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Privacy, Liberty and the Transaction Economy

February 25, 2007 on 2:52 pm | In IdBlog, Privacy, Tools | Add a Comment

Some elaboration is required on two items in the last post. By suggesting that anonymous e-mail and handwritten signatures be retired as old and useless technologies, I am not saying they should be outlawed or forbidden. There is a place for anonymous communication and everyone has a right to protect their privacy to the extent that they see fit. However, in today’s machine-mediated, transaction-based economy, participants must validate their identity or lose trust and risk being shut out of many exchanges.

If I buy a pair of sunglasses from a man who has set up a table on a street corner, I do not need to know the man’s name, or even the provenance of the sunnies. I can try on the sunglasses, assess the fit and judge for myself if the lenses are adequate. Then, if I am satisfied with the sunglasses, I hand the man $5 and the transaction is complete.

That exchange would not happen on the net. If I wanted a pair of discount sunnies, I’d check established retailers first — companies that had been in business a few years and had built a reputation for fair dealing. If I wanted a better discount I might go to ebay, but I’d take a close look at the sunglass vendor’s trust ratings and the number of transactions he had done. Likewise, the seller would require assurance that I was paying with real currency. That identity check would be performed by a credit clearinghouse like PayPal or Visa. Without a mutual verification of identity and reputation, that transaction would not happen.

The distinction that needs to be made here is between voluntary and involuntary identification. In arguing for better identification technology I am advocating a safer marketplace where transactions flow more easily — a space where I choose to yield some of my information in order to participate in certain transactions. However, better identification technology also increases the chances that my identity will be taken from me involuntarily.

Last week I had some business in a Midtown office building. In addition to the usual security checks that have become so common in post-911 New York, I was asked for my photograph. The digital photo that the security guard took was printed on a sticky-backed paper ID badge along with my name, which became my day pass to the building. I submitted to that rigamarole because I had business transact there. Although, one has to wonder how long that information will stay in the building’s database or if it will migrate to other information repositories (the persistence of information will have to be a topic for another post).

Not everyone is so compliant. Three years ago Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben famously declined to come to the United States to lecture because he refused to submit to the identity checks performed at our borders. Similarly, Michel Foucault made a career railing against bio-politics and surveillance, most notably in the Discipline and Punish. The notion that our personal information is no longer our own has even filtered into the popular culture with movies like Minority Report, which had the chilling tagline “You can’t hide. Get ready to run.”

These are legitimate concerns and they should not be overlooked. By the same token, it’s foolish to wish away technology that already exists. The tools themselves — retinal scans, biometrics, integrated databases — are value-neutral; they either work or they don’t. It is the application of the information these tools gather that posits moral questions.

As a member of modern society, working in information design, I can’t realistically opt out of the networked marketplace. I can, however, demand control over the information that pertains to me, especially ambient information that is not strictly transaction-based. This would entail a revision and expansion of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which has been patched many times since its first passage in 1970.

Legislation is famously slow to catch up with technology, especially in the information space realized by the net. A better safeguard of our liberty is an awareness of how information is gathered and used and a constant assessment of its value in transactions.

RIP Old Tech

February 21, 2007 on 6:57 pm | In IdBlog, Stuff, Tools | Add a Comment

In the rush toward new technology and new solutions, we often forget to discontinue old or outmoded tech. Old technology has a way of lingering on, sapping productivity, costing us money, and generally annoying the hell out of people who still use it. Rather than limp forward with a legacy of tools that no longer work, we should resolve in 2007 to make a clean start.

In the spirit of new beginnings and progress, I submit this short list of tools and technologies that should be discarded in the New Year. The list is roughly ordered in terms of cost; the most egregious money-wasters are at the top.

1. Fossil-fuel burning automobiles. This is an obvious choice and yet this centuries-old technology lingers on. Apart from the enormous social costs of automobiles, pollution and danger associated with cars, there are real and substantial individual costs. But, in an economy predicated on the automobile, good alternatives have been slow to emerge. Fortunately, there is a simple solution: move closer to where you work and sell your car. Take public transport to work — or ride a bike — and you will find that you have more money and more time.

2. Television. Who has the time for broadcast TV or cable? Who can afford to waste an hour of their life to get 18 minutes of dubious content? Use TIVO if you must, or better still; select your content online according to a schedule that suits you.

3. Incandescent light bulbs. Yesterday Australia’s government recognized just how dead this tech is by mandating a phase-out of incandescent bulbs by 2010. The shift to compact fluorescent bulbs is expected to save Australia 800,000 tons of carbon emissions annually. LEDs are even more efficient, as much as 60% more light for the money than fluorescents, according to industry estimates.

4. Fax machines. Don’t even get me started. What seemed like a miracle in 1980 is merely a nuisance today. What possible excuse can there be for maintaining this pterodactyl tech in offices now? Need a signature on a piece of paper? Sign it, scan it and attach the PDF to an e-mail. As an added bonus, you don’t have to call to make sure someone picked up your fax at the other end.

5. Phone Books. When was the last time you looked up a number in a paper phone book? Arguably, phone books are still useful to senior citizens and in places where internet service is not available, but the cost of printing and shipping these doorstops means their days are numbered.

6. Newspapers. As with phone books, this method of information dissemination has been superseded by far cheaper solutions. At the same time, the advertising model that supported the dailies has changed. Classifieds have migrated to the net and display ads look likely to follow. While newspapers may persist for a few more decades, publishers would do well to curtail their print runs and concentrate on publishing to the net.

7. IM. Instant Messaging can spell Insistent Migraine for people who are trying to work through a complex problem or follow a train of thought. Part of the beauty of e-mail it that it is asynchronous. You read it when you’re ready; not when your over-caffeinated colleague is bored and wants to chat. Persistent communication is not necessarily better communication.

8. Anonymous E-mail. The days of unverified e-mail identity are over. Now that majority of all e-mail is SPAM (see Akismet or MSNBC ) and the annual cost of handling/filtering SPAM is in the billions, the net should move to a verified identity system. In the next year or so, clearinghouses will emerge for identity management and verification. Systems like Shibboleth, which is used in academe to identify students, will vouch for the identity of senders. Savvy recipients and sysadmins will block any mail that does not have the imprimatur of a recognized clearinghouse.

9. Hard Disc Drives. Spinning HDDs all fail eventually. Flash memory looks to be more durable. Right now cost and capacity have prevented a mass flight to flash memory, but that equation is changing.

10. Signatures. I don’t know about you, but my signature is more of a graphic spasm than a valid identity verification device. Given that signatures are a voluntary form of identification and easily forged, their anachronistic persistence is a mystery. In the near future, I expect to retire my John Hancock in favor of retinal scans or some form of hand/finger scanning and verification.

Many of these systems and technologies are already out of my life. I’m hoping to be free of the rest by this time next year. What about you?