Tech Talk / By Martha Knight

YOYW, we used to say around Electric Minds. Obviously the founder of that virtual community, Howard Rheingold, would hold to that belief, published author that he was. You Own Your Words.

When we posted at EM, our words were out there in Cyberia, seemingly free to be read by anyone who had lurking (reading without posting) privileges. Still, our words were still ours. It wasn’t okay for others to exploit them. They could be quoted, but within the community, and credited to us.

It would not be okay for anyone to drop in at one of the poetry slams and snitch a clever verse and use it as a jingle in a commercial. How about the Limerick topic, where one person might post, say, “There was an old hippy on EM,” and then four others would post, in rapid succession, “Who’d write words but never would free ʼem.” “When asked, ‘Is that fair?’” “He’d stoutly declare,” “’You’re lucky that I let you see ʼem.” What if someone collected the limericks thus produced collaboratively and published them in a best-selling anthology? Without permission from the various post-ers, and without sharing the royalties? Unfair!

These days virtual communities have morphed into online communities and social networks. Rheingold has written numerous books and articles since “The Virtual Community,” and has been the Eminence Gris of BrainStorms, a private (they hope) community. Along the way, the online generation has become used to the idea that what we post, or text, can be captured, and can be stored, and can be forwarded, and can be seen by people we don’t know and didn’t authorize. So can our images, and the spoken word, and music. For good purposes or bad, for fun or profit or spite.

Not that we haven’t given permission! Sometimes we have done this while unaware that we were doing so. Do we read all those  Terms of Use before clicking our consent, on the way to downloading an app we want? Who has that kind of time? How about when we join a social network and have to agree to the RoR (Rules of the Road)?

Those rules we are asked to accept are non-negotiable, but at least we have a choice. We don’t have to click the box signifying consent to share whatever, or absolve the vendor or network of all responsibility, or give up our right to be compensated or to sue. inter alia. Of course, then we will not be admitted to the social network, or will not be allowed to download or install that app! But think of the times we are not told, let alone asked for our consent?

That’s something we have in common with Angela Merkel, huh!

Just as the National Security Agency has been assuring one and all that it collects metadata in gobs and globs, and anonymizes it so it can’t be associated with individuals—well, unless they are looking for some trait that might flag us as somebody they need to watch or eavesdrop on—we are assured that the personal info the social networks and app makers are asking us for will either be aggregated unrecognizably, or, if not, will be used only to “enhance” our viewing, gaming, or mingling experience. Thus Network watches my watching habits, the better to recommend movies and TV series I’d be likely to like. I must say they have me figured out pretty well. Spooky.

Studies have shown that with the right algorithms and gear, it’s a snap to identify individuals in anonymized data sets.  We’d have to suppose there is that potential, or NSA would not be able to identify terrorists  through wholesale data collection.

There are good uses of data mining, and uses we are not comfy with. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers with that view have come up with a prototype system they call OpenPDS, meaning Open Personal Data Store, which stores data from a user’s digital services in a single location the user specifies. It could be in a computer on site, maybe in a safe or locked in a box under the desk. It could be in the cloud, in an encrypted server.

If some research bunch or agency wants to get at the user’s cell phone or email or work product or personal records in his PDS, it has to query the PDS, being quite specific about what it wants. Only truly relevant data is provided.

Netflix, for instance, could ask for the last ten items I watched, and which ones I watched all the way through, and how I rated them, but nothing concerning my finances or political activities. A head hunter could ask for, and receive, only the information a prospective employer is allowed to ask a job applicant, but nothing concerning my religion or politics.

Yyves-Alexandre de Montiove of the MIT project says, in a paper in the “Public Library Of Science,” explains that a music download or listening service wanting to analyze a user’s listening tastes would not get to access any but the relevant data. It would send your PDS a piece of code to be analyzed at your PDS, and only the data defined and authorized by your rules would be sent in reply.

The idea is consent to access on a meaningful basis, to data on a need-to-know basis, each entity requesting permission according to that need to know, and with users having specified in advance or on the fly what is acceptable as a need.

Sounds like a step in the right direction. Short of a court order, that’s how I’d want my communications and online records to be treated by networks and Internet Service Providers and communications companies, and the government at every level.

Your thoughts? Contact drymar@gmail.com.