Private Getaway

There is a battle being waged between the web startup, Airbnb, and New York State. According to its website, Airbnb.com “is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world.” At issue is the concern that landlords might be using the website to circumvent New York State rental laws, specifically, renting out properties for less than 30 days unless a permanent resident is present.

According to a Bloomberg Business Week online article, Airbnb is refusing to comply with a subpoena to hand over the names of all of its 15,000 users.  They argue that the law should not apply to “ordinary, everyday people who occasionally share their homes.” They also feel the subpoena is “unreasonably broad” given the fact that Eric Schneiderman, the New York State Attorney General has said that they are only concerned with “a small number of bad actors who abuse the Airbnb platform.”

This battle raises privacy questions for both individuals and organizations in terms of how far the government can reach to enforce legislation.  While the intent of the legislation according to the Bloomberg article – that residents of an apartment building “shouldn’t have to worry about the apartment next door turning into a de facto hotel room” – is valid, does the government have the right to collect information on all users?  In essence, simply by being a user on a website where someone might be violating a law, all users become suspects and subject to investigation.  And beyond that, should the government be the sole arbiter of who is subject to prosecution in a marketplace where occasional home shares are growing in popularity due to the ease of it on the web.

For organizations, where do they draw the line when a small percentage of users are abusing the platform to circumvent legislation?  They are caught between privacy that they guarantee to their users and being party to illegal activity.  If they do not wish to relinquish all information, then they either become the arbiter of who is subject to investigation or they, to some extent, become complicit.

As social media continues to grow and new ideas for web services and apps appear every day, the implications of such questions increase.  It may not be long before benchmark cases of online privacy and constitutional rights find themselves much more frequently on the steps of the Supreme Court.

Renewable Email

Email addresses have become part of our identity.  Much like a long-possessed phone number, we identify them with our friends, families and ourselves.  But unlike phone numbers, our email addresses are repositories for highly personal information.  We think little about relinquishing a phone number, assuming without great concern that someone will have that phone number again at some point in the future, but what about relinquishing an email address…or not relinquishing it, but having it repossessed by a service provider.  While one's personal emails and profile information may be erased, it is possible that email sent to the email address might contain personal information for the previous user.

That concern was raised in a mashable article detailing how Microsoft and other service providers recycle email addresses.  The article explains that Microsoft requires users to log into their email accounts at least once every 270 days.  If not, they risk having their account deleted.  Following the deletion, the account will be made available again after 360 days.

It may seem that 270 days of inactivity is a reasonable amount of time to give someone to keep their account active.  However, it is not uncommon to have to create multiple email accounts for different purposes, and it becomes difficult sometimes to track these or remember all of them.  For individuals, this may just be a case of personal accountability.  But for organizations, there might be greater privacy concerns.

 I’ve had to create different google accounts for emergency communication, for wiki access and for file sharing.  Not all of these are needed continually and some I’ve forgotten.  Large organizations could have countless inactive Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft accounts with private or sensitive information of which they are unaware.  It may be that it is highly unlikely that such a breach of privacy could occur, but the implications of such a breach should be enough for organizations to think more about setting guidelines for creating email and web accounts for business purposes.

Wear Are We Going?

I resisted buying my first cell phone.  “I have voicemail,” I reasoned, “why does someone need to call my body?”

Thirteen years later my body can be tracked via my smartphone, and through a host of other data mining devices, cameras and computers.  This week, Gigaom.com ran an article called “Where is Wearable TechHeaded?”  The author, Rahul Patel, discusses the potential of wearable tech describing “a small adhesive strip that can collect intimate biological data and tell your smartphone that you need to apply sunscreen or hydrate,” or, “devices that monitor health and behavior – human or animal.”

Organizations already scour social media to gain background data on potential employees or monitor current ones.  What happens when the biological information of each individual is linked into a digital data network?  Will organizations know an employee or potential employee is sick before they do?  Can discrimination become undetectable through background algorithms and data mining of wearable tech?

It is interesting that in the interactive Web 2.0 data mining seems to go in one direction.  The masses are unable to access and utilize monitoring data with any degree of similarity to large organizations.  Data mining is neither two-way, nor is it transparent.  Perhaps it should be part of the public record.  If not, we may be relinquishing a degree of control on our own fates that we might never regain.

Make A 'Bot

Makerbot has introduced The Digitizer, a 3D scanner that can image real world objects and then print them out on a 3D printer.  3D printing has already sparked a fair share of conversation.  Some hail the benefits to the individual, of gaining more control over creativity, while others point out the dangers of being able to “print” firearms, or the economic implications of manufacturing obsolescence.

However, of greater concern to me is not the specific device, but the runaway speed of technology and the growing divide between it and consumers and manufacturers ability to understand its effects and implications.  Countless amounts of data have been generated by consumers of technology, particularly since the introduction of Web 2.0 and social networks in the mid-2000’s, yet we are just beginning to realize the extent and implications of data mining and its effect on our privacy and relationships.

How then are we to understand the issues associated with being able to replicate three-dimensional objects through something as simple as a printer?  How long before the products are not crude, plastic replicas, but something that resembles actual manufacturing – or perhaps living organisms?  Just about any tool can be used for benefit or for harm.  The danger is not necessarily in the tool itself, but in the growing gap between cutting edge technology and society’s ability to properly study and understand its implications.