Stanford Center for Internet and Society

David Frum in the NYT Book Review: "You do not need to be a partisan of a political movement to write its history. But you do need enough imaginative sympathy to comprehend how it won adherents and supporters.

I notice that Google now has a privacy policy link on its homepage. Congratulations to Marc and others who pushed for this.

It's tempting to view this move cynically as a dragged-out response to a long-standing complaint from the privacy community. My understanding, however, is that there has been internal debate at Google over whether to include a privacy link on the homepage for some time. One argument against such a link is that it conveys the sense that a given company respects privacy, irrespective of the actual content of the policy (which, as we know, often goes unread).

I'm not saying Google did this on purpose, but I think that many more people are likely to click on the privacy link, given that it appeared suddenly on the zealously sparse Google homepage. (Unless, of course, they get distracted by the fireworks.)

My friend Sanjana sent me an interesting blog post from the NYT today on privacy. Brad Stone: "We all cherish our privacy.

We made a simple program...

There's been a good deal of posts about Google's XLM file of copyright renewal records, mainly of books. See http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8412 and http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/24/copyright-renewal-re.html for two examples.

Threadbare as it already is, the privacy rubber may not even be meeting the road. A recent study conducted by the Ponemon Institute implies a disconnect between the perception of privacy officers – charged with formulating company policy – and marketing departments – entrusted with actual custody of customer data – with respect to how consumer information may be used.

Peter Adler, head of the Keystone Center and a giant in the field of dispute resolution, recently published a great "credo for facilitators" that he first came up with some years ago. I really like his set of seven beliefs at the end of the credo:
 
"1. A GOOD FAITH CONTRACT.
 

Last week my friend Ken Banks (of kiwanja.net) launched the latest version of FrontlineSMS, a text messaging platform geared at servicing the needs of the grassroots NGO community.
 
There are a number of improvements on the first version, released way back in 2005:
 

I will be participating in the ABA's first Second Life (and teleconference) event tomorrow “Why Virtual Worlds Matter for Lawyers” at 10 AM Pacific. Information about the call is available at Virtually Blind and on the ABA's website.

I imagine the subset of individuals that read the Center's blogs but not, for instance, Boing Boing to be in the (low) single digits. I still could not resist posting this news story about bearded, community-gardening, anti-surveillance activists in Philly whose house was raided, initially without a warrant. In fairness, the facts are disputed: for instance, local police are calling a structure on the top floor of the raided house a possible "bunker," whereas resident Daniel Moffat (pictured) is calling it a definite "greenhouse."

For those interested in the upcoming schedule for Hearsay Culture (beginning anew on July 2), here it is! I'm very excited with the coming slate of guests. Thanks for listening and spreading the word!