The Justice Department May Force ISPs to Save Records of Your Every Move

The privacy wars: Measures and counter-measures…

The Justice Dept. would like to have a better idea of how you are spending your time. 

That it would eventually come to this is probably not a surprise -- Internet privacy will soon be as archaic as the telegraph machine.

And yet, this is still worrisome.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein met with the House Judiciary subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security today to discuss data retention — in which Internet service providers and mobile carriers save information about your personal activity carried out online.

Chaired by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican suggested that mandatory requiring service providers to retain records, even temporarily, was "not out fo the question."

The Justice Department May Force ISPs to Save Records of Your Every Move

UK ISPs Moot Anonymous Internet Solution to Circumvent New Data and Piracy Laws − ISPreview UK

The privacy wars:  Measures and counter-measures…

A Swedish ISP that is also responsible for hosting WikiLeaks, Bahnhof, has this week triggered a fresh debate into internet privacy by announcing its intention to avoid the new European Data Retention Directive and stick all of its customers behind an effectively anonymous Virtual Private Network (VPN).

UK ISPs Moot Anonymous Internet Solution to Circumvent New Data and Piracy Laws − ISPreview UK

Blumenthal: Meaningful Use, healthcare reform 'two sides of the same coin' - FierceEMR

From a recent interview with Dr. David Blumenthal, [U.S.] National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.  Some sobering thoughts for physicians who might not have the gumption to opt in to “meaningful use” of electronic health records: If you don’t opt in, your practice won’t fetch a very good price when you want to retire and sell it to another physician. 

Metaphorically, Dr. Blumenthal is telling every private physician in America to “eat your vegetables.”  Will physicians in private practice do the right thing, or will we information-management professionals eventually get to “tut-tut” them for the data-management equivalent of patient non-compliance?

For older physicians, I think it's going to be almost impossible for them to replace themselves unless they have an information system that a younger physician can work with. Or, they'll have to discount the price of the practice, accordingly, because the younger physician will say 'I don't want this practice unless I can install an electronic health record.' It's a little bit like re-doing the roof, if you're buying a house: You give me a roof that leaks, I'm going to take that out of the purchase price. So I think there's another economic rationale.

Blumenthal: Meaningful Use, healthcare reform 'two sides of the same coin' - FierceEMR

Oracle Upgrades Data Modeler | CTO Edge

From a story about the latest release of Oracle’s data-modeling tool (Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler), here’s an intriguing sentence attributed to an Oracle product manager:

IT organizations are rediscovering the value of data modeling in the wake of the move to agile development.

Any product manager of any data-modeling tool would certainly hope so. For my part—that is, as a person without a data-modeling tool to sell but with hard-earned opinions about best practices in IT—let me go on record once again:  I also hope that IT organizations are rediscovering the value of data modeling.

Oracle Upgrades Data Modeler | CTO Edge

India Demands Full BlackBerry Access, Pakistan - NYTimes.com

The hoary old “state security vs. personal (and corporate) privacy” narrative:

NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - India rejected on Monday Research In Motion's (RIM) offer to allow it only partial access to its BlackBerry data services as neighboring Pakistan also moved to restrict the popular smartphone's services.

It was not immediately clear what the Indian government, which says it is driven by security concerns, would now do after the Canadian smartphone maker failed to fulfill demands to monitor encrypted corporate email by a January 31 deadline. RIM had previously said was confident India would not ban its services

India Demands Full BlackBerry Access, Pakistan - NYTimes.com

Wikipedia Ponders Its Gender-Skewed Contributions - NYTimes.com

Some data on the demographics of Wikipedia contributors:

About a year ago, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University.

…

But because of its early contributors Wikipedia shares many characteristics with the hard-driving hacker crowd, says Joseph Reagle, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. This includes an ideology that resists any efforts to impose rules or even goals like diversity, as well as a culture that may discourage women.

…

According to the OpEd Project, an organization based in New York that monitors the gender breakdown of contributors to “public thought-leadership forums,” a participation rate of roughly 85-to-15 percent, men to women, is common — whether members of Congress, or writers on The New York Times and Washington Post Op-Ed pages.

Wikipedia Ponders Its Gender-Skewed Contributions - NYTimes.com

Court Allows Emanuel on Ballot for Chicago Mayor - NYTimes.com

Information literacy includes being a responsible information consumer, which includes a healthy dose of skepticism, which should not be confused with cynicism.  To be clear:  Skepticism leads us to check the facts when a public figure or politician quotes verifiable statistics.  Skepticism is a good thing. 

Cynicism, by contrast, is corrosive.  Cynics believe that something unsavory and manipulative is behind the efforts of Rahm Emmanuel to become mayor of Chicago, or alternatively, behind the attempts to keep him off the ballot.  The question turns on whether Emmanual meets the residency requirements of Illinois election law. 

As it turns out, a little information literacy comes to the rescue.  The question “What is a resident?” is legitimately unobvious and open to interpretation.  Category boundaries are vague.  Information management specialists and requirements analysts confront these issues frequently.  For example, many large companies have difficulty answering the question “How many customers do we have?” or more fundamentally, “What is a customer?” 

Cynic, be reassured; there is no foul play here, by either Mr. Emanual or his adversaries:

CHICAGO – Rahm Emanuel’s bid to become mayor of this city may proceed, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.

The decision appeared to bring an end to weeks of legal debate over whether Mr. Emanuel qualified for the ballot, specifically whether his time in Washington as President Obama’s chief of staff meant that he had given up his residency status in Chicago, where he was born. By Illinois state code, candidates for mayor are required to have resided in Chicago for at least one year before Election Day. Mr. Emanuel left the White House in October, and the election is Feb. 22.

Court Allows Emanuel on Ballot for Chicago Mayor - NYTimes.com

Sway of N.R.A. Stymies Firearms Research, Scientists Say - NYTimes.com

Politics, which can affect the dissemination and interpretation of data, can also affect the very existence of data, i.e., whether or not the data is collected in the first place.

The amount of money available today for studying the impact of firearms is a fraction of what it was in the mid-1990s, and the number of scientists toiling in the field has dwindled to just a handful as a result, researchers say.

The dearth of money can be traced in large measure to a clash between public health scientists and the N.R.A. in the mid-1990s. At the time, Dr. Rosenberg and others at the C.D.C. were becoming increasingly assertive about the importance of studying gun-related injuries and deaths as a public health phenomenon, financing studies that found, for example, having a gun in the house, rather than conferring protection, significantly increased the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.

Alarmed, the N.R.A. and its allies on Capitol Hill fought back. The injury center was guilty of “putting out papers that were really political opinion masquerading as medical science,” said Mr. Cox, who also worked on this issue for the N.R.A. more than a decade ago.

Sway of N.R.A. Stymies Firearms Research, Scientists Say - NYTimes.com

BBC World Service Plans 650 Job Cuts : NPR

Painful cuts affect a major information provider (and a mere 30 million information consumers)

BBC Global News Director Peter Horrocks said the cuts, which the broadcaster says will reduce its global audience by 30 million, was "a painful day for BBC World Service."

…

The cuts mean BBC will ax its Macedonian, Albanian, Serbian, English for the Caribbean and Portuguese for Africa radio services, and will scale back radio programming in seven languages — Azeri, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Spanish for Cuba, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Ukrainian — focusing instead on online, mobile and television content. In March, shortwave broadcasts will cease in Hindi, Kyrgyz, Nepali, Swahili and the Great Lakes service broadcast in Rwanda and Burundi.

BBC World Service Plans 650 Job Cuts : NPR

Bills in 2 states target distracted pedestrians - The Boston Globe

Here’s a thought: One way to be a responsible information consumer is to occasionally turn off the spigot.

After targeting drivers who paid more attention to their phone calls and text messages than the road, lawmakers in Arkansas and New York are now looking to crack down on pedestrians equally distracted by their electronic gadgets.

Lawmakers in both states have proposed restrictions on using cellphones and music players such as iPods by people running and walking on the street or sidewalk.

Bills in 2 states target distracted pedestrians - The Boston Globe

Storytellers help neighbors lower blood pressure - The Boston Globe

Data professionals are not the only folks who recognize the practical differences between structured and unstructured data.

Storytelling has been studied as a means of educating at-risk patients on medical issues such as smoking and breast cancer screening, but according to Houston this was the first such study with hypertension patients. Storytellers were chosen from community focus groups for their eloquence and persuasiveness, and the DVDs included supplementary information to go along with the stories.

Storytellers help neighbors lower blood pressure - The Boston Globe

Food Makers Offer Own Nutrition Label Plan - NYTimes.com

From the Glass Is Half Full Department: Let’s refrain from characterizing this as irresponsible information dissemination from the food industry.  Instead, let’s call it an opportunity for consumers to get some practice at responsible and skeptical information consumption.

Starting in the next few months, the front of many food packages will prominently display important nutrition information, including calorie, fat and sugar content. The industrywide program was announced Monday by food makers and grocers.

…

The Obama administration wanted the package-front labels to emphasize nutrients that consumers might want to avoid, like sodium, calories and fat. But manufacturers insisted that they should also be able to use the labels to highlight beneficial nutrients, including vitamins, minerals and protein.

The administration concluded that “in the end, the label was going to be confusing, because those things would be included out of context, and it could make unhealthy foods appear like they had some redeeming quality,” said an official who was not authorized to discuss the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity. For example, the official said, “ice cream would be deemed healthy because it would have calcium in it.”

Food Makers Offer Own Nutrition Label Plan - NYTimes.com

Gerritsen Beach Blogger Criticized for Posting Photos - NYTimes.com

The following highlights some issues about responsible dissemination of information.  Also some questions about parental responsibility, police responsibility, and the responsibility to not throw rocks at women with baby strollers, even if you are only 12 years old and trying to impress an older brother.  (In my childhood home, we tried to impress each other with good grammar.)

It was Mr. Cavanagh’s community watchdogging on Halloween that created the most ire.

Around 3 p.m., Mr. Cavanagh said, he saw more than three dozen adolescents hurling eggs, potatoes, rocks and shaving cream cans at buses, cars, women with strollers and an elderly man.

Mr. Cavanagh called the police, but it took them more than 30 minutes to arrive. By then, the group — which he had captured on camera — had scattered.

At 8:48 the next morning, he posted “No Police Response Despite Massive Damage by Local Teens.” It included more than a dozen photos of the offending youths, along with images of public Facebook profiles. Status updates described pelting the police and breaking bus windows.

Two days later, when the property owners’ association held its monthly meeting, the audience railed against Mr. Cavanagh.

Gerritsen Beach Blogger Criticized for Posting Photos - NYTimes.com

Test-Taking Cements Knowledge Better Than Studying, Researchers Say - NYTimes.com

Perhaps surprisingly to its passionate fans, concept mapping might not be the most effective way to prepare for a test that will require concept mapping. 

The second experiment focused only on concept mapping and retrieval practice testing, with each student doing an exercise using each method. In this initial phase, researchers reported, students who made diagrams while consulting the passage included more detail than students asked to recall what they had just read in an essay.

But when they were evaluated a week later, the students in the testing group did much better than the concept mappers. They even did better when they were evaluated not with a short-answer test but with a test requiring them to draw a concept map from memory.

Test-Taking Cements Knowledge Better Than Studying, Researchers Say - NYTimes.com

Book Review - Alone Together - By Sherry Turkle - NYTimes.com

I never much liked Sherry Turkle’s early work because she seemed to take an uncritical, gee-whiz look at web interactions and identity.  Now it appears she’s having second thoughts.

She rejects the thesis she embraced 15 years earlier, as she notes that the online world is no longer a space of freedom and re­invention. Instead, we have been trapped by Facebook profiles and Google cache, in which verbs like “delete” and “erase” are mostly metaphorical. Turkle quotes one high school senior who laments the fact that everything he’s written online will always be around, preserved by some omniscient Silicon Valley server. “You can never escape what you did,” he says.

The Internet is full of absurdities, from the booming economy of virtual worlds — a user recently paid $335,000 for land on a fictitious asteroid in Entropia Universe — to the mass retweeting of Justin Bieber. It’s always fun to mock the stilted language of teenagers and lament the decline of letter writing. But these obvious objections shouldn’t obscure the real mystery: If the Internet is such an alienating force, then why can’t we escape it? If Facebook is so insufferable, then why do hundreds of millions of people check their page every day?

 

Book Review - Alone Together - By Sherry Turkle - NYTimes.com

Critics Love The Social Network. Will The Academy Defriend It? - NYTimes.com

One way to be a “responsible information consumer” is to understand how different voting systems work.  (There is no ideal voting scheme that ensures equitable distribution of power.)  Three cheers to anyone who bothers to scrutinize and explain a particular voting system.

Last year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences adopted instant-runoff voting for its selection of best picture, a decision which is sometimes credited for its choice of “The Hurt Locker” over “Avatar” and other nominees. Although the system has its critics, it’s no more convoluted than, say, the voting process for “Dancing With The Stars.” Let me walk you through it:

Instead of simply voting for one candidate, each voter instead ranks all of the choices on his ballot from top to bottom (meaning, in this case, from 1st to 10th). The first-place votes are then tallied. If no choice has received an outright majority of first-place votes, then the choice with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated. If your first choice is eliminated, then your second-place choice gets your vote instead. For instance, if you had ranked “Little Fockers” first, and nobody else had agreed with you that it deserved best picture, your second choice (say, “Twilight: Eclipse”) takes its place. This process then repeats itself, with the candidate with the fewest first-place votes being dropped one stage at a time until one of the remaining choices has received an outright majority.

Critics Love The Social Network. Will The Academy Defriend It? - NYTimes.com

Information Pleeze

 

Information Pleas

This blog will encourage its readers to be responsible information creators and skeptical information consumers. The intended “encouraging” will sometimes become “desperate imploring.”

Information Please

Like the long-running radio program of the same name moderated by Clifton Fadiman, this blog aspires to be informative and entertaining.

This blog is not a general almanac such as www.infoplease.com. Rather, this blog focuses on the opportunities and pitfalls of living and doing business in an information-saturated environment.

Information? Please.

This blog will call attention to irresponsible behavior by information creators or consumers or both. Such behavior might include mendacity, but could also include shortcomings in language and logic, failure to appreciate how metaphor and analogy work, and the misapplication of software tools and techniques. “You call that information? Puh-lease.”