Kim Cameron on Liberty, Federation and the Law...
Kim Cameron has just posted
here on Stephen Deadman's recent paper concerning the legal implications of establishing a Liberty Circle of Trust.
Having just returned from the Liberty Sponsors' meeting, I think I can safely say that coffee-break conversation did sometimes turn to the topic of Kim's blog, and even if there were some specifics on which people might disagree, there was also a general appreciation of the way in which Kim's work brings important topics into the public domain in a constructive way, allowing different views to be aired.
There were just two sentences in Kim's post on which I wanted to offer my own personal comment, and here they are:
1
"The legal complexities of this style of federation are significant, and they must all be considered."
I agree with the sentiment entirely... but not necessarily with the hint of an implication that there are other styles of federation which might be legally less complex.
Federation is one of the possible approaches to fixing the problem of trusted, interoperable authentication between multiple parties. My instinct is that relationships of that kind will give rise to pretty much the same legal complexity no matter which organisational and technical approach one adopts. It's just a tough (but not insoluble) problem.
2
"Now, perhaps I am just a man with a hammer who sees everything in the world as a nail, but the paper reinforced my thinking that the more our systems are built to guarantee that the user is the conscious agent of information release (rather than having this done on his behalf), the better privacy is served, and the simpler our lives become from a legal and policy point of view."
Again, I agree with the basic statement but not the implication. In my view, the user can be "the conscious agent of information release" while still having that act performed on her behalf. For instance, when I write a cheque [check] I consciously act to make a payment, but I then rely on the clearing system to perform that payment on my behalf. In the online environment, I issue instructions to my bank to transfer funds to someone else; that's a process I trust a lot more than keeping my salary under the mattress!
So this is a trust model which already works in both the real and the online worlds; I think it can be applied to online attribute exchange as well - not necessarily as the whole and only solution, but certainly as a valid architectural option.
Thanks, Kim, and keep 'em coming.......
Posted by racingsnake
@ 01:57 PM GMT+00:00
Steve Mann (qv) has done it again...
Steve Mann (see my March 23rd blog entry
here)
has come up with another brilliant subversion of consentless
privacy invasion.
At the CFP (Computers, Freedom and Privacy) conference, delegates were given conference knapsacks with a difference. Each bag sported a shiny
black 'surveillance dome' referred to as a "maybecam". Some of the bags
also contained webcams, but the idea was that no-one would know which ones.
Some of the delegates then roamed the nearby retail outlets to see which ones objected to having someone else's surveillance dome pointed at them for a change...
"How to make a maybecam"...
I'm indebted to
Kim Cameron's blog and
Wired News for alerting me to this.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 01:33 PM GMT+00:00
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