Now, four days later, my wife had a chance to react to the notification she received from Facebook regarding my tagging her, and I thought I’d share a few more reactions to her attempt to opt-out of Places altogether.

First, it is important to note that until my wife took any action, my ability to check her into places in this fashion remained. She’s a busy person, and generally only checks her personal email account a couple of times a week. Today was the first chance she had to log in and view the message Facebook sent regarding my attempt to check her into the liquor store.

Notice how the email prompts you with an enticing green “Allow Check-ins” button, and only a smaller textual link to learn more about what this is all about. Remembering that I’ve been talking about Places around the house the past few days, my wife figured she didn’t want anything to do with it, so she just ignored the email altogether. I suspect many others would do the same, and as a result, there was zero opportunity here to adjust the privacy settings to prevent any future interaction with Places or fully opt-out of the feature.

Next, my wife decided to log into her Facebook account itself. She’s not all that active on Facebook, with her last meaningful update being a note in May about, coincidentally, my appearance on NPR’s Science Friday about Facebook and privacy. Thankfully, and to Facebook’s credit, upon logging in she was immediately met with a prompt to act upon my attempt to check her in to the liquor store.

Here, the two primary options are “Allow Check-Ins” and “Not Now”. There’s again a secondary text link to “Learn more”.  My wife, again, didn’t want anything to do with Places, and said out loud “how do I just turn it off”. Obviously, there’s no simple way of doing that from this prompt, as clicking “Not Now” just makes the prompt disappear, but nothing else happens. There’s no suggestion to go check out your privacy settings. Hopefully users will click “Learn more” to discover what Places is and their privacy options; but in the case of my wife (a very well-educated and web-savvy user), she just clicked “Not Now” and was left with nothing.

Thankfully, I suggested she go to her privacy settings to properly opt-out of the Places feature. But once there, she was met with what appeared to be the same array of privacy options that was launched earlier this year.

Looking more closely one notices, embedded in the light gray list of privacy options, a “Places I check into” category, withe a little question mark. Hover over that icon, and you learn what this item is about.

Following the prompt, my wife clicked on “Customize settings”, which brought her to another familiar page of privacy settings, again with no obvious indication of what new settings were added for the Places feature. After hunting, she finally noticed the “Places I check in to” and “Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in” options, which she modified.

And then she figured she was done.

Until I pointed out there were more privacy settings that required adjustment to fully opt-out of Places. Further down this page is perhaps the most important privacy setting: “Friends can check me in to Places”. She disabled this, wondering why it was practically hidden on the page, requiring one to scroll and really look for it.

Finally, I showed her how she had to go back to the main privacy settings page, then click on “Edit your settings” under Applications and Websites, and then click on “Edit settings” under Info Accessible Through Your Friends. Here, she made sure that “Places I check into” was not selected.

It took all these steps to properly opt out of Places. Not only was it confusing, but there was no guidance on how to navigate the myriad of settings required to opt-out. (I recognize there is a video and some information in the “learn more” links, but she didn’t want to learn more, just to opt-out.) Facebook provides no message when she first went into her privacy settings that there were new options that she should take a look at.

Overall, the process of completely opting-out of Places remains unintuitive and cumbersome. That’s poor privacy design, and Facebook should know better by now.

Note, too, that disabling check-ins by others does not affect previous check-ins. My wife’s name still appears in my original check-in to the local liquor store, as well as on the “friend’s activity” on the liquor store’s page, and, presumably, in Facebook’s database of who has been checked into that location. She must manually “remove tag” from each and every Places check-in that has occurred prior to her disabling the service….and no where was she proactively told she should do that. Over the days between launch and her eventual logging into Facebook to try to disable the service, I could have been checking my wife into dozens of places, each which would need to be located within her feed and removed manually.

Again, I think Facebook has done a better job designing Places compared to many of their recent product launches. But there is much to be desired for how they designed the privacy settings & user interface, and, in the end, it remains that users can be checked into places without their permission.

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It is important to realize that before Like.com was helping people find shoes and watches online, its technology was the core of Riya, a photo sharing and search site that allowed users to upload, tag and search images based on facial recognition technology. Users simply uploaded their photo library to Riya, tag faces in a handful of the photos, and then Riya’s facial recognition technology took over and attempt to automatically tag different faces it “recognizes” so that you don’t have to. Riya’s vision was to expand this facial recognition beyond an individual’s library, and eventually reach every digital photo scattered across the Web.

Over 4 years ago, I wrote about the privacy implications of Riya’s facial recognition technology here and here. I warned then:

Sure, it would be great if I could easily search for pictures of me on the web, but do I want others to be able to do that as well? Could this provide a useful tool for stalkers looking for a particular person? Abusive partners trying to track down their victim? (Note that Riya also uploads and indexes all the metadata related to your photos, including the date and time is was taken, when it was uploaded, etc. Users can also tag and search photos based on location). …there are externalities once all of the images of our daily lives (and their related metadata) are uploaded to the Internet, indexed, searchable, and accessible to all.

Google almost bought Riya back in 2006, but acquired Neven Vision instead, and soon integrated basic facial recognition into its image search results, and, later, into Picasa and Orkut.

With the purchase of Like.com, Google obtains the original Riya technology. Coupled with other recent social networking related acquisitions, Google appears poised to make a run at Facebook, with Riya providing the means to automate photo tagging at a scale Riya could only have dreamed of. What remains to be seen is how carefully Google will consider the privacy implications of unleashing powerful face recognition technology on throngs of users.

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[Readers might be interested in my follow-up post: Facebook Places Privacy Falls Short, Part 2: Opting-Out]

Facebook has finally launched its location-based service: Places. Places allows Facebook users to “check in” wherever they are (or pretend to be) using a mobile device, and let’s their friends know where they are at the moment.

Facebook has tried to do a better job addressing privacy with Places compared to previous launches of new “features”. Particularly, Facebook brags that “no location information is associated with a person unless he or she explicitly chooses to become part of location sharing. No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission.”

And while many applaud Facebook for the design of Places (the best design decision, perhaps, was to make check-ins visible to friends only by default, rather than everyone), there are some serious ways in which Facebook has fallen short in fully protecting user’s locational privacy.

The folks at EPIC, EFF, and DotRights have each done a good job outlining the primary concerns, and I don’t want to repeat them all here.

But as I’ve played around with the service, I’ve uncovered a problem with Facebook’s assertion that “no one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission.”

While Places is largely an opt-in service — one needs to install and use it on a mobile device — anyone can be “checked-in” to any place by a friend. This can happen regardless of whether you use the service yourself. If you get checked into a place by someone, and you haven’t already authorized the service or these kinds of check-ins, you’ll receive an email asking if you want to allow check-ins by friends. Below is an email received by my wife when I tagged her as joining me at a local liquor store.

Given Facebook’s assertion that “No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission,” presumably my wife won’t be checked into this location until she clicks “Allow Check-ins” on this alert message.

She didn’t click, and hasn’t made any other changes to any of her Facebook settings. Yet, if any of my friends look at my Facebook feed, they’ll see the status update of my check-in at the liquor store, with my wife’s name there with me:

And her name also appears with my check-in on the location’s page automatically generated by the Places service:

So, where does this leave us?  My wife has not authorized me (or anyone) to check her into places. She doesn’t use the service. In fact, she wasn’t even at the liquor store at all.

Yet, I was able to tag her in my check-in, and all my friends now see her name linked with my check-in as if she was there. Granted, the check-in does not show up in her news feed, but it is there in mine, and I suspect if I had my privacy settings set to “Everyone”, then everyone would see my wife’s name as being checked into the liquor store.

UPDATE: I’ve tested having my settings on Everyone, and then looking at my feed from a dummy account I have (yeah, violating the TOS, I know). Here’s the screenshot confirming my wife’s name is visible alongside mine to the entire universe:

Recall Facebook’s claim that “no location information is associated with a person unless he or she explicitly chooses to become part of location sharing. No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission.” My wife did not explicitly choose to become part of location sharing. She did not give any explicit permission to be associated with this location. Yet, there her name is, and anyone viewing my feed can now associate her with being at this location. It is unknown whether this association between her name/account and this location is logged within Facebooks databanks, and thereby available to be shared with marketers, handed over to law enforcement, etc.

This is a serious problem. Names and linked user accounts should not be associated — in any way — with a particular location unless they explicitly consent to it. Facebook needs to listen to its own rhetoric and make the necessary changes to protect user’s locational privacy. I should not be allowed to tag someone in a check-in unless they’ve taken the positive step of authorizing check-ins from friends. Locational privacy needs to be fully opt-in, not opt-out.

[I haven't yet checked to see if my wife's name will disappear from this existing check-in if she takes the affirmative step to disallow friends from checking her into place. I'll post an update once that happens] See this post where I detail the steps it took for my wife to opt-out, and that her attachment to this particular check-in remained.

UPDATE: TechCrunch just posted a similar discovery, and they don’t seem all that worried about it, noting that “Facebook treats this as if you were tagged in a basic status update.” But there’s a meaningful difference between simply being tagged in a status update, and having your location unknowingly disclosed in a status update. And this is the critical issue that Facebook again has misunderstood: tagging someone’s geographic location is not something to be treated like every other Facebook activity.

UPDATE: There’s been assorted media coverage of my discovery and our subsequent discussion: MSNBC.com, MediaPost, SC Magazine, CBC News.

[Readers might be interested in my follow-up post: Facebook Places Privacy Falls Short, Part 2: Opting-Out]

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I’ve decided to focus on how LIS scholars and professionals need to place renewed focus on providing information ethics education across various contexts. We must move beyond just implementing information ethics within LIS curricula, and find innovative ways to incorporate it into elementary and secondary schools, public & school libraries, homes and community centers, as well as within popular media, video games, and the Internet.

See the call for participation below, and please submit a proposal if you want to join this conversation.

Call for Participation
ALISE 2011 Information Ethics SIG panel discussion
San Diego, CA, January 2011

Innovations in Teaching Information Ethics Across Contexts

:: Submission deadline: July 28, 2010 ::

In keeping with the 2011 ALISE conference theme of “Competitiveness and Innovation,” the Information Ethics SIG invites submissions to participate in a panel discussion to highlight innovations and new approaches for teaching information ethics across multiple contexts.

While recent Information Ethics SIG activities have focused on innovative ways to integrate information ethics across LIS curricula, the 2011 panel discussion will broaden this scope to include multiple educational contexts and opportunities, ranging from elementary/secondary education, university & professional environs, public & school libraries, within homes and community centers, or through popular media, gaming and the Internet.

Possible topics for this panel discussion include:

• What innovative educational tools and methods are being used for teaching information ethics across various contexts?
• How can information ethics be introduced in elementary through secondary education curricula?
• What place does information ethics have within broader “21st Century Skills” or “S.T.E.M.” educational initiatives?
• What topics in information ethics (i.e., privacy, netiquette, intellectual property, plagiarism, information literacy, etc.) are most appropriate to introduce within specific educational contexts?
• How can popular media, video games, and the Internet be leveraged to foster information ethics awareness and education?
• How can information ethics be established within general requirements for undergraduate education?
• What role do parents and non-traditional teachers play in educating youth about information ethics?
• How are LIS scholars and professionals providing information ethics education across various contexts? What contexts are underserved, and how can we target them?

We envision this panel discussion to take the form of a guided conversation, featuring 4-6 selected speakers addressing relevant topics, complemented by a robust exchange of ideas with the audience members.

Interested participants are invited to submit a 300-word abstract of their intended contribution to Michael Zimmer (zimmerm@uwm.edu) by July 28, 2010. A full proposal will be submitted to ALISE on July 30, 2010.

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My contribution to the discussion will focus on how Web 2.0 tools, environments, and experiences are creating new conceptual gaps in our understanding of privacy, anonymity/identifiability, consent, and harm. My presentation is titled “Research Ethics in the 2.0 Era:Conceptual Gaps for Ethicists, Researchers, IRBs”, and relies heavily on my critique of the Tastes, Ties, and Time research project and subsequent data release (news coming soon about publication of this critique).

The slides are available below (updated with new version).

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The School of Information Studies (SOIS) is proud to welcome Wilhelm Peekhaus as the 2010-11 Postdoctoral Fellowship in Information Policy.

Peekhaus earned a Doctorate in Library and Information Science in 2008 from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario (Canada).  Peekhaus comes to SOIS from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois where he was the 2008-10 Information in Society Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2003, he earned a Master’s of Library and Information Science from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and an Honours Bachelor of Arts in 1992 from McGill University in Montréal, Quebec.

Peekhaus’ doctoral study primarily focused on the biotechnology community and information policy in Canada. In 2008, he successfully defended his dissertation, Canada’s Biotechnology Strategy: Struggles on the Knowledge Commons. At Illinois, he taught courses in information policy. In addition to numerous international conference presentations both within and beyond LIS, his work has been published by the Canadian Journal of Law & Technology, Government Information Quarterly, Journal of Information Ethics, and Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society.

“This is new ground for SOIS and we’re eager to welcome Wilhelm to our team,” said Center for Information Policy Research Director Elizabeth Buchanan. At SOIS, Peekhaus will help enhance the research profile of the school while also teaching graduate level courses. “Wilhelm brings a lot of experience with him to SOIS, and we know that he’ll play a big part in advancing our reputation as a leader in information policy.”

“Bringing in Wilhelm is a big step for SOIS,” said SOIS Interim Hope A. Olson. “With our recent grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and a postdoctoral program in place, SOIS has cemented its academic reputation as a leader in library and information science research.”

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Registration is now open for Internet Research 11.0: Sustainability, Participation, Action, the 2010 conference for the Association of Internet Researchers, taking place October 21-23 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Yes, the costs are higher this year, but, frankly, this conference is more expensive to run than IR.10 was in Milwaukee last year.

If you’re a student looking for ways to defray some of the costs, the UW-Milwaukee Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR) will again sponsor a student (undergraduate, graduate or post-doc) for the conference in the amount of US$800. Details below:

Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR)
School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
AoIR 11 Grant

The CIPR will sponsor one student (undergraduate, graduate or post-doc) for the Gothenburg AoIR 11conference in the amount of $800 (US). The student’s research must focus on some aspect of information ethics or information policy, and internet studies, broadly conceived. The recipient must submit a proposal for a paper according to AoIR procedures. Once accepted, the following should be submitted to Elizabeth Buchanan at elizabeth at internetresearchethics.org:

• Paper Abstract
• CV
• Brief statement describing how the paper will make an impact on the fields of information ethics, policy, and internet studies.

Submissions should be received by 1 August 2010. Recipient will be notified by 30 August 2010.

The recipient should acknowledge the CIPR grant at AoIR and in any subsequent presentations or publications.

I hope to see many of you in Gothenburg this fall!

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Harvard vs. Steve Jobs

Harvard Law star Jonathan Zittrain is an influential critic of Apple—so why doesn’t he talk about donations to his research center from Steve Jobs’ competitors? Emily Brill investigates.

Brill’s investigation centered on the notion that when Zittrain wrote an op-ed critical of Apple in the Financial Times, he didn’t disclose the fact that his academic home, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, receives funding from some of Apple’s competitors, such as Google and Microsoft.

Now, while Zittrain’s op-ed doesn’t (and couldn’t) list any/all the of the funding sources that might — might — present a source for a conflict of interest, Berkman is quite clear about its funding sources, and a simple Web search would provide someone that information.

Nonetheless, Brill seems determined to explore (and accuse) whether Zittrain — and the Berkman Center generally — succumbs to the pressures of funding sources in forming research conclusions and policy opinions.

Of course he doesn’t.

I’ve known Zittrain since my participation in the 2007 edition of the Oxford Internet Institutes’s annual “Summer Doctoral Programme,” which was held at Berkman that year. It was a wonderful experience, and I benefited directly from Zittrain’s public critique of my research presentation (both its content and style). Since this initial interaction, I’ve helped organize a book talk by Zittrain at Yale Law School, chaired panels with him on reputational privacy online, and participated with him on a panel addressing privacy issues related to Library 2.0. In the end, I think I can consider Jonathan both a friend and a colleague.

Even with my short time knowing Zittrain, Brill’s suggestion that Berkman’s funding relationships with companies that happen to compete with Apple — coupled with Apple’s notable absence from the list of sponsors — is what prompted him to write an op-ed, let alone his book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, is extremely far-fetched. While I’ve had reason to criticize Berkman on other occasions, I don’t question their intellectual integrity, nor any of their founders or faculty members.

I’ll leave it to others to criticize the attempted takedown. (Update: Here, too)

But I do want to comment on my own connection to Brill’s article.

I met Emily Brill this February at the A2K4 conference at Yale Law School. She noticed in my bio that I was the Microsoft Resident Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project, which got us to talking about the issue of corporate funding of academic centers. She mentioned, generally, this issue of whether Zittrain should have disclosed Berkman’s funding sources in his op-ed, and I related some of my reflections on how the Yale ISP wasn’t impacted by funding it had received from companies like IBM and Microsoft. Technology companies, generally, respect and appreciate the academic and policy work that comes from centers like these, largely because so many of the companies have their roots in academia. And, not surprisingly, many of the companies own policy people are graduates of these universities and law schools, and had affiliations with places like Berkman and the Yale ISP.

I did relate an anecdote, that I told her was fuzzy in my memory banks, about how some folks at Microsoft weren’t thrilled with a white paper that was written by ISP fellows that was critical of Microsoft’s position regarding open document standards. As far as I knew, a Microsoft employee that the ISP had contact with merely expressed his displeasure, but nothing came of it, and the ISP never changed anything in the article.

We continued to chat generally about the nature of disclosure and possible influence by technology companies in scholarly research. I don’t recall precisely what I said, but I’m confident in stating that I highly doubt Zittrain or Berkman would compromise their intellectual standards merely to get funding.

After this meeting in February, Brill and I had a few additional phone conversations on the topic, where she sought my general opinion on Berkman, Zittrain, etc. I shared my general thoughts, and I recall noting that the kind of expertise necessary to really understand and address emerging technology policy issues is condensed in a relatively short list of (very intelligent) people.

I recall suggesting that a complementary project would be to map out how these individuals have moved between academia, industry, advocacy, and government roles — perhaps creating a map how of people of Zittrain’s ilk move between these spheres in overlapping ways: one year you’re teaching, the next you’re working for a tech company, the next you might be at the FTC, and often with the same people. Kinda like these cool maps of overlapping spheres of executives and board members in the corporate world.

Brill apparently hasn’t pursued that project, and instead kept her focus on criticism of Zittrain. A shame, as I think my suggestion would’ve made for a much more interesting — and informative — piece.

No related posts.

For 2011, the conference theme is “Crossing Boundaries: Ethics in Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Relations”. The full call for papers is below.

Call for Papers: 2011 Computer Ethics/Philosophical Enquiry Conference

The CEPE (Computer Ethics Philosophical Enquiry) conference series is recognized as one of the premier international events on computer and information ethics attended by delegates from all over the world.

CEPE/2011 is hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and will take place in Milwaukee, WI from May 31 to June 3. The theme for the conference is “Crossing Boundaries: Ethics in Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Relations.”

Possible topics for papers/presentations:

• E-governance
• E-waste
• E-politics
• Intercultural ethics
• Professional Ethics
• International ethics, law and policy issues
• E-crime and security
• E-Research Ethics

Deadlines and Notification Dates:

• Extended abstracts of 2000 words due: December 15, 2010
• Notification by 30 January 2011
• Full papers in CEPE style guide due: March 15 2011

Please send abstracts, papers, and other inquiries to Jeremy Mauger at jjmauger [at] uwm [dot] edu.

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One thing I try to instill on my students is how the role of an information professional is to utilize systems to gather information, organize it, make it understandable and useful, turn it into useful knowledge, and communicate it to guide decision-making and other vital functions. From this loose definition, I’ve arrived at a few (rough) catchphrases to try to market our degree’s new identity:

• Some build systems. An IST grad makes systems work.
• An engineer might focus on what a system can do. An IST grad looks at what people can do with the system.
• IST: Building decision systems.
• IST: Developing information systems to make your business work.

And so on, with some struggles.

But today, I think I found a new slogan.

In Milwaukee, we felt the magnitude-5.0 earthquake struck the border region of Ontario and Quebec in Canada. This was quite an unusual event for Milwaukee, especially for a quake so far away. Those in the upper floors of our office building on campus could feel the building sway; some reported bookshelves shaking and other items rocking in their office. Uncertain what was happening, many of us evacuated the building. Figuring it was some kind of earthquake, I took that opportunity to walk over to the Geosciences Department on campus to see if anything was recorded on the University’s seismometer.

Sure enough. So, being the social media/info-geek that I am, I snapped a photo of the display with my phone and posted it to Twitter. By the time I’d walked back to my office, my Facebook status update (sorry, friends only) already had reactions and confirmation that it was indeed an earthquake from Canada.

Meanwhile, I was contacted by someone from the front office at the College of Arts & Sciences (which houses Geosciences), asking if they could repost my picture on their Facebook page. Of course, that’s what social media is for. So, they posted it, thanking me for providing the image (although the phrasing could cause people to believe I’m a professor in Geosciences). Then, I discover that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s article about the quake also uses my photo, but this time correctly identifying me as a faculty member at SOIS.

Now, I have no problem with my photo being used. But some noteworthy items come to light in this episode:

1. It’s interesting that the campus academic unit called to ask for permission before reposting my image, while the for-profit media company did not, apparently having no qualms about using others content for their own “reporting”.
2. It’s even more interesting that apparently no one in Geosciences felt it necessary to issue some kind of official release of data regarding the quake and the university’s official monitoring results. They’re the one’s with the equipment and expertise. I’m just a geek that knew where the seismometer was located and had a camera phone. Why is the university and the local media left to rely on my image (complete with my reflection on the glass) to document this event? What good is the public display of the university seismometer if the information isn’t shared or distributed?

This final point returns us to the search for a suitable catchphrase to explain what our IST program is offering. While the geologists have the equipment and expertise to create information (the seismic graph), the information has only been distributed and made useful by an intervention by an information scholar (me) and my online social networks.

Thus, I have a few new catchphrases:

• A scientist might create information, but an information professional makes it useful.
• Anyone can make information, but an IST grad makes it work.

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