Reality 2.0

Doc Searls and Katherine Druckman talk to Dave Huseby about privacy, cryptography, and authentic data.

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• Memorandum on Improving the Cybersecurity of National Security, Department of Defense, and Intelligence Community Systems | The White House — This memorandum sets forth requirements for National Security Systems (NSS) that are equivalent to or exceed the cybersecurity requirements for Federal Information Systems set forth within Executive Order 14028 of May 12, 2021 (Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity), and establishes methods to secure exceptions for circumstances necessitated by unique mission needs.
• Guess which government doesn't want you to use end-to-end encryption — From a privacy point of view, there is much to love about end-to-end encryption, as employed by the likes of WhatsApp. But while users may delight in the knowledge that their communication is free from surveillance, there are some groups that have a different opinion.
• I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score. Now You Can Get Yours, Too. - The New York Times — Little-known companies are amassing your data — like food orders and Airbnb messages — and selling the analysis to clients. Here’s how to get a copy of what they have on you.
• Black Teen Kicked Out Of Roller Rink Over Face Recognition | News | BET — A face recognition-equipped Detroit roller rink reportedly kicked out a Black teen on June 10 after misidentifying her as a person who’d allegedly gotten into a fight there in March.
• The principles of user sovereignty | by dwh | UX Collective — The first time I heard the phrase “user sovereignty” was while working at Mozilla on the Firefox web browser. Firefox ostensibly follows user sovereign design principles and respects its users. Mozilla has even baked it into their list of design principles on page 5 of the Firefox Design Values Booklet. But what does “user sovereignty” actually mean and what are the principles that define user-sovereign design?
• A Unified Theory of Decentralization | by dwh | The Startup | Medium — All networks begin as only one thing; one neuron, one cell, one chip, one computer, or one user. One entity alone is not a network, but it is the starting point for understanding the unified theory of decentralization. One entity is fully sovereign, it has no connections to anything else that might influence or control it. One entity in isolation is empowered to act however it wants to strive for whatever results it seeks.
• The Web was Never Decentralized. Redecentralize the web is a fantasy | Design Warp — There are so many people today focused on “re-decentralizing the web.” They have a popular belief that when the web was invented it was a wonderfully optimistic vision of decentralization, governed by democratic principles and full of free information available...

Katherine Druckman and Doc Searls talk to Brian Fox about voting systems, open source, work in the post-covid era, blockchain, programming languages, and more.

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• Brian Fox (computer programmer) - Wikipedia — Brian Jhan Fox (born 1959) is an American computer programmer and free software advocate. He is the original author of the GNU Bash shell, which he announced as a beta in June 1989.[1] He continued as the primary maintainer of bash until at least early 1993.[2][3] Fox also built the first interactive online banking software in the U.S. for Wells Fargo in 1995,[4] and he created an open source election system in 2008.
• Opinion | To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software - The New York Times — Although Russian hackers are reported to have tried to disrupt the November election with attacks on the voting systems of 39 states, the consensus of the intelligence community is that they were probably unsuccessful in their efforts to delete and alter voter data. But another national election is just 15 months away, and the risk that those working on behalf of President Vladimir Putin of Russia could do real damage — and even manage to mark your ballot for you or altering your vote — remains. Since the debacle of the 2000 election (remember hanging chads?) American election machinery has been improved to reduce the chances of mis-tallying votes, outright fraud and attacks by hackers. These improvements brought with them a new concern: lack of software security. Most voting machines’ software can now be easily hacked. This is in large part because the current voting systems use proprietary software based on Microsoft’s operating system.
• Gerald Jay Sussman - Wikipedia — Gerald Jay Sussman (born February 8, 1947) is the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his S.B. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from MIT in 1968 and 1973 respectively. He has been involved in artificial intelligence (AI) research at MIT since 1964. His research has centered on understanding the problem-solving strategies used by scientists and engineers, with the goals of automating parts of the process and formalizing it to provide more effective methods of science and engineering education. Sussman has also worked in computer languages, in computer architecture and in Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design.[1]
• Lisp (programming language) - Wikipedia — Lisp (historically LISP) is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation.[3] Originally specified in 1958, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language in widespread use today. Only Fortran is older, by one year.[4][5] Lisp has changed since its early days, and many dialects have existed over its history. Today, the best-known general-purpose Lisp dialects are Racket, Common Lisp, Scheme and Clojure.
• Pwnie Awards - Wikipedia — The Pwnie Awards recognize both excellence and incompetence in the field of information security. Winners are selected by a committee of security industry professionals from nominations collected from the information security community.[2] The awards are presented yearly at the Black Hat Security Conference.[3]
• Z shell - Wikipedia — The Z shell (Zsh) is a Unix shell that can be used as an interactive login shell and as a command interpreter for shell scripting. Zsh is an extended Bourne shell with many...

Katherine Druckman and Doc Searls talk to Drupal Association Community Liaison, Rachel Lawson, and Drupal developer, Tony Savorelli, about Privacy in Drupal and beyond, and protecting ourselves and others on the web.

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• Add Permissions-Policy header to block Google FLoC [#3209628] | Drupal.org — Google is introducing what it calls Federated Learning of Cohorts, which is a way to gather user data without cookies, regardless of whether a website is loading any Google-related trackers. This is enabled starting in Chrome 89, and only in select countries on a trial basis. Although other major browser vendors are likely against this technology and will presumably not be implementing it, given Chrome’s market share this will become a concerning issue, because it largely remove users’ ability to easily opt out of being tracked—particularly true in the case of less-savvy users. See a very informative post by Plausible. Since no one can reasonably expect users to just stop using Chrome, it will be up to responsible developers to block FLoC at the source.
• Amazon is blocking Google's FLoC — and that could seriously weaken the system — Amazon is blocking Google’s controversial cookieless tracking and targeting method.
• Privacy analysis of FLoC — In the current web, trackers (and hence advertisers) associate a cookie with each user. Whenever a user visits a website that has an embedded tracker, the tracker gets the cookie and can thus build up a list of the sites that a user visits. Advertisers can use the information gained from tracking browsing history to target ads that are potentially relevant to a given user’s interests. The obvious problem here is that it involves advertisers learning everywhere you go.
• Surveillance Self-Defense | Tips, Tools and How-tos for Safer Online Communications — We’re the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an independent non-profit working to protect online privacy for nearly thirty years. This is Surveillance Self-Defense : our expert guide to protecting you and your friends from online spying.
• University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons — The Tradeoff Fallacy - How Marketers Are Misrepresenting American Consumers and Opening Them up to Exploitation
• Reality 2.0 - Blog - Reality 2.0 Newsletter - June 4, 2021: More Tracking Tech and Apple — After a lengthy discussion in Drupal’s core issue queue by some of Katherine’s favorite people, the upcoming release of Drupal 9.2 will officially block Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) by default! Similarly, the WordPress and Joomla communities are taking similar measures. With these platforms representing a huge chunk of websites, this must be quite a blow to Google, enough so that a member of Google Chrome’s developer relations team weighed in on the Drupal issue himself. I hope this news inspires you to run off and build a Drupal site, so I’ll just leave this documentation link here just in case.

Doc Searls and Katherine Druckman talk to Kyle Rankin and Petros Koutoupis about the SolarWinds hack, and Facebook's reaction to Apple privacy initiatives.

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• The Pros and Cons of Open-source Tools - THWACK — SolarWinds blog post that didn't age well. "Security becomes a major issue. Anyone can be hacked. However, the risk is far less when it comes to proprietary software. Due to the nature of open-source software allowing anyone to update the code, the risk of downloading malicious code is much higher. One source referred to using open-source software as “eating from a dirty fork.” When you reach in the drawer for a clean fork, you could be pulling out a dirty utensil. That analogy is right on the money."
• Facebook’s Laughable Campaign Against Apple Is Really Against Users and Small Businesses | Electronic Frontier Foundation — Facebook has recently launched a campaign touting itself as the protector of small businesses. This is a laughable attempt from Facebook to distract you from its poor track record of anticompetitive behavior and privacy issues as it tries to derail pro-privacy changes from Apple that are bad for Facebook’s business.

Doc Searls and Katherine Druckman talk about Facebook's recent Irish problems, Google's Performance Max ad product, and digress into discussing the Houston food scene as we welcome back Reality 2.0 for 2023.

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• Data Protection Commission tries to make victory of its U-turn on Facebook and Instagram – The Irish Times — Watchdog forced to toughen its decision on data protection complaint after European intervention
• Data Protection Commission announces conclusion of two inquiries into Meta Ireland | 04/01/2023 | Data Protection Commission — The Data Protection Commission (DPC) has today announced the conclusion of two inquiries into the data processing operations of Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (“Meta Ireland”) in connection with the delivery of its Facebook and Instagram services. (Meta Ireland was previously known as Facebook Ireland Limited).
• Inside Google’s Ad Display Network Black Box: Porn, Piracy, Fraud — ProPublica — Google’s ad business hides nearly all publishers it works with and where billions of ad dollars flow. We uncovered a network containing manga piracy, porn, fraud and disinformation.
• Meet Performance Max, The Blackest Black Box Of All Google Ad Products | AdExchanger — Lost in the Sturm und Drang of Q4 (Q for quarantine) 2020, Google introduced a beta program called Performance Max, its first ad product spanning all Google-owned media.
• GitHub - dmarti/CAPCA: California Advertising Placements on Criminal Activity Act
• LastPass Data Breach: It’s Time to Ditch This Password Manager | WIRED — The password manager’s most recent data breach is so concerning, users need to take immediate steps to protect themselves.