Let us be clear: this is not a fight between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media. This not about blogger vengeance or a mob mentality wanting to lay in to print media. This is about journalistic integrity, immorality, and a few unethical hacks desperate to make their mark in the newspaper industry.

The digital age has given people access to instant information, interactive feedback, and the freedom to reply, so the vast, angry, Internet response to The Sunday Times outing me, and, indeed, last week’s outing of fellow anonymous blogger Night Jack, by sister paper The Times was not a bloggers vs. journalists battle. Instead, it was simply a reaction of disgust that journalistic standards have sunk so low: is this what ‘news’ reporting has come to?

The journalist who outed me has now justified doing so by stating my anonymity was a “marketing gimmick”; this just smacks of pathetic desperation. My writing a sexblog and book was hardly newsworthy – it’s not like I was writing about anything criminal, or shagging a politician – and my being anonymous for almost three years, until I was outed, doesn’t support this supposed pre-meditated book-selling ploy.

I had my reasons for wanting to remain anonymous, as all anon bloggers do, and did everything in my power to remain so; sadly that wasn’t enough for this keen journalist, eager to get her foot on the quality journalistic ladder.

Link

. . . Facebook’s privacy settings are the most flexible and the most confusing privacy settings in the industry. Over and over again, I interview teens (and adults) who think that they’ve set their privacy settings to do one thing and are shocked (and sometimes horrified) to learn that their privacy settings do something else. Furthermore, because of things like tagged photos, people are often unaware of the visibility of content that they did not directly contribute. People continue to get themselves into trouble because they lack the control that they think they have. And this ain’t just about teenagers. Teachers/professors – are you _sure_ that the photos that your friends post and tag with your name aren’t visible to your students? Parents – I know many of you joined to snoop on your kids… now that your high school mates are joining, are your kids snooping on you? Power dynamics are a bitch, whether your 16 or 40.

Why are privacy settings still an abstract process removed from the context of the content itself? Privacy settings shouldn’t just be about control; they should be about the combination of awareness, context, and control. You should understand the visibility of an act during the moment of the act itself and whenever you are accessing the tracings of the act.

Tech developers… I implore you… put privacy information into the context of the content itself. When I post a photo in my album, let me see a list of EVERYONE who can view that photo. When I look at a photo on someone’s profile, let me see everyone else who can view that photo before I go to write a comment. You don’t get people to understand the scale of visibility by tweetling a few privacy settings every few months and having no idea what “Friends of Friends” actually means. If you have that setting on and you go to post a photo and realize that it will be visible to 5,000 people included 10 ex-lovers, you’re going to think twice. Or you’re going to change your privacy settings.

Link.

[via Boffery]

I used to use the AddThis bookmarking widget, because it let users add content to many different services and didn’t look too cluttered.

My friend JC forwarded me an email from the WWWAC list. Addthis was bought by ClearSpring last month. Starting yesterday today, they are now slipping a ClearSpring Flash Tracker Object into all your pages. Like all flash trackers, these use cookie-busting LSOs to track users across all websites that utilize AddThis or ClearSpring technologies:

These cookies are not visible within user’s normal privacy options windows in their browsers and can not be cleared by using the browser’s Clear Private Data (Firefox) and similar privacy options. These cookies also work across all browsers on the machine as Flash stores these LSOs in a single location.

There’s more info at JohnHaller.com. He’s the author of the Portable Firefox program.

I’ve removed the widget from my blog and Lolita Wolf‘s blog, and suggest you to do the same.

…In all this time, only three people have tied the real person to the blog without my help. One was told the URL by an irate friend; I am now at peace about this. The other two people, my parents, were told by God. I am most decidedly not at peace about this.

They know the address, but they maintain that they have not yet read the writing here. They’ve only read places where it’s been linked or mentioned on other sites. Therefore they seem to have an unnecessarily unbalanced view of what I’m writing, and by extension, of what I’m doing with my life.

I’m torn. I’ve been torn for the weeks since they told me of the trespass.

I could, I suppose, refuse entirely to discuss this with them. They stepped where I’d specifically asked them not to; it would seem reasonable not to let them gather any more knowledge than they already have. I could block their IP (for what it’s worth) or demand that they knock off the intrusiveness.

This option brings with it a boatload of complications. They already violated my wishes by hunting me down; they prolly aren’t going to be too pleased to be told that it’s not up for further discussion. Nor too willing to comply. Most importantly, it does not address the basis of the problem: They want more access into my life.
(more . . .)

Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you’re entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to Congress urging it to investigate and regulate this practice.

But the US is not alone. British customs agents search laptops for pornography. And there are reports on the internet of this sort of thing happening at other borders, too. You might not like it, but it’s a fact. So how do you protect yourself?

. . . So your best defence is to clean up your laptop. A customs agent can’t read what you don’t have. You don’t need five years’ worth of email and client data. You don’t need your old love letters and those photos (you know the ones I’m talking about). Delete everything you don’t absolutely need. And use a secure file erasure program to do it. While you’re at it, delete your browser’s cookies, cache and browsing history. It’s nobody’s business what websites you’ve visited. And turn your computer off – don’t just put it to sleep – before you go through customs; that deletes other things. Think of all this as the last thing to do before you stow your electronic devices for landing. Some companies now give their employees forensically clean laptops for travel, and have them download any sensitive data over a virtual private network once they’ve entered the country. They send any work back the same way, and delete everything again before crossing the border to go home. This is a good idea if you can do it.

If you can’t, consider putting your sensitive data on a USB drive or even a camera memory card: even 16GB cards are reasonably priced these days. Encrypt it, of course, because it’s easy to lose something that small. Slip it in your pocket, and it’s likely to remain unnoticed even if the customs agent pokes through your laptop. If someone does discover it, you can try saying: “I don’t know what’s on there. My boss told me to give it to the head of the New York office.” If you’ve chosen a strong encryption password, you won’t care if he confiscates it.

(more . . .)

deabauchette writes:

So, I did this interview with Diane Sawyer. It was an anonymous interview in silhouette, with a distorted profile and an altered voice and a few other anonymizing tricks. A few of you already know about this — one of you said I was identifiable by the way I used the word ‘yeah’ and the way I touched my hair. Another said I wasn’t recognizable at all.

When Sawyer asked why I agreed to speak with her, I said, “I don’t know.” But I do know. I did it because she asked. It was flattering, if a fucked form of flattery, but I was mostly interested because her perspective stands in diametric opposition to my own. She represents the view of middle America; she works for a family-friendly network with no tolerance for grey area in a subject as inflammatory as sex work. It was clear that there could be only one slant for her documentary, being the old Victorian trope of the broken, dysfunctional, fallen prostitute, incapable of forming her own opinions or making her own decisions (and I find it interesting when self-described feminists reinforce this). A network like ABC wanted Dickensian sex workers and that’s precisely what they were going to show. But here I was being given a chance to offer my own take and experience, which runs counter to their thesis, and more specifically, I was being offered the opportunity to sit down and talk with this woman personally.

. . .

I’m mentioning the interview now because last night I learned that my parents tuned in to ABC that fateful day and promptly recognized me, in spite of the silhouette, the altered voice, the distorted profile, the vague and thoroughly dated details. I received an email from my mother saying that she knows. She saw the interview and decided to sit on this knowledge until she could see it again, and then she decided to contact me. What tipped her off exactly, I don’t know. Maybe my mannerisms or my tendency to mumble or the few details that were mentioned. Whatever it was, it was clear to her. I’m sure that while she knows nothing about me personally, she can recognize my speaking habits.

(more. . .)

That’s what a New York Post spokesperson, Howard Rubenstein, told Jeff Bercovici at Portfolio.com. Bercovici called the Post—and me—after the New York City tabloid ran a story in which they named the 67 year-old that almost choked to death in a bondage-scene-gone-wrong at the famous Nutcracker Suite last week. Not only did the Post name the man, a retired college professor, it also called his wife and told her the news. Says Bercovici:

Paying for erotic favors is okay, as long as your tastes are generic. That, in a nutshell, is the sexual ethic of the New York Post. How else do you explain a paper where the top editors hang out at strip clubs at night and spend their days shaming fetish-club patrons by name?

I refer to coverage of the 67-year-old man who had to be hospitalized after an accident at the hands of a dominatrix in a Manhattan establishment called the Nutcracker Suite. Today, the Post crossed into ethically murky territory with a story that named the man (citing “law-enforcement sources”), and described his professional history, hometown and family situation. For good measure, the Post’s reporters also took it upon themselves to phone the man’s wife and fill her in on the details.

Since the man is not a celebrity, politician or other public figure, it’s hard to understand what kind of news value the Post’s editors saw in printing his name, or what they accomplished beyond embarrassing him in front of his community and ensuring that the episode will forever be his top Google hit.

I tried to ask metro editor Michelle Gotthelf how she justified the decision, but she referred me to the paper’s spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, who offered this statement: “The Post will happily name every adult caught in a dog collar.”

Well, today the Post has another piece about this guy—and this time they’ve not only got the man’s picture, but an interview with him. The Post:

The kinky college professor who was almost strangled during an S&M session at a Midtown club told The Post yesterday he’s deeply ashamed and is finally through with the double life he’s lived since he was kid. “I don’t want this to spoil my marriage,” said Robert Benjamin, 67, still disoriented from the three days he spent in a coma but sitting upright in a chair in his room at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

“I don’t want my wife to leave me, but I have to tell her the truth,” he said. “I’m going to share everything with her. I think my family will forgive me.”

Where to begin? How about with the ethics of interviewing a man that’s still disoriented after three days in a coma? Or naming a man that isn’t a public figure, broke no laws, and hasn’t been charged with any crime?

It seems to me that if the Post is going to declare war on kinksters—they’ll “happily name every adult caught in a dog collar,” they’ll out you as a kinkster to your family, they’ll run triumphant pieces about how you’ve learned your lesson and you’re going to give up your kinks for good (as if it were that simple)—then kinksters ought to declare war on the Post. The Post is a large news operation in one of the most sexually liberated cities on the planet. Not only are there kinky people on the Post’s staff, but I’m thinking odds are good that more than one Post exec has has patronized the Nutcracker Suite. (Wealthy white men make up 99.9% of the Nutcracker Suite’s clientele, after all.) If a happy, healthy, pissed off kinkster out there has evidence that a Post exec or an exec at the News Corporation—Rupert Murdoch? one of his moderately hot sons?—has ever been “caught in a dog collar,” now would be a good time to share it with media.

Because, hey, if you’re kinky, then you deserve to be outed, shamed, humiliated, and bullied into pledging to give up your “addiction” to whatever your kinks might be—those are the Post’s standards. The people that run and own the Post ought to be held to ‘em.

link

Shanghai subway authorities apologized to a Chinese couple videotaped hugging and kissing on a subway platform and dismissed an employee involved in uploading the video which drew thousands of hits, state media said on Friday.

The company found three staff were responsible for taking and uploading the video. Two had already left the company and the other was dismissed after the incident caused “public uproar”, Xinhua news agency quoted authorities with Shanghai Metro Operation Co Ltd. as saying.

“We have wrapped up an internal investigation and found the videotape was uploaded by people who had worked for Shanghai metro,” they said.

“We made formal apologies and are negotiating with the couple over compensation.”

The three-minute footage was uploaded online earlier this week, attracting thousands of hits on sites such as YouTube and sina.com.

Authorities have credited the installation of hundreds of thousands of closed-circuit security cameras in large Chinese cities for helping to reduce crime in recent years.

But Chinese legal experts and scholars have called for more robust privacy legislation to regulate the use of video footage and impose penalties on its abuse.

link

Trixie writes about accidentally disclosing her real name:

Having said that, there *have* been a couple of times where people used my birth name online to put me in an uncomfortable place trying to show me that they knew something they weren’t supposed to. It was like they wanted me to know I couldn’t get away with “fooling” them. Also, there have been people who are hell-bent on knowing my “real” name, repeatedly trying to drag it out of me; anyone who seems to think he NEEDS to know my birth name is someone I don’t want to have that information. For one thing, “Trixie” is just as real a name to me as the one my parents gave me because I gave mySELF this name. I really detest anyone who acts like the name I gave myself is inherently fake or phony. Plus, someone who doggedly refuses to acknowledge the importance of having a stage name just for privacy’s sake in this industry is someone I don’t want to deal with — they are the people who give whores good reason to protect their identities and keep them separate from their family lives.

( more. . .)

[via Trixie's Twitter]

Sam Sugar writes:

This picture, of 18 year old pole vaulter Allison Stokke, has demonstrated how easy it is to puncture the pretense of a mainstream media and bloggosphere who don’t treat every human interest story as a beauty pageant.

Stokke is, in the moment of this photo, perfect. An Olympian ideal with the kind of physique you only earn via an all-consuming dedication to top-flight athletic competition. The public response? ‘Is she legal?’ type posts from new-found fans of track and field who don’t want her to vault their poles so much as land on them.

Pathetic.

Understandable but pathetic. (more. . .)

. . At least, this was all the setting when Lara saw that one of her old self-portraits had been retouched to remove her watermark and placed on the online sales cover of 1982′s porn non-epic “Body Magic.” Unfortunately, this wasn’t Lara Jade’s first experience with her images being used by someone else. It’s also no news that buying porn online is a “buyer beware” environment where consumers must constantly be on guard for privacy and personal information issues (just like with online pharmacy and “cheap” travel sites). (more. . . )

Sam Sugar writes:

In the world of porn the implications reach far. Personal ads, adult site memberships and social networking profiles can all contain potentially damning information, and may all enter the public record. For the cost of a second-world data-miner anyone can connect the public and private dots which link our physical and electronic identities in ways we often don’t desire. If you think you’re anonymous, think again.

In five years, when teenagers who have never lived a life which didn’t extend to the wires cease to exist, the issue of what’s relevant, what’s private and what should be rightly forgotten will be raised again. In the UK, at the age of 16, a minor’s criminal record is hidden from view, effectively expunged for all but those at the highest levels of power. Online we’re becoming our own jailers. The web doesn’t care how old we are and forgets nothing. We’d be better protected if we sent our blogs to the local police station. (more . . .)

Lux Nightmare writes:

People think I’m not a private person. There’s good reason for that: at different points in time, I’ve written about my sex life, posted naked pictures of myself, written about my history with depression, written about therapy, written about self-injury, written in detail about my relationships. There’s very little that goes on in my head that I’m not willing to write about, that I’m not willing to put out into the world in some form.

People see this and think that I don’t care about my privacy. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s not that I don’t value privacy: it’s that I have a very specific notion of what “privacy” means.

Steve Bass at PC World has a good blog entry about the ridiculous conviction of Julie Amero, a substitute teacher who was arrested when a OC computer riddled with pop-up adware began displaying pornographic photos in front of junior high school students.

I’ve been privy to private conversations with a dozen security experts (you’d immediately recognize many names), forensic examiners, and an attorney (one that I’d choose for my defense if ever I needed one).

Unfortunately, there’s lots I can’t repeat. However, what I can say is the consensus is that Amero is getting a bad rap for a lot of reasons. High on the list was a poor defense, a not-very-PC-savvy judge, and a school district that won’t take responsibility of having no current protection on the computer in the classroom. For instance, one forensic investigator examined an image of the PCs hard drive said the anti-virus program was ancient and the last time it was updated was in “August 2004,” and, he said, “hopelessly out of date.”

Right after my newsletter was posted, many of you asked what you could do. You can check the Julie Amero blog and consider helping by way of the Julie Amero Defense Fund.

Steve also urges readers to take action by emailing the people who have the power to drop the obviously bogus charges against this woman:

The State’s Attorney responsible for supervision of David Smith, the prosecutor in the Amero case, is Michael L. Regan. You might want to write him and strongly urge he help Smith file a motion to vacate the conviction. An e-mail to the Chief State’s Attorneys of Connecticut Kevin T. Kane and Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell can’t hurt, either. (There are more e-mail links on the Julie Amero site.)

If you write, however tempting, try not to go on a rant. Use your computing expertise — and a civil argument — and you’ll likely get better results.

The case has the public’s attention and it’s taken on an energy that won’t be stopped. Stay tuned.

Two good articles from Google Tutor and Advisor:

• Clear Google Search History to Maintain Your Privacy
• Google’s New ‘My (not so private) Search History’