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Google recently launched its new product, Google Buzz. There is no denying that it attempts to compete with Facebook and one has to say Google has good arguments there. Obviously, with the number of services Google provide to people, it makes a big amount of information to share. Interconnect everything, give it a name stolen from your competitor Yahoo!, add a cool Google logo and here you have Buzz.
And I have to say that, even if it is far from perfect and finished, it is not so bad technically. Its ability to centralize external data empowers this channel of sharing information (and add to that open APIs, it has a big potential).
But however, the buzz was not so much about technical qualities, but more about a social, even moral issue: privacy. It is outstanding to see how far Google has failed the start of Buzz. Privacy issues were raised very early, and for very good reasons. Making the followers list public was quite an irresponsible move, since it nearly meant making public the names of people to whom you send the more emails (in private).
The first consequences followed (see F*ck you, Google, the article by the Guardian.)
Google is widely responsible for that. Emails are part of private correspondence. Google would never have published the recipients of your emails. Although that’s what they did without noticing with Buzz lists (plus with all the content they automatically shared, e.g. from Google Reader.)
Wired has created an interesting survey: “What Buzzeth you About Google Buzz?”.
Nevertheless, I would like to remind something… including about this very answer (survey top #2 answer):
Breach of Trust
by Anonymous
I am a lawyer. The names of clients, witnesses, investigators, and expert witnesses are all confidential, and Google just breached the trust that my clients have in me to keep ALL of their information confidential. I signed up for email. Not social networking. We can no longer trust Google. They do not appreciate our privacy. Lawyers must immediately cease using Google provided services since they breach our client’s privacy.
First, this lawyer’s behaviour is very clumsy, if not irresponsible. When you have a moral (and professional) obligation to keep your conversations private, confidential and secure, you don’t give away this responsibility. But this lawyer did, by charging Google of this responsibility. Which reasons can explain that he could trust Google for that? What is the point of having all those laws about client-attorney secrecy, if the lasts give it away? It also reminds me of the story of this gun dealer from Belgium, busted easily by feds when Google gave his emails to the authorities.
I can admit that you can trust Gmail as your postman. In real life anyway you have to trust the guy who caries your message. However, you don’t give all your data to him, nor all the information, neither the whole responsibility of protecting your privacy. Trust means mutuality. Where is mutuality between you and big Google?
Second, mails and emails are one thing, all the information shared by Buzz are another. Once Buzz has centralized all the data Google can share about you, one suddenly wakes up and notices how much information he gave away. All this information is far from out of reach for Google, it is only a few clicks away, without you noticing, without even your control (or so little).
My opinion is that, on privacy concerns, Google’s nuisance power is only the power we, users, give to it, by giving away all our data and by giving up on protecting our own privacy (which is everyone’s responsibility).
Meanwhile, Facebook also goes on Google’s strategy. They launched their chat XMPP server, a big competitor for Google Talk. So, to be optimistic and positive, that make a lot more people using XMPP/Jabber, good news!
Translated from French: Google Buzz, départ manqué et vie privée.
Please give me your feedback on this draft article  It is intended for publication on FSFE.org so for now it is All Rights reserved.
Free Software is defined by four freedoms, and intends to create ethical relationships in the digital age of society, based on trust, responsibility and freedom.
In a world where we rely increasingly upon Information Technologies such as software and networks, it is important to realize software is more than code. The effects of programs go beyond the limited scope of developers, and contribute to shape our future.
The Free Software movement aims at making this future possible for everyone by ensuring fundamental principles of freedom for all, equally.
In order to achieve this goal, Richard M. Stallman defined four freedoms. At first sight however, these criteria are only valuable to hackers and developers. It is true that for most users access to source code does not seem important, neither do the rights to modify and publish improvements. The utility of software freedom is not obvious for all because only few have the capacity to enjoy hacking.
Free Software is valuable to society since it enables the emergence of a system, in the same perspective as Democracy. Democracy leads to the transformation of political systems, especially towards more freedom for all. However, in order to achieve this the political system goes through several steps before everyone value political rights. The fact that someone cannot enjoy the freedom given by the system does not mean he cannot enjoy its effects. To illustrate this, think of the process of an election.
The Constitution gives to every citizen over a certain age the right to be candidate in a political election. But it does not mean that everyone will, because only some citizens have the capacity and want to become politicians. Would you say that Democracy does not matter because you do not want to be in politics? No, the scope of Democracy is larger than just the election system. Whether you participate directly or not, you as a citizen enjoy the effects of freedom in your political system.
Quite the same distinction occurs in Free Software. Its licences grant rights to use, share, study and improve the program. But it does not mean that everyone will. These rights are fundamental for the software system because nothing stops you if you want to learn how software works or how to read source code. It depends on your own choice.
Thus, Free Software concurs to a system in which developers and users are equal and potential hackers. It results in a system in which freedom and equality are at core. That is also why Free Software is good for business and for education. Because if your creation is better than the competition, you are allowed to start yourself.
It is also important for education because Free Software gives everyone the right to read and understand source code. And this is a very important step toward a free society in the digital age, when technology will be even more invasive. It is important that more people are able to read and modify source code, so that it is not an extreme minority of people who shape the system for us.
This is a question of social control. What freedom will we have in a society of digital illiterates? Free Software enables people to be in control in digital society and gives the possibility to learn, to read and to write.
“Free Software, Free Society”
Doing an internship with FSFE is great! And you have a lot of things to do  Coffee can be a good friend sometimes…
By the way, I’m now in the middle of my internship already.
 This photo is coffeeleft.
At last, privacy is becoming a hot issue, in a world where everyone is tracked by companies and by the State, and in which information is shared more easily through networks. We can now potentially share everything with the whole world in an instant. The Internet is now accessible by almost every mobile phone.
Obviously, the consequences are huge, not only technically, but also on our behaviour. Social practices evolve with technologies, so is our conception of privacy. We are now willing to show more, to publish more. For my generation, it seems like the complex of privacy or intimacy is now gone.
Or, is it?
Maybe not. Because in spite of all these practices of sharing almost everything on the Web, recently the issue of privacy has risen. Politicians in France came up with a “right to oblivion” which consists in allowing everyone a kind of absolute “property” on everything that is published by (or about) you on the Web.
But very recently, Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed:
“The Age of Privacy is Over”
ReadWriteWeb
This echoes the changes in privacy settings and privacy policy that Facebook has undertaken in December, for which a lot of people are complaining. They are now concerned about the respect of their privacy, after having published so much things.
It’s not that I’m particularly enjoying this trend towards less privacy and more publicity, I am myself a hardcore advocate of privacy (which is the reason why I use encryption for my emails and do not use Gmail). But however, I am really welcoming this change in the Facebook policy. Here’s why.
Let’s have a look at what happened. In the beginning of December, Facebook updated the privacy settings with new default options which were seen as less “protective with privacy.” Since a lot of people are using the default options, a lof of things published, which were intended to be accessible only to a restrictive list of people, called “friends;” suddenly went more public. Even Mark Zuckerberg’s pictures were then publicly available (and it was certainly not a mistake).
So how did we get there? What explains this strategic change at Facebook?
The first mistake was to even consider in the first place that there is such thing as privacy on Facebook.
Facebook is about sharing. The only major difference in its concept compared to other services like YouTube is that the sharing is not focused on content (YouTube is focused on videos), but it is focused on individuals. The way streams are organized is not as much on what is said, as to whom and by whom it is said.
Nevertheless that does not change the fact that whatever is shared, is public. It maybe to a restrictive audience in the first place, but it is public, especially when you have more than 50 “friends” (which is the case for almost everybody). So from there, I find it’s particularly incoherent to concern about privacy, because such a privacy is illusion and in contradiction with Facebook’s utility.
The argument that there was a kind of implicit agreement between Facebook and its users that what is published should be kept private is pure nonsense. It is true that in the beginning Facebook was only for students and so it was a restrictive enough network. But it is a long time since Facebook is not a Harvard community anymore. It’s now a worldwide company.
And like every company of this size, you do not control it, you do not own it. Behind, there are commercial incentives, and certainly not poeple without ulterior motives… People who used to think Facebook was compatible with privacy were wrong.
Because technically privacy needs certain rules and practices to be protected. Think of the issue of private communication (snail mails, emails, instant messaging). Why do you use an envelop when you send a letter? This is a technical measure you take in order to protect your own privacy.
On the Internet, we also have laws to protect privacy (or at least we try). The problem is that everyone forgot to take care of their own privacy. Why is almost nobody using encryption when sending an email?
On Facebook, such precautions cannot exist because you would not control them. And even when you think you are in control of your data, you are not. Because all your data are in their databases. You cannot trust them on that. You have no means to make sure that your privacy is respected. Moreover, it is nonsense to give up the respect of your privacy to others, even more to a business that is based on advertisement and marketing your data.
If you go on with trying to keep things private on Facebook, you will end up with problems every single time they change something. And since they don’t have a very strong business model right now, it is likely to change again. My feeling on this is that Facebook needs to be more open and tends to look like Twitter: more public, more audience, more information, more sharing… more advertisement.
My advice is that you should always keep in mind: everything you publish on the Internet will be public, especially when you don’t control your publication with your own trusted server. And whatever concerns your intimacy should not be on the public Web. You don’t need the Web to share your photos with true friends, you have emails or instant messaging (e.g. jabber).
Finally, if you want to enjoy social networks you have to accept the way it works. Like everything social, it can be the subject of social studies, or economic interests, or marketing. And what is social on the Web belongs to the public sphere. Your privacy does not belong to the public sphere. Accept that, and publish whatever you want with maximum openness and you will see how much you will enjoy websites like Facebook without being worried for your privacy.
This was previously published in French on my personal weblog.
You just joined the Fellowship and you are thinking about publishing some thoughts you’d like to share about Free Software. Then, I hope this little guide will ease your blogging and help you enjoy at most your experience inside the FSFE Fellowship.
Create your own blog
Once you have successfully completed your Fellow subscription, just go to http://blogs.fsfe.org/YOURNICKNAME/wp-admin and enter your password (the same as in the other Fellowship services like Jabber). You have now accessed the Wordpress administration, from which you will be able to write new articles, organize your content, customize your blog, etc. If you are not familiar with the blog application, there are several documentations on the Web.
If you already have a blog and that you don’t want to use blogs.fsfe.org ; keep reading to know how to integrate your blog into the Fellowship planet.
Tags, Categories and Language
Organizing the content of your blog is important if you want people to find easily what they’re interested in. Tags also give your audience a clear idea of what you’re talking about precisely. However, you might be confused between tags and categories. Well, you’re not the only one in that case.
Moreover, we aren’t all English speakers, and most of us want to blog both in English and in our mother tongue.
So we came up with a quite simple solution. Tags are used to carry content, subjects, whereas Categories are used for languages (and if you want you can also use categories for classification).
This blog post is categorized as English, and tagged as Fellowship, FSFE, Howto.
Get your blog in the Planet
The Fellowship Planet is an aggregation tool that publish blog posts from our fellows. There is a planet for different languages: English, German, French, Spanish, etc.
If you want to get into this planet, please send an email to fellowship-hackers at fsfeurope dot org with the following information,
- RSS feed for the language; so, if you’ve created an English category you should have an RSS feed for that category, e.g. see Matthias’ English category, http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?feed=rss2&cat=708. Note that you can play with the options to have a little more explicit RSS URL.
- The name under which you would like your blog to be published.
- Your Hackergotchi, in 80×80 px and PNG format
Pimp your blog
We have several plugins like Sociable, Identi.ca Tools, or Spam Karma (though some don’t advise to use this tool). To be continued. Tell us, how did you pimp your blog? What do you advise?
Best wishes for 2010,
Hugo
Remember what was at stake with Net Neutrality and the nature of business in the coming ‘Internet’ economy?
Virgin Media is, like SFR in France, an Internet Service Provider, but also property of an entertainment company - Virgin is like Vivendi-Universal among the biggest in this industry. I think it’s in their interest to lock the Internet into some kind of great catalogue to the content they’re getting royalties with.
Well, it’s what Virgin Media has clearly announced in its plans for United Kingdom. Some links,
The need for legislation on Net Neutrality is now vital!
My understanding of the Web is apparently not shared by everyone. Considering discussions going on about, the Web as a public resource, or the promotion of an “open” Web; I decided to give my point of view on this, and to show what issues are at stake here. So first, here is my definition,
The World Wide Web, or what we refer to as “the Web,” is all that uses a common metalanguage: the Web metalanguage.
- This metalanguage is like every language. Nobody owns it, everyone can speak it and understand it.
- Like every language, it has its rules: grammar and orthography. For the Web, this rules are what we call the web standards, formalized by the W3C. The W3C is like L’Académie Française for the French language.
- However, grammar and orthography allow creativity, flexibility. You can make of words whatever you want, you can transform them, use them for other purposes, invent them. Some of your inventions will become mainstream, some will be forgotten… It’s how the language evolves over time; just like the Web has moved from a hypertext system to a hypermedia system with pictures and soon videos.
In order to read this language, all you need is a Web browser. The Web browser is just here to give an “easy version” for most people. That’s where it becomes important to respect standards. However, today, a lot of Web browsers aren’t just Web browsers.
The Web, as a metalanguage, allows hypermedia publications and for that, it uses a set of transport protocols: http being the main one currently. However, all that uses this transport protocol is not necessarily the Web. There are some things parasitizing these protocols and parasitizing the Web.
This things are clearly something else than the Web. It is software, using other things than the metalanguage. The question whether it is Free Software or proprietary software doesn’t change the fact that it’s not the Web.
When you have a Flash video embedded in a website, it is something clearly different. It’s just a proprietary applications delivering content to you through the same Internet protocols that the Web uses. And you can only read it if you decide to install a proprietary program - or a plug-in in addition to your Web browser.
The difference between proprietary and Free Software here, is that while proprietary software doesn’t have any good impact on the Web, Free Software can improve the Web because it is also something you can read, study, share and improve. However, this should not be recognized as part of the Web until it becomes a web standard.
So what’s important is to make sure that this language is good enough to prevent anyone from having to use other programs in order to communicate on the Internet.
Distinctions to make
For the reasons above, I think we should avoid some words such as “open.” To me, there’s no such thing as an “open” Web. Because there is no such thing as a “closed” Web. The Web is this hypermedia system that uses a common language. A language is neither closed nor open! There isn’t such distinction as a “binary” language and a “source” language. There is just language.
However, there is an important distinction to make. If you take into account my definition, facebook is a part of the Web just like my blog is a part of the Web. Some people however would refer to facebook as a closed Web. Here, the distinction is about public and private, not about open and closed.
That’s why I think we are mistaken when we think of the “open” Web or “the Web as a public resource.”
The Web as a metalanguage is a common good, but the World Wide Web, all these hypermedia publications are not a public resource.
 So far, we already had excellent reasons to refuse using Skype. Indeed, this protocol is closed, but most of all it doesn’t allow any interoperability, which is the height for a communication protocol! Imagine you could make phone calls only to people subscribed to the same telephone operator.
We already had an excellent protocol for instant messaging: an open standard, perfect to achieve interoperability. Its name is xmpp, the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. On top, a lot of services are already used by millions of people: Jabber, on which is based Google Talk (and soon Facebook Chat) among many others, but also other interesting things such as Juick.com, a social network completely based on the xmpp protocol.
But now, besides that, we also have a technical reason to say bye bye to Skype
Indeed, a lot of people were still making use of Skype because it was more convenient to have a video-conversation. It worked better and often between different operating systems. It was the only way for people using Gnu/Linux to have a video-conversation with people using Microsoft Windows: every other software was lacking stability and was often randomly working.
But a lot of effort have been put into improving this. And following the specification of Jingle, came the implementation of multimedia sessions. This implementation took time. But now, it’s getting to the end.
We can now have video-conversations using xmpp and it works just great! The main thing is that it is now possible with Microsoft Windows users! Using Empathy, you can now call people using the Gmail Web interface, see their face and hear their voice.
There aren’t any technical barriers left toward free video-conversation anymore!
Bye bye Skype, Welcome XMPP!
SW8ABHDZUF6X DGCQZWSFRJUZ
A few days before the launching of Microsoft’s last operating system, FSFE wondered about users’ security since an important vulnerability has been silently ignored. I then asked myself the question, in what way Free Software is different regarding security?
It appears that our allegations were true and should have been taken seriously. As an article in Computerworld reports, Microsoft finally issued a security advisory about that high-risk vulnerability three days ago. The problem is still not fixed though.
What’s important there is that this vulnerability already triggered a warning (en) by the BSI agency more than a month ago! Despite the consequences, Microsoft meanwhile decided not to tell its customers in order to avoid bad publicity around the launching of Windows7.
Such despise towards their customers’ security has led me to ask: Does Microsoft care about their customers’ security less than they care about their good image? This experience proves the answer is yes. Microsoft has made the choice to keep their customers in ignorance and in the same time has put their systems at risk. This is yet another perfect illustration that proprietary software hijacks users: Microsoft is ready to sacrifice your security for their commercial purposes.
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