The world owes AOL a big thanks for its data privacy breach because it’s becoming clear that nothing you do on the Internet is anonymous, a basic fact of the digital era that few people really understand. The New York Times has two worthwhile pieces today on the issue of Internet privacy, the first of which provides practical advice on how to keep your net activities private.
The first, by J.D. Biersdorfer, reviews the proxy server or cloaking tools, including BeHidden.com (http://behidden.com) and The Cloak (www.the-cloak.com) that allow users to surf anonymously. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has a site linking to other tools that mask identities.
The other article, by Tom Zeller, touches on the tension between user expectation of privacy and marketers’ need to understand what consumers are doing. Law enforcement needs also pull at consumer privacy rights, with governments demanding greater storage of and access to data on user activities.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:08 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Mathew Ingram of Canada’s Globe and Mail (and also a top blogger) has this piece on social media and the London terrorist plot. What’s interesting is that, like Mathew, I searched for “citizen journalist” coverage of the news when the story first broke and didn’t find much of anything.
I guess I thought I would find compelling coverage of this huge news story because of the simple parallels between this terrorist plot and the London bombings that took place a little more than a year ago. Both were big stories emanating from London and both involved plots to blow things up. Citizen journalism made its mark with last year’s London bombings as frightening footage and photos shot by amateurs made their way into major media outlets and so it seemed natural that ordinary people would again have something to contribute.
Mathew has done a valiant job of digging up whatever “bits and pieces” of citizen journalism exist on this most recent terrorist scare, but there’s no real impact to the photos and stories. Pictures of discarded liquids and gels, snapshots of long security lines.
How different these static images are from the video footage inside subway cars and first-person accounts of devastation that flowed from last year’s terrorist bombings. And this contrast underscores the limits of citizen journalism.
This most recent plot was foiled and there’s nothing to see. All the information is in the hands of authorities and nothing is really visible. Any understanding of what happened must come from professional journalists who know how to reach law enforcement officials, who get invited to press briefings, who can dissect the complex world of counter-terrorism.
With some exceptions, I’m sure, citizen journalists serve primarily as eyes and ears when things actually happen. They can provide first-person accounts of scenes that we can’t visit. But when it comes to complicated, behind-the-scenes shadowy developments, only the pros can give us the information we need.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:20 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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