"Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance. Years ago, surveillance meant trench-coated detectives following people down streets. It was laborious and expensive, and was only used when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime. Modern surveillance is the policeman with a license-plate scanner, or even a remote license-plate scanner mounted on a traffic light and a policeman sitting at a computer in the station. It's the same, but it's completely different. It's wholesale surveillance.

And it disrupts the balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the people.

[...]

Like the license-plate scanners, the electronic footprints we leave everywhere can be automatically correlated with databases. The data can be stored forever, allowing police to conduct surveillance backwards in time."

Oops. Wasn't trying to throw a bomb, and I thought that the URL was safer than it was taken to be. Now it has been deleted. And the site it led to has also been deleted, I have been told.

Yes, I have apologized - and yes, my apology was accepted. Now it's time for some pie, again.

Crow pie, not my favorite type.

We should, indeed, control our own information in most respects. We don't, but we should. On this forum, it has been made clear that most of the folks want the anonymity to remain intact so long as the person themselves wish to remain anonymous. Olycop was playing with this anonymity, inviting us to use our 'secret decoder rings' and guess his identity. I was apparently the first to do so, some weeks ago now. Many people had joined in the game, and a few exchanged private missives with me, begging me for the secret identity. I held out against all these requests, except to require hard work from each student to review the available data and make an independent conclusion. The data is out there, public, and I did not need any private information to make my conclusions.

Once Norm had reached a conclusion and I had safely exchanged a "tell" with him to assure myself that he had the right name, I posted to him a message that I had found the family page - since deleted - and he asked for me to send him a link. I did. Moments later, in what I can only describe as a fit of journalistic competition (OK, I can also describe it as simple hubris), I scooped him before he could publish the link, or the name. That post was the link to a family photo page with captions, untagged with anything which would tell a novice reader what the context of the URL was. The names named on that site were all first names, no surnames. The site was originally built to keep details to a minimum, yet once it was revealed in this context it became a liability in the judgement of Olycop.

While I have never agreed with that assessment of the danger posed by a URL of family photos, it is and was his judgement to make - not mine. That's my regret and the reason I have apologized, despite the differences.

My greatest regret is the loss, to his family, of that method of sharing their photos with each other. If they wish to use that medium, they will now be forced to choose another method of captioning, or another service provider who can authenticate users before they access the pages. A technological solution can be found, but is less likely than simple nonpublication of the photos. And that diminishes their options, to the detriment of our common communication.

I learned a lot about Olycop from his family page - a love we both share of ships that move silently under the seas, a desire we both share for camping time out of the house, and a certain name we both treasure. I also learned things about him which show our differences, but these differences do not diminish his humanity - and I was wrong to publish that URL without checking in with him first.

Rick has taken me down a peg, in terms of my access to the information on this website. The post in question has been edited by Rick, and the page it linked to has itself been deleted, I am told.

I've said this to Sarah before, but I can't remember if I told everyone on the blog or not.

At Google, you can turn certain functions on which allow Google to e-mail you if certain names are searched.

In short, you can be notified if your name is "Google'd." It will even show you what they were looking for.

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern."

Can you explain how to do this?

Jade

(A Rose in the Pumpkin Patch)