Peter Bradwell
Researcher
Peter Bradwell is a researcher at Demos. He is interested in digital identity, technology and the ways that information and knowledge is shared...
- Potter Privacy 'Police' Point to Photo 'Prints' Just read on Times online how Canon engineers, joining the hunt for the culprit in the leaked Harry Potter SCANDAL, are showing off their information tracing skills. Using the metadata from the illegally taken photographs of the newest wizard novel - apparently available at the Pirate Bay - they are hopeful that they can track the owner of the camera and, by inference, the thief. Interestingly, they are relying on the owner either having registered the camera, or having had it serviced. ... continue reading on 19th July 2007 in For Your Information
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You are not anonymous
At the home of former file-sharing service Grokster, you will find a stern reminder of the illegality of p2p content sharing - followed by a thoroughly sinister last couple of lines:
"YOUR IP ADDRESS IS xx.xx.xxx.xxx AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous." continue reading on 17th July 2007 in For Your Information - Privacy on social networks Just read a story about Oxford University using Facebook to find evidence from their students' photos of banned post-exam partying. It follows lots of stories about employers using infomration they find on social network sites to inform their recrutiment decisions, or monitor their staff.One of Facebook's selling points is that users can set levels of privacy, limiting access to photos and the other snippets of information from their profiles to a specific group or groups. Is it as... continue reading on 17th July 2007 in For Your Information Private Lives? Comments (1)
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Search me...
We're holding an event with Google next Thursday evening at their offices in Victoria. We'll be talking about what's happening to privacy online.
The discussion should touch on some really timely challenges and opportunities. As we do more and more online, large amounts of information about us is created and captured. Much of that underpins the spirit of coolaboration and openness of online life. But what are the implications for the rich values that our sense of privacy embodies? continue reading on 29th June 2007 in For Your Information Private Lives? - Rate my privacy A really useful report from Privacy International - rankings of the major internet companies based on an assessment of their attitudes and practices with regard to their users privacy.It gets its hands dirty at the point where the sharing of information online - and the promises we hear about collaboration and involvement - strike against the protection of information about us and our habits. Great to see policy and practice laid out like this. continue reading on 11th June 2007 in For Your Information Private Lives?
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Philosophy and social hope
American pragmatist philospher Richard Rorty died on Friday, June 8th.
I saw Tony Benn speak a year or so ago. He enthused about history's teachers - those who through their work fire flares into the sky and illuminate, briefly, the world around us. They help us shape our thoughts, and our understanding of how things work. In Philosophy and social hope, Rorty played that role for me. It's an extraordinarily welcoming book - like being introduced to the strange world of philosophy by a very friendly uncle. continue reading on 10th June 2007 -
google me this, google me that...
...how many search results for my personality came back?
What a gift of a headline the Independent gave us: "Google is watching you..." They reported on Google big man Eric Schmidt's suggeston that they ultimately want users to be able to ask questions such as: 'what job should I take' and 'what shall i do tomorrow?' continue reading on 25th May 2007 in For Your Information - Everyday democracy takes on NY The second day of the pdf conference has taken on the form of an 'unconference'. It's led by the attendees - no star speakers, no pre-determined agenda. So we took the opportunity to hold a session on everyday democracy - we'll let you know how we get on. continue reading on 19th May 2007 in For Your Information
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'Web 2.0' and data control
I just found an interesting quote in a Wired interview with Tim O'Reilly. It ties in really nicely with a lot of the work we are doing on information, and social software etc:
"(there is) a major theme of web 2.0 that people haven't yet tweaked to. It's really about data and who owns and controls, or gives the best access to, a class of data..." continue reading on 23rd April 2007 in For Your Information Comments (2) - Trust...dialogue...transparency Reading the Freedom of Information blog today you might come across a couple of interesting quotes. One of them is from Tony Blair who was talking, broadly, about freedom of information in the context of trust in politics: "...the question for us is how do you then get this more sophisticated and profound dialogue about politics today and political issues...' continue reading on 18th April 2007