Katie Hafner is getting a little silly with the reporting these days ...

Mr. Smith is all too aware of his wife's mounting disapproval of his routine and suspects that a laptop-in-bed ban could be imminent.

"You kind of want the bed to be a sacred space," she said.

Mr. Anderson, a senior researcher at Intel Research, has found more technology ending up in the bedroom.

"It's kind of like a vibrating 24/7 secretary."

Laptop Slides Into Bed in Love Triangle

I always liked this skit.

Warner: I'm sorry, but, uh.. why does the jingle say that our candy bar is bad?

Dan Sinaki: [ confused ] Come again?

Executive #1: You seem to be saying that Nut-rific doesn't taste good.

Bruce Riley: Ah ... and who exactly is saying that?

Executive #1: Well ... you are. The jingle says "Nut-rific is not very good."

Bruce Riley: Wha ...? Oh!

[ Bruce and Dan laugh at the comic misunderstanding ]

Dan Sinaki: No, no, no, no, no, no, no! No, no, no! No! No. It's ... nut-very good. It's ... nut... very good.

[ they continue to laugh ]

Bruce Riley: It's like it's ... nut-tastic! Or, or ... nut-licious! But this is "It's nut-very good."

It's Nut Very Good | SNL

"This would be like if botanists had found something between trees and bushes and invented the word 'animal' to describe it."

If you've ever spent days^h^h^h^hweeks on end arguing with people about the definition of a word, you'll find this article both comforting and hilarious. If not, you might find it hard to understand how anyone couuld get so worked up about such a thing.

Plutons, planets and dwarves

Heads have rolled ... but EFF isn't satisfied.

AOL announced the resignation of its chief technology officer today, following two weeks of intense criticism from privacy advocates after members of its research staff released hundreds of thousands of its customers’ personal Web search queries.

The researcher, Dr. Abdur Chowdhury, and a manager overseeing the project were dismissed.

AOL also said it planned to beef up data privacy protections, reconsider the length of time that it holds onto the millions of search queries that customers make every day, and re-educate its own employees about the sensitivity of personal data.

In another article, Marc Rotenberg says:

"AOL could do a real service to the online community if it would commit to permanently (deleting) all personal search details and challenge other search companies to do the same."

Also in this article, CDT's Ari Schwartz disses the Markey bill, instead calling on the industry to fix itself.

Meanwhile, Chertoff moves to outflank the public:

"As we have broadened information sharing, we have made sure that there are strict rules in effect...that prevent people from misusing that information or putting it out improperly," he said. "That's built into the DNA of this and all of our intelligence-sharing capabilities."

I can see Jon Stewart making fun of "built into the DNA."

In case the bio metaphor didn't do it for you, he also offers an EE/astro/aero option:

"The whole name of the game here with counterterrorism is information sharing and early warning," Chertoff said. "Our radar for terrorism is intelligence...It is the radar of the 21st century, and if we let that radar go down, we're going to be flying blind."

It's radar, for Pete's sake! Don't you realize that radar defeated the Nazis? Either you're for data retention, or you're a Fascist.

AOL Technology Chief Quits After Data Release

Decius wrote:

Don't you agree with them? I don't think search engines should store usage data indefinately.

As the recent Taylor ruling on the NSA case made clear, one can agree with a decision but not its line of reasoning.

Decius wrote:

I'm not sure I folllow how your distinction between a common carrier and an enhanced service provider is relevent to this discussion. I would say that the phone numbers you dial have approximately the same privacy implications as search terms. Search terms are a bit worse, but it's the same ball park.

My chief complaint was that NYT was making an apples-oranges comparison; there are legal precedents regarding the caller's expectation of privacy with regard to a common carrier, but those precedents do not apply to enhanced services.

The call detail records are a much better analogy, although the phone company has a (more) legitimate business need to retain the records (for a period of time) for billing purposes. Additionally, aggregated call records (perhaps at the level of digital-edge-to-digital-edge) play a role in long-term planning for network capacity. Since Internet search customers are not billed for service, these records do not serve that purpose.

The AOL case complicates the fundamental issue, due to the fact that a time-series history was released. For legal purposes, one would prefer to have a separate ruling on the privacy expectations associated with a single search query (and any associated record of user click-throughs). On this basis, then, the court could proceed to evaluate the implications of long-term accumulation.

Decius wrote:

As time goes on from the search, the risks associated with holding on to that information far exceed the value of storing it.

Is that really true? Or is it the time-series compilation of queries that increases the risk?

As an exercise, compare the damages associated with two cases in which 10 million search records are inadvertantly released. In the first case, the database consists of the last one thousand queries from each of 10,000 users. In the second case, the database consists of the last single query from each of 10 million users.

Decius wrote:

Unfortunately, all of the risk is borne by the searcher and all of the value is borne by the holder. This sort of imbalance is an area where it makes sense for the government to intervene.

The imbalance is real enough, but I'd be concerned that too much government intervention could stifle innovation. It is not enough to simply "empower" the customer with the authority to dictate a binary (yes or no) policy about data retention. Most customers are not in a position to make an informed judgment about this, and service providers are motivated to convince the customer of its necessity. Unless specifically prohibited, you are likely to see practices bordering on coercion ... where a web service is free if you accept the data retention policy, or $10/month if you do not. But such a development would not necessarily be bad, because it puts a valuation on the data. (One would be reliant on market pressure to make this reflect its true value.) Then legislation could set the minimum penalty for disclosure at N times accumulated value, for some N.

RE: Enter Search Term Here, Forever

I'm sure you were all wondering about the effectiveness of a premature pullout. Well, the verdict is in, folks.

Amid national debate about whether or not to stay the course in Iraq, President Bush today firmly placed himself in the “stay” category.

In case you missed this Doonesbury:

Sir, I've noticed that whenever you frame a debate, it always contains false choices. The "debate" you're willing to have is always between options of your own choosing.

Premature Pullout ‘Would Be A Huge Mistake,’ Bush Says

NYT says Google et al are wrong to store usage data.

The storing and sharing of [search] data is a violation of users’ privacy rights.

OK, so what's their reasoning?

When people talk on the phone, they assume that the words they utter will disappear when the call is over. They certainly do not expect that their phone company is recording and storing the words, to mine for commercial purposes or to sell to other companies. People have the same expectation about the Internet searches they do: when the search is over, the words they used will disappear.

They confuse the telecom provider's role as a common carrier and basic service provider with Google's role as an information service and enhanced service provider.

Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, has introduced a bill to prohibit Internet companies from warehousing personal data, including search queries. It is a good start, but it still gives companies too much leeway to keep data. The bill should be strengthened and passed.

This seems rather heavy handed and ill-conceived. Obviously you'd need a user-consent exception to such a rule. Then search providers would force you to log in and accept a terms of service agreement. And then your semi-anonymous cookie is replaced with a login ID; is that better?

Enter Search Term Here, Forever

InterViews provides first-person accounts of the lives and work of National Academy of Sciences members. In these hour-long interviews, members talk about their research, why they became scientists, and other aspects of their research and careers.

Three interviews you might find interesting:

Freeman Dyson

Freeman Dyson began his career as a mathematician, but then turned to the exciting new developments in physics in the 1940s, particularly the theory of quantized fields. He wrote two papers on the foundations of quantum electrodynamics that have had a lasting influence on many branches of modern physics. He went on to work in condensed-matter physics, statistical mechanics, nuclear engineering, climate studies, astrophysics, and biology. Dyson was born in 1923 in Crawthorne, England. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Cambridge in 1945 and came to the United States in 1947 as a Commonwealth Fellow at Cornell University. He settled in the United States permanently in 1951, became a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1953, and retired as professor emeritus in 1994. Beyond his professional work in physics, Dyson has a keen awareness of the human side of science and the human consequences of technology. His books for the general public include Disturbing the Universe, Weapons and Hope, Infinite in All Directions, Origins of Life and The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet.

Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond is professor of physiology at the School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles. Diamond received his B.A. from Harvard College in 1958 and his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1961. He has several appointments at UCLA: professor of physiology at the medical school, professor of environmental health sciences at the School of Public Health, and professor of geography. Diamond is also a research associate in ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and a research associate in ornithology and mammalogy for the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Diamond is a contributing editor for Discover Magazine and director of the U.S. Division of the World Wildlife Fund. Diamond has led 19 expeditions to New Guinea and nearby islands. He is the author of eight books, two monographs and 577 articles. In 1992, Diamond received both Britain's Science Book Prize and the Los Angeles Times Science Book Prize for The Third Chimpanzee. For Guns, Germs, and Steel, he received Britain’s Science Book Prize in 1998, the Pulitzer Prize in 1998, the Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Prize in 1997, the California Book Awards Gold Medal in nonfiction in 1998, and the Lannan Literary Award for non... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

National Academy of Sciences: InterViews

Every time Bruce Schneier smiles, an amateur cryptographer dies.

Everybody Loves Eric Raymond - Bruce Schneier Facts

If you are in Nashville in September, you can apply to learn to give Al Gore's slideshow.

Gore: At the end of September, I'm going to start training a thousand people to take my slide show all across the country, to high schools and civic clubs and anybody who will listen. We're going to get this message out there -- and when we do, the political system will shift gears, and you'll see a dramatic change. I will make a prediction that within two years, Bush and Cheney themselves will change their position.

On the application form, they ask:

If selected by The Climate Project to be a Trainee, please list up to 5 venues in which you anticipate giving this presentation and the approximate size of audiences.

You could propose to give Gore's talk at every hacker con in 2007. That ought to get you in the door ...

Al Gore 3.0 | Rolling Stone