search page that refers to Open Data and such topics. But that shouldn't stop us from talking about the ideas around privacy, and how to draw the lines between private and public information and our digital personae should it ?

[Michael Hardner]

The Duke university student who outed the pornography actor has had his own pornography accounts published online:

http://cltampa.com/bedpost/archives/2014/03/06/bully-who-outed-duke-porn-star-has-his-porn-preferences-publicized#.Uxy2pfldVlM

People are upset with him for the sin of revealing someone else's persona without their performance.

[GostHacked]

I still fail to see how this Duke university incident can be used as a talking point for your OP.

[Michael Hardner]

Well, you're right. The thread drifted to a more general discussion about online/digital privacy and openness when I realized that the responses were about personally identifiable information being shared. Yesterday, I wrote about secrecy/privacy as a social/technical construct, to explore opinions on these things.

I would start another thread that's more on topic but your last six posts at least indicate you find this topic to be a non-starter, and nobody else is interested in what this means at the moment so... thread dead.

[GostHacked]

Well the real discussion you want is one about open data vrs privacy. Which is an important discussion and one that should be had.

[Michael Hardner]

Well the real discussion you want is one about open data vrs privacy. Which is an important discussion and one that should be had.

I don't know that there's much to say there, actually. Government held PII will go to the cloud at some point. There will be hacks and accidents - that will happen - but it will be too late to change things by that point. Personal data won't be shared openly but it will be aggregated to mine information. It's all pretty clear cut, even if a thousand Toronto Star articles between now and that point in time will try to suggest otherwise.

The more important discussion is about the publicizing of government operations and performance data but as we've seen there's close to zero interest from "the" public - and that's the problem as well as the cause of the problem as well as the solution.

It's covered by the OGP and will be the last of the three principles therein to be adopted, I predict.

[Michael Hardner]

http://www.rappler.com/move-ph/ispeak/52139-keep-government-honest-ispeak

Happy Feraren fights the good fight in the Philippines:

In the citizen monitoring space, a lot of civil society organizations (CSOs) have come to realize that many of the problems our developing nation has can be solved by people themselves. But first, ‘the people’ need to care, get involved and participate.

[Michael Hardner]

The UK Government has been more aggressive than most, imposing requirements on local governments. The results are described here:

http://diginomica.com/2014/02/28/open-data-putting-fear-local-government/

A fear of being humiliated[/size]
Eddie Copeland, the head of the think tank’s Digital Government Unit, explained that there are some councils in the UK – such as Camden in London, which has a very comprehensive digital strategy – that are genuinely pioneering in releasing data. However, he said that generally the response from councils has been variable, where some are simply holding one day hackathons to see what developers can do with the data put forward to them, whilst others are staying clear from the whole agenda.

“There’s councils who wouldn’t even know what open data was and if they do know what it is they find the idea terrifying,” said Copeland.

Copeland has two theories as to why there has been some reservation from regional governmnet:

• Councils are worried about what the data will be used to do – there are local politicians who will be worried that the data will be used to embarrass them and that money wasting scandals will hit the headlines. (Everyone’s up for being transparent unless its exposing the ugly truth).
• The second concern is with regard to how identifiable the data is. Obviously the open data agenda looks to release information that is non-identifiable, but even if information such as date of birth and gender are removed, it is possible to use other publicly available datasets to combine with this information and there is a risk that the data could then become identifiable. For example, central government has faced a backlash for its care.data, which diginomica has been following in recent weeks.

“There’s a fear that releasing everything seems pretty scary, unless someone has got the time to really check that you are not releasing really sensitive information, which could obviously backfire quite massively,” said Copeland.

[TimG]

The UK Government has been more aggressive than most, imposing requirements on local governments. The results are described here:

At the same time the UK government has frequently allowed scientists to lie (i.e. they make claims that are demonstrably not true) in order keep their publicly funded data secret despite numerous FOI requests. Edited March 10, 2014 by TimG

[Michael Hardner]

At the same time the UK government has frequently allowed scientists to lie (i.e. they make claims that are demonstrably not true) in order keep their publicly funded data secret despite numerous FOI requests.

This must be a really boring topic because people are only interested in bringing their own topics to it.

But, to address your point, yes. This has also been said of the Canadian, American and I expect other governments. They use OGP as an opportunity to have a press conference, but protect secrecy in more important ways at every opportunity.

It seems to me the mundaneness of this topic is what is preventing us from moving forward.

[TimG]

This must be a really boring topic because people are only interested in bringing their own topics to it.

I can only discuss how it relates to me. My point is systems are meaningless if there is no 'culture of openness' with in the bureaucracy because bureaucrats will always manipulate and exceptions to avoid releasing stuff they don't want to release to people they don't want to have it.

[Michael Hardner]

I can only discuss how it relates to me.

All of it relates to all of us in significant ways, since OGP is mostly about participation and monitoring of government, and government services are important to all of us.

My point is systems are meaningless if there is no 'culture of openness' with in the bureaucracy because bureaucrats will always manipulate and exceptions to avoid releasing stuff they don't want to release to people they don't want to have it.

I think OGP is about creating a culture of openness. After all, that's what the O stands for. If people start demanding it, then it will happen at some point. And when people see the results, there will be more and more of it.

"The" public accepts bad service - especially "the" Canadian public. The press therefore doesn't care either, unless there's some kind of outrage associated with it. ( Example, eHealth doing nothing and costing hundreds of millions getting scant coverage before and after a flare-up where a consultant expensed a tea and muffin. )

If we pay attention to these details, the big things will start to take care of themselves.

[Michael Hardner]

I want to add: as much as this gets billing as a 'government of the future' type thing, the very concrete improvements we would see from this first are:

1 ) Improved services

2 ) Clarity on budgets and costs

[GostHacked]

I don't know that there's much to say there, actually.

There is a lot to say about it. And it is a discussion that needs to be had. Your articles seem to back that notion up. The one line of if they know what open data is, it is terrifying. That would be the logical response in my view.

Government held PII will go to the cloud at some point. There will be hacks and accidents - that will happen - but it will be too late to change things by that point.

This is another bit that the government likes. Self defeatists. 'Well whatya gonna do' or 'it is what it is'. Tired of the utter complacency in which this is approached. And besides, IT clouds are not safe places to store critical information.

Personal data won't be shared openly but it will be aggregated to mine information. It's all pretty clear cut, even if a thousand Toronto Star articles between now and that point in time will try to suggest otherwise.

Forgive me if I have a hard time believing this. It is not clear cut, or we would not be having this conversation.

Who gets to decide if it is identifying information or not?

The more important discussion is about the publicizing of government operations and performance data but as we've seen there's close to zero interest from "the" public - and that's the problem as well as the cause of the problem as well as the solution.

There is a lot of interest. Problem is will they be able to aggregate the data in a way that makes sense and shows the information they need to make better decisions. I don't care or need to know a Senator's personal life, aside from his public record, like criminal charges and who and where he worked for in the past (qualifying experience for the government role) However, everything they do while in public office for the public should be open to scrutiny and oversight.