Owen Mundy

I am tele-participating in a one-week online performance of Google queries at Transmediale 2012 in Berlin. The project, plainly titled, “Google,” is organized by Johannes P. Osterhoff and will run from Jan 30 to Feb 5, 2012. Each participant edits the search method for their browser search bar so that everything they type in this box, from the personal to the mundane, becomes instantly visible at google-performance.org.

The project (“manifesto” below) makes public what Facebook, Google, and any online search engine, crowdsourcing website, or social network already does by harvesting searches from users, and re-representing that data in a new context. While Google uses these queries to build and sell condensed user demographic data to advertisers, Osterhoff’s project asks, who actually owns your search data?

We shall do an one-week performance piece.

The piece is called “Google” and documents all searches we perform withthe search engine of the same name.

The performance shall take place during transmediale 2012 and shall start on Monday, January 30 and shall end on Sunday, February 5, 2012.

We shall not use undocumented ways to use the search engine Google during this time.

Each of our search queries shall create a web page that is indexed by this search engine and thus makes our searches publicly available as search results for everybody.

I just moved back to Florida after a one year research project in Berlin and have subscribed to Comcast broadband service. The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth, though not because the tech showed-up 2 hours after the installation appointment window. Nor was it because he held loud personal conversations on his cell phone while he was setting up the service. No, the icky feeling is more corporate and selfish, and impedes much more into my private space than “Joe the cable guy” ever could.

Comcast made me install software on my computer in order to use their broadband.

Upon his arrival, “Joe” announced he would need access to my computer to setup broadband service. Understanding that most of the people Joe deals with might not be IT whizzes, and could manage to not be able to connect their machines without his help, I decided to let him use it rather than attempt to prove I was not a member of the usual group. After half an hour of complaining about previous customers to his friend on his cellphone, waiting for an other Comcast person to flip a switch allowing him to do his job, and multiple trips to his truck, he showed me that the internet was indeed accessible on my computer.

At this point the laptop was directly connected to the cable modem via an ethernet cable. He announced I was to follow the steps on the screen and he was out the door. The web page he had left up required me to agree to some terms, create a username and then… install software? Really? I tried to access the net without the final step but nothing doing. Unless I installed this software I was stuck. So I did it, still not believing that a company had really initiated this final invasion onto every customer’s computer. After it was done I had new bookmarks everywhere, for Comcast email, security, and some branding nonsense called “XFINITY” (I thought “X” was out with the ’90′s and “X”games?)

So I thought, “OK, Comcast, you got me, hit me with your best marketing slime. Whatever, I can delete the bookmarklets you installed in my browser, just let me access the service I paid for, wirelessly, on whichever device I want.”

But this is where the relationship got really creepy. Apparently when I installed the Comcast (spyware?) on my machine, it made note of my MAC address, a unique identifier of networked machines, so that it would only allow my machine (or another machine with that MAC address) to connect to the internet. This means when I attached a wireless router to the cable modem I could connect to the wifi, but there was no internet.

So it turns-out that Comcast is not only forcing their adware on customers, it’s also making it difficult (though not impossible) for them use more than one device. Presumably Comcast is doing this in order to circumvent sharing of services among neighbors, but the end result is that you can’t share the service between more than one device, or between roommates or spouses for that matter.

An example (albeit a geeky one): between my wife and I we have 2 laptops, 2 smartphones, and a desktop computer that all might be talking to each other or accessing the net. Comcast’s so-called internet service didn’t allow for any such geekery because it only allows one device, with the correct MAC address, to connect.

So, here’s what I did, on my Mac, with some help from my sister’s boyfriend, Tom, and a lot from Google, to get my linksys wireless router to work with Comcast internet.

1. Confirm you can access the internet with your machine connected directly to the Comcast cable modem.
2. Open Terminal and type (without the quotes): “ifconfig en0 | grep ether”
3. Now disconnect your computer from the modem and connect the modem ethernet cable to your wireless router. Make sure both are plugged-in.
4. Connect to your wireless router via the airport on your machine.
5. Go to the following link: http://192.168.1.1
6. Under Setup, choose DHCP as the Internet Connection Type. Save Settings.
7. Under Setup : Mac Address Clone, enter the alpha numeric characters returned from Terminal. Save Settings.
8. Configure your wireless router like you normally would and you are up and running.
9. Snicker at Comcast

I was quoted recently in a TechCrunch article about the ongoing battle between Google and Facebook to draw users to their respective social networking services. In the article, The Only Backdoor Left To Sneak Your Facebook Friends Into Google+ Is Yahoo, Erick Schonfeld writes:

‘Over the weekend, Facebook blocked a Google Chrome extension called the Facebook Friend Exporter. And in fact, Facebook changed its OAuth 2.0 API in such a way that it “suddenly removed email addresses from the queries without warning,” says Owen Mundy, creator of Give Me My Data. Other data can still be exported, just not your friends’ email addresses.’ [1]

I wanted to clarify something about the above because my contribution is slightly vague. I also wanted to elaborate for other developers and people interested in how to get their data, specifically the email addresses *out* of Facebook.

Getting your data our of Facebook is a hot issue right now with the emergence of Google+. It’s important to be able to preserve your data, especially in the event you want to exit Facebook, or prepare for its possible demise. I think most people don’t care which social networking software they use, as long as they can stay in touch with their friends. Many depend on Facebook to keep their friends’ contact information up to date. Their friends’ phone numbers, emails, and physical addresses may have changed, but they can still be found on Facebook.

This is one great benefit of Facebook, but I think they’ve come to take a higher-than-thou approach to user data. For example, if I use a single software on my computer to manage contact data for my friends, send them messages with pictures, etc., I am not locked-into a contract with the machine nor the software. I physically have the device that stores this data in my possession, and therefore can do whatever I like with it—assuming I can wrangle my data out of it.

One of the great benefits of the cloud is access, right? Wrong. Facebook has a god’s eye view regarding the matter of our data. The view from on high is that they can do whatever benefits Facebook, not necessarily the user. So they continue profiting from our activity while protecting it’s evidence from any company/person/software which could compromise their lead in social networking. Unfortunately this includes us, so we are ultimately at their mercy.

But Facebook is not a merciless God. They don’t charge to use their service or store my data. This is the tradeoff. We sacrifice privacy—our right to not be tracked, advertised to, or sniffed by governments—in order to play games, have stupid political debates, and post pictures of our kids. So, they have the right to allow or prevent access to this information, regardless of whether it is right.

Regarding getting email addresses of your contacts, as far as I know, there are three ways to mass export your friends’ contact data, only one of which is currently allowed by Facebook.

Hacking

The Facebook Friend Exporter, created by Mohamed Mansour, is a browser extension that works independent of the Facebook API. It scrapes your friends’ contact data from the Facebook pages you visit and exports them as CSV. First, Facebook’s rules here for reusing this type of data are not exactly clear. While they don’t explicitly ban saving the contact info of your friends, the have a catch-all statement that tries to set guidelines for doing so. One could argue by accepting your friend request a user has already consented to sharing with you.

“If you collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information, and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and how you will use it.” [2]

One thing that is clear is the method the Facebook Friend Exporter extension uses is banned according to Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities:

“You will not collect users’ content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.” [2]

And as expected, Facebook has taken measures to prevent Mansour’s app from working.

“Mansour says that Facebook removed emails from their mobile site, which were critical to the original design of his extension. He told me that the company had implemented a throttling mechanism: if you visit any friend page five times in a short period of time, the email field is removed.” [3]

This is not the first time Facebook has referenced their Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to take measures to keep user data from hackers, artists, or competitors. In 2010 they served moddr and other makers of the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine with a cease and desist letter to prevent them from providing a service for Facebook users to delete their accounts. The letter, which claimed the project was guilty of “Soliciting users’ Facebook login information; Accessing a Facebook account belonging to someone else; Collecting Facebook users’ content or information using automated means such as scripts or scrapers without Facebook’s permission” was possibly effective. Currently only users of MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter can commit “virtual suicide.”

The Face to Facebook (see image on left) project by Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico stole one-million Facebook profiles, filtered them with face-recognition software, and then posted them on a fake dating website sorted by facial characteristics. From a statement by the makers:

“Everybody can steal personal data and re-contextualize it in a completely unexpected context. And that shows, once more, how fragile and potentially manipulable the online environment actually is.”

I agree, and I like the project. But in a public work such as this it’s hard to argue, in my opinion, that this project will help the average web user. While many may reconsider the type of information they post, more than likely they will think this project is another example of the “bad guys” (a.k.a. hackers) doing bad things. While it critiques, in a very amusing and relevant way, the issue of online privacy, it leaves the user feeling violated, not necessarily thoughtful. As a work of protest it encounters the same problem that holding a giant sign in someone’s face that says “go to hell”—It makes it hard for the other person to see your perspective when you do that.

While I appreciated the fun jab and reference to FaceMash, Facebook did not see the humor in the project. The creators received cease and desist letters and were threatened with multiple lawsuits from Facebook’s lawyers. And in a final spiteful measure, Facebook deleted their profiles [4]. Apparently the rule is, what happens on Facebook, stays on Facebook.

Using the API

While I was sure that in the past my app, Give Me My Data, was able to retrieve a user’s friend’s email address, when I tested it after the Facebook Friend Exporter news broke I found no emails. Looking around the web I can’t find any evidence that Facebook ever allowed this data to be accessed. While you can still export all other data from your Facebook profile using Give Me My Data, this tiny and important string of characters with an ‘@’ is one essential component Facebook won’t allow. Likely, the policy was spurred by spam prevention, but given the above, it has the added bonus of blocking an exodus of users from Facebook.

In any case when you run the following FQL (Facebook Query Language) against their API it doesn’t error. This means the field exists, but they have written a custom script to remove it from the results.

SELECT first_name, middle_name, last_name, email
FROM user
WHERE uid IN (SELECT uid2 FROM friend WHERE uid1 = me())


Becoming a Preferred Developer

In the article above, Schonfeld also explains how users can access their Facebook friend’s contact info by first importing it into a Yahoo! account and then exporting a CSV which can be imported into Google+ (or anything for that matter). I believe that Yahoo! belongs to the Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant Program which gives them access above and beyond regular developers:

“Facebook provides PDCs with increased access to its employees and training. PDCs are expected to abide by program expectations around policy compliance, integration quality, and high-level cooperation with Facebook.” [6]

Whatever kind of cooperation it is that Facebook is giving these preferred developers, one can be sure it includes access to data Facebook considers sensitive, like email addresses. While Yahoo! is not listed as a preferred developer on the Facebook page above, they have access to the emails so they clearly have some kind of arrangement.

Google, on the other hand, most definitely does not. This is not the first time Google and Facebook have gotten into a scuffle over sharing (or lack of) data. Late in 2010 Google stated they would no longer allow Facebook and other services access to their users’ data unless Facebook or the other service allowed data to be accessed by Google. [7]

In closing, we already know everyone wants our data. All the clicks, likes, comments, photos, and video we incur or upload are tracked, analyzed, and ultimately compiled and sold to advertisers or others in the business of molding consumer (or political) behavior. We’ve come a long way since Gutenberg, but just like when he was alive, it seems there will always be powerful groups in control of the media of the day. And, even with the utopian promise of a democratic internet, information continues to be manipulated or hidden in order to keep them powerful.

Notes

1. Schonfeld, Erick, “The Only Backdoor Left To Sneak Your Facebook Friends Into Google+ Is Yahoo,” Jul 5, 2011, http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/05/google-facebook-friends-yahoo/
2. “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,” Facebook, last revised April 26, 2011, http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
3. Protalinski, Emil, “Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends,” July 5, 2011 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-blocks-google-chrome-extension-for-exporting-friends/1935
4. “Angry Victims and Eager Business Partners React to the “Face to Facebook” Art Stunt,” ARTINFO, February 11, 2011 http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/36963/status-update-angry-victims-and-eager-business-partners-react-to-the-face-to-facebook-art-stunt/
5. Gayathri, Amrutha, “Why Facebook’s Acts of Desperation Are Not Enough to Stop Google+,” International Business Times, July 6, 2011, http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/174946/20110706/google-plus-facebook-chrome-extension-block-facebook-friends-exporter-disable-social-network-yahoo-b.htm
6. “Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant Program FAQ,” http://developers.facebook.com/preferreddevelopers/#FAQ
7. Oreskovic, Alexei, “Google bars data from Facebook as rivalry heats up,” Reuters, Nov 5, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/05/us-google-facebook-idUSTRE6A455420101105

When it comes to personal data everyone’s first concern is usually privacy. But a lot of us want to share our data too, with friends, colleagues, and even complete strangers. While numbers have been used for centuries to improve the way we manufacture and do business, using them to quantify our personal lives is a recent phenomenon.

I’ve been thinking about this because one of my goals in creating Give Me My Data was to inspire others to reuse their data, and respond with images and objects they created. But I’m learning if you don’t know a programming language your choices are somewhat scattered and intimidating.

In a recent email exchange with Nicholas Felton, creator of daytum.com and other quality data products, I asked him what other user data sharing and/or visualization web applications he might have encountered while working on daytum.

Included in this article are the three apps he mentioned with my research plus nine additions of my own. All of the apps I mention help users access their own data to track, share, and/or visualize it either by recording it themselves or exporting it from another software. There’s a table at the end of the article to summarize and compare each.

Give Me My Data givememydata.com free

First, to give some context, Give Me My Data is a Facebook application that helps users export their data out of Facebook for reuse in visualizations, archives, or any possible method of digital storytelling. Data can be exported in common formats like CSV, XML, and JSON as well as customized network graph formats.

Daytum daytum.com free/$$

And to further contextualize, I’ll also address Daytum, an online app that allows users to collect, categorize, and share personal or other data. You can add any data that can be quantified or written down and organize and display it in many forms including bar and pie charts, plain text, and lists. There’s also a mobile site for quick submissions from your device or you can use their iphone app.

Geckoboard geckoboard.com $$

Geckoboard is a hosted real-time status board for all sorts of business (or personal) data. You can view web analytics, CRM, support, infrastructure, project management, etc., in one interface, on your computer or smart phone. To see data from other web services in your “dashboard” you add “widgets”—choose from a large list of APIs, give permissions, configure a variety of options, and see your data in a customized graph. Note though, this service is only for presenting data that is hosted elsewhere, and only in this interface. If you like looking at numbers all day, this is for you.

Track-n-Graph trackngraph.com free/$$

Track, graph, and share any information you can think of: your weight, gas mileage, coffee consumption, anything. The design is a little awkward, the graphs don’t display in Chrome or Safari (Mac), and as far as I can tell there’s no API, but the site seems very useful for storing and making simple graphs of your personal data. There are also various “templates” you can reuse to keep track of data like the Workout Tracker, which has fields for gender and age in addition to minutes you worked out, all of which are important in figuring other data (e.g. calories).

your.flowingdata.com your.flowingdata.com/ free

your.flowingdata lets you record your personal data with Twitter. With it you can collect, interact, customize views, and determine privacy by sending private tweets to your account. This project is created by Nathan Yau who writes Flowing Data and studies statistics at UCSD.

mycrocosm mycro.media.mit.edu free

Mycrocosm is a web service that allows you to track and share data and statistical graphs from the minutiae of daily life. Mycrocosm was developed by Yannick Assogba of the Sociable Media Group of the MIT Media Lab.

ManyEyes www-958.ibm.com free

ManyEyes is a project by the IBM Research and the IBM Cognos software group. On Many Eyes you can upload your own data and create visualizations, and view, discuss, and rate other’s visualizations and data sets. It is a great concept but it hasn’t evolved much since its original launch. In fact I’m finding the visualization technology has slowly devolved, leaving only about 20% of visualizations actually displaying (Chrome 12.0 on OSX 10.5.8 if folks are reading).

Fitbit fitbit.com $99.95

The Fitbit is a hardware device which tracks your motions and sleep throughout each day. This data can be uploaded and visualized on their website to realize information about your daily activities like calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled and sleep quality. The Fitbit contains a 3D motion sensor like the one found in the Nintendo Wii and plugs into a base station to upload the data.

Personal Google Search History google.com/history free

When I first saw this application on the Google site I was immediately alarmed. The amount of data they have collected is staggering; for example, “Total Google searches: 36323.” (since Jan 2006) This is a fantastic picture into the life of a user and what they are reading, watching, responding to. It’s like another, admittedly less manicured version, of Facebook. Instead of creating a profile, I am being profiled.

The privacy implications are serious here, which is probably why you have to login again to view it. It is also why a user’s search history draws the interest of interface artist, Johannes P. Osterhof, who is in the process of exploring the line between private and public data, as well as the even further-evaporated division between surveillance and social networks, in his one-year-long search history-made public project, simply titled, Google.

But, as everyone probably already knows, these big companies are making money and providing services. Google has the resources to take your privacy seriously. Well, kind of, because it mostly doesn’t fit into their business model to not track people.

Google Takeout google.com/takeout free

Speaking of funding, I’m quite impressed by this project. Google Takeout is developed by an engineering team at Google called the Data Liberation Front who take their jobs very seriously. In addition to their Google Takeout project, which allows you to export some of your data from Google, they have a really great website with current information about getting access to the data you store with Google.

gottaFeeling gottafeeling.com free/$$

gottaFeeling is an iphone application that allows you to track and share your feelings. It’s a simple concept, and while loaded down with a lot of rhetoric, reminds me of the amazing, “We Feel Fine.”

BuzzData buzzdata.com unsure

Finally, I’ll end with BuzzData, a data-publishing platform that encourages the growth of communities around data. Not yet public, I’ve received a private taste of what this app will do, and it looks like it will be pretty cool. Think a mashup between Github and ManyEyes.

So I’ll end with the table I created in my research. There are obviously many more types of ways to keep and manage data that I haven’t addressed here, but this is a good start. For further reading check out the Quantified Self blog/user community/conference created by Gary Wolf, who also authored, The Data-Driven Life, the New York Times article linked above.

Update: Check out Google Guages and other Google Charts.

This week I have been enjoying the blurred images of German buildings whose owners have chosen to opt-out of Google Street View. Infamous moments in the country’s history have led Germans to take privacy very seriously; especially when it comes to information about their residences. Unlike the United States, where data privacy is an opt-out option, Germany law states that, “citizens must opt-in to have their data collected in any way.” (1). In fact, there is a document detailing the rights of the “data subject” in the German Federal Data Protection Act which serves “to protect the individual against his right to privacy being impaired through the handling of his personal data.”

An even more powerful gesture are the very public images that have resulted from this protection. While they serve a specific function—to obscure identifying aspects of buildings, faces, etc.—they also communicate very effectively the message that individuals should have the right to decide how their data is used. This gets to the heart of the Give Me My Data app—to prompt this sort of discussion. It is then ironic that Google, a company whose revenue is based almost completely on advertising opportunities made possible by aggregating and re-representing data, has inadvertently brought us this message.

I was excited to find my own apartment building in Berlin has been removed.

Another building down the street

Helge Denker, a reporter with the German daily, Das Bild, has found a clever way to opt-out.

Originally published in Plutonian Striptease, a series of interviews with with experts, owners, users, fans and haters of social media, to map the different views on this topic, outside the existing discussions surrounding privacy.

PS: Social networks are often in the news, why do you think this is?

OM: Assuming “social networks” refers to the online software, application programming interfaces (APIs), and the data that constitutes sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, I feel its popular to discuss them in the news for many reasons.

Online applications that enable enhanced connectivity for individuals and other entities are relatively new and there is an apparent potential for wealth through their creation and the connections they enable. News organizations are businesses, so they naturally follow the money, “reporting” on topics which are considered worthwhile to advertisers who buy space in their pages, pop-ups, and commercial breaks.

Additionally, the public is still grappling with the ability for online software to collect and distribute data about them, both with their permission and through clandestine means at once. Most users of social networking software don’t understand the methods or potential for behavior manipulation in these user interfaces and therefore are wary of what they share. Other users seem to be more care-free, making many private details from their lives public.

Finally, online social networking software is still evolving, so it’s difficult for users to establish a consensus about best practices. I believe the accelerating functionality of web 2.0 software will continue to complicate how we feel about online social networks for much longer.

PS: In what way do they differ from older forms of communication on the Internet?

OM: If web1.0 consisted of static pages, web2.0 is made-up of dynamic information, generated by the millions of users accessing the web through personal computers and mobile devices. This rapid rise in user-generated content has been made possible by the development of online applications using a myriad of open source programming languages. Sites like youtube.com (launched 2005 and written primarily in Python) and Facebook.com (2004, PHP) which consist entirely of content contributed by users, store information in databases allowing for fast searching, sorting, and re-representation. Initially, the web consisted of information and we had to sift through it manually. Web2.0 allows for the growth of a semantic web and possibilities for machines to help us describe, understand, and share exponential amounts of data through tags, feeds, and social networks.

PS: Who is ultimately responsible for what happens to the data you upload to social networks?

OM: Obviously users are responsible for deciding what information they publish online. Still, Facebook’s “Recommended Privacy Settings” should emphasize more not less. While their privacy settings always seem to be a work in progress. One thing they do consistently is default to less privacy overall, thus more sharing of your information on their site. For a website that depends on user-generated content the motivation to encourage sharing is clear enough. Still, why do they use the word “privacy” if they’re not actually embracing the idea?

I honestly feel that all software that accepts user input, credit cards and phone companies, should be bound by strict written rules preventing them from sharing my information with advertising companies or the government. It seems like a basic human right to me. If there are laws preventing me from downloading and sharing copywritten music then there should be laws protecting my intellectual property as well.

PS: Do you read Terms of Use or EULA’s and keep up to date about changes applied to them?

OM: Only when curious or suspicious. They’re usually intentionally full of so much legalese that I don’t bother torturing myself. But as an artist and programmer, I have an interest in sharing my information in public space because I benefit from its appreciation. Perhaps a more accurate answer to this question would come from someone who doesn’t have this interest.

PS: Do you think you’ve got a realistic idea about the quantity of information that is out there about you?

OM: Yes I do. I am definitely conscious of the information I share. In addition I also research methods of surveillance and incorporate that knowledge into my art practice. So while I haven’t seen the visualization that determines the likelihood that my grandmother is a terrorist threat, it’s guaranteed that one is possible with a few clicks and some multi-million dollar defense contractor dataveillance tool. This is true for any human being through aggregation of credit card records, travel information, political contributions, and what we publish online.

PS: How do you value your private information now? Do you think anything can happen that will make you value it differently in the future?

OM: It’s important to me to situate my art practice in public space where it can provoke discussion for all audiences. But yes, I do intentionally avoid distributing dorky pictures of my mountain bike adventures. Seriously though, I’ve been watching the news. I can say that I’m definitely alarmed by the post-911 surveillance on U.S. citizens.

PS: How do you feel about trading your personal information for online services?

OM: It depends on the service. We all have to give up something in order to use these tools. For example, without telling Google Maps that I’m interested in Mexican restaurants in Williamsburg, I might never find Taco Chulo. This continual paradox in making private information public is somewhat rendered void if the sites we use actually protect our information, but it is more likely that everything we say and do online is used to some degree to enhance and advertisements. Here’s another example, 97% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising, which should suggest that while they produce software, their ultimate goal is to appeal to advertisers.[1]

PS: What do you think the information gathered is used for?

OM: I have a background in interface design and development so I know how great it is to use web stats to see where users are clicking. If traffic is not moving in the direction that you want then you can make specific buttons more prevalent.

I can only imagine what a company like Google does with the data they gather through their analytics tools. The fact that a government could access this information is scary when you think of the actions of past fascist states. The amount of control a government could levy through a combination of deep packet searching and outrightly ignoring human rights is staggering.

PS: Have you ever been in a situation where sharing information online made you uncomfortable? If so, can you describe the situation?

OM: Definitely. Sharing financial information online always causes a little anxiety. One of my credit cards has been re-issued three times now due to “merchant databases being hacked.”

PS: What is the worst case scenario, and what impact would that have on an individual?

OM: I just moved to Berlin so I’m looking at the history of this place quite a bit. This is relevant because, during the Cold War, before Germany was reunited, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) Ministry for State Security (MfS) or ‘Stasi’ is believed to have hired, between spies and full- and part-time informants, one in every 6.5 East German citizens to report suspicious activities.[2] That’s millions of people. At this moment, the ratio of people entering data on Facebook to non-members is one in fourteen for the entire world.[3] We have probably the most effective surveillance machine in the history of mankind.

PS: Nowadays, most of the “reading” of what is written online is done by machines. Does this impact your idea of what is anonymity and privacy?

OM: Well, it’s not surprising the interview has come to this point, since I keep referrencing the multitude of methods of computer-controlled digital surveillance. It’s true that machines have replaced humans for remedial work. For example: searching text strings for suspicious statements. But the ultimate danger to my privacy is only enhanced by machines. The real problem is when companies that I trust with my data decide to share it with corporations or governments that engage in behavior control.

PS: Can a game raise issues such as online privacy? And if so, what would you like to see in such a game?

OM: I find this question to be intentionally leading. Perhaps its because I’m generally optimistic and come from farmers, so I assume anything is possible? Not being a gamer though, I can tell you honestly that yes, it is possible, but you will have some challenges if you intend to reach an audience that doesn’t already agree with you. Reaching non-gamers who don’t already feel the same will be even tougher.

Games are generally immersive; you are either playing or your not. The biggest challenge you may have is reaching non-gamers, because they don’t generally invest large amounts of time in games for enjoyment. Try to find ways to highlight complexity and prompt discussion regardless of how long users play, and make this clear from the outset.

Finally, in politically-motivated cultural production it’s important to appeal to an audience first, and let them come to the issues on their own. Who would sit through a film knowing the twist at the end? Especially a conclusion intended to spur critical thinking and action, which is of course the goal.

[1] “Google Financial Tables for Quarter ending June 30, 2009” Retrieved October 13, 2010
[2] Koehler, John O. (2000). Stasi: the untold story of the East German secret police. Westview Press. ISBN 0813337445.
[3] “Facebook Statistics” Retrieved October 14, 2010

Facebook’s “Privacy Settings” always seem to be a work in progress. One thing they do consistently is default to less privacy overall, thus more sharing of your information on their site. For a website that depends on user-generated content the motivation to encourage sharing is clear enough. Still, why do they use the word “privacy” if they’re not actually embracing the idea?

For example, a recent update introduces a table with degrees of privacy from less to more (left to right). Types of data are listed in rows, while access is shown in the columns, with Everyone to Friends Only, again left to right.

Curious about what Facebook “Recommended” settings were, I clicked and am sharing the screenshot below. I am not surprised to see that they wish me to open-up all content I generate; status messages, posts, images, etc. and discourage allowing anyone I don’t know to comment on posts (probably as spam prevention).

I have been thinking about privacy quite a bit this week, developing ideas for what next to do with Give Me My Data, and providing an interview about social media for Naked on Pluto (along with the likes of Marc Garrett and Geert Lovink). Plus I went to see the “geek hero story” The Social Network at the Babylon Cinema last night.

Anyway, after all this thinking about Facebook’s past, I’m curious about its future, and how it will continue to try to hold on to the #1 social networking website position that Friendster and MySpace lost so quickly. The API, games, etc could be expected, but the Facebook Connect tools that are so prevalent now, even on Yelp, a site I figured could make it without schlepping, were a surprise.

Facebook Connect, a jquery “widget” that allows you to login to other websites using your Facebook ID, is clever and eerie at once. It allows Facebook to track you when you are not even on their site, and make sure you stay loyal. If that sounds sinister, well it is. What other purpose could there be for making available a service with the single purpose of mediating every interaction or bit of content you add to the web? It seems at first like OpenID, and it is, except that its run by a multi-billion dollar social media corporation.

Give Me My Data mentioned in a Bild article:

Die peinlichsten Einträge bei Facebook, StudiVZ und Twitter The most embarrassing messages on Facebook, StudiVZ, and Twitter (English), May 22, 2010

Read the full translation

(translated from German) “Many users are unaware that their comments will be permanently stored in networks. For example Facebook can retrieve all stored Stautusmeldungen. The U.S. Professor Owen Mundy has a developed application, Facebook members ever entered all the data and displays the posts. Under “Select Data”, you select which data you want to see (for example, personal data, status messages). Here also dive old, long deleted on posts, which are provided with a time code. Facebook apparently never forgets.”

More press for Give Me My Data, this time by Rohit Khare from TechCrunch (thanks for the note Evan.).

“Give Me My Data has a more open-ended design that supports exploration and experimentation, in part because it sports an impressive array of formats to download your friend lists and other information for use in other projects such as visualization and charting. Owen Mundy at Florida State originally developed it for his own use, but “this week it kind of exploded because of the interface changes.” That could either be a sign of broader awareness of how much data users share with Facebook; or it could be the acute interest users have in putting profile data that Facebook “lost” right back onto Facebook (a feature that may be coming soon).”

Two Facebook Apps To Help You Fight Back Against Facebook
by Chris Walters, The Consumerist, May 4, 2010