Republic, Lost

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lessig lays out in unequivocal detail how the U.S. Congress has become soaked in corruption. Not the standard quid pro quo type (which is illegal), but rather something he refers to as "dependence corruption", where the dependency is on money, the money that drives campaigns and legislative behavior. Lessig uses the analogy of a "gift economy" to get at the concept of how this type of corruption differs from direct deal making, but leaves no stone unturned in detailing how it is just as real, and just as destructive.

Lessig goes further, describing how eradicating this corruption is fundamental to making any significant problems in the larger problems facing our nation (such as health care and education).

Lessig is a would-be Messiah. He concludes the book with four strategies for how we might address this important problem, the last calling for a constitutional convention to adopt a citizen-led Constitutional Amendment.

I have to say, I am inspired. Before reading this, I of course knew there were problems in Washington, but after reading this, I have a solid foundation on which to understand these problems, some hope that a solution is possible, and a reason to get behind a national movement for election reform.

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Frictionless Sharing and Curation

There is a lot of hubbub recently over Facebook's introduction of what is being called "frictionless sharing". Frictionless sharing is really a redefining of how people will share interests digitally. The FB "I Like" feature, along with related services, have accustomed people to actively sharing interests with friends. Frictionless sharing ushers in a new era where sharing can be done passively. That is, my activity can be monitored passively, and events are forwarded to friends without my direct involvement.

I think it's pretty clear why people may have concerns...

From a privacy perspective, in a way FB has done people a service. They have made blatant and obvious, and in a manner people can understand, the true power and danger of digital communication. Namely, every thing we do, at the finest level of detail, can in principal be monitored. Activity details can be stored indefinitely, processed, data mined, aggregated and sold. It's a good thing that people are being made aware of this fact.

There are also concerns about data overload, and how activity streams will eventually (and may already) hit a signal-to-noise ratio so low as to be useless. I have to disagree. Or at least I have to say that it is way too early to make this kind of conclusion. In fact, if managed correctly, such an advancement could have beneficial effects not only for the usefulness of sharing online but also benefits for user privacy. Of course the crucial phrase here is "managed correctly."

Taken to its logical conclusion, Facebook is in a position to own two valuable assets: 1. the social graph (that is, identity and association), and 2. user activity streams. At this point users MAY (depending on the pleasure and behest of M. Zuckerberg) be given two types of "curation" tools: a. the ability to manage data streams produced by their on-line activity, and b. the ability to manage data streams of others that they consume. It is also quite possible that FB simply expose these two types of assets to 3rd party developers, which can in turn provide tools for managing these data streams (aka "activity streams".) Of course FB will maintain control, and if there is some risk to their business, can and will rollback access as they see fit.

If nothing else, this presents non-trivial problems in balancing flexibility with simplicity. No doubt users will have to be exposed gradually to these types of services. It's quite possible that FB moved too quickly here, but they have shown every ability to correct and adjust as necessary.

A further complication involves content providers (such as media companies, music sharing sites, etc.) Over time users will develop (potentially complex) control and privacy relationships with a proliferation of content providers, creating a fractured privacy environment, which creates further risk for the user.

No doubt FB is struggling with these many issues as we speak. The recent media attention has almost certainly sent the signal that they may have over-stepped here or moved too quickly. It would be nice to imagine that this will signal a weakening of FB's dominance over these valuable assets, and that we may enter an era where consumers wake up to the value these assets present and the danger of one commercial interest obtaining a monopoly over them. And in turn the rise of more open alternatives...

The Patriot Act and American Civil Liberties

The first subject of tonight's Republican National Security Debate was the continuing and strengthening of the Patriot Act. It certainly was no great surprise that there would be nearly universal support (with the exception of Ron Paul and John Huntsman.) What I do think was interesting was the approach taken to mollify concerns about privacy and civil liberties.

In short, the nearly universal strategy (with the exception of some batshit-crazy comments from Bachmann about phones being wired into walls and Miranda rights for foreign citizens) was to characterize the Patriot Act as something that applies primarily to foreign citizens and in particular foreign terrorists. Here are a few examples (see full transcript):

Gingrich: I think it's desperately important that we preserve your right to be innocent until proven guilty, if it's a matter of criminal law. But if you're trying to find somebody who may have a nuclear weapon that they are trying to bring into an American city, I think you want to use every tool that you can possibly use to gather the intelligence.

Romney: And that is Congressman Paul talked about crime. Newt Gingrich was right. There are different categories here. There's crime and there are rights that are afforded to American citizens under our Constitution and those that are accused of crime. Then there's war. And the tool of war being used today in America and around the world is terror. There's a different body of law that relates to war... And that means, yes, we'll use the Constitution and criminal law for those people who commit crimes, but those who commit war and attack the United States and pursue treason of various kinds, we will use instead a very different form of law, which is the law afforded to those who are fighting America.

This is an effective strategy. It certainly plays perfectly into the fears Americans have of future terrorist attacks, but also directly addresses concerns about the erosion of personal liberties.

Unfortunately it is also extremely misleading, inaccurate and ultimately dangerous. The Patriot Act is in fact a direct assault on the privacy and 4th Amendment rights of American citizens. The details on this are really too numerous to present here, but for an overview of how the Patriot Act effects American citizens, see this recent overview from the ACLU. Here is one excerpt:

The Patriot Act applies the distinction between transactional and content-oriented wiretaps to the Internet. The problem is that it takes the weak standards for access to transactional data and applies them to communications that are far more than addresses. On an e-mail message, for example, law enforcement has interpreted the "header" of a message to be transactional information accessible with a PR/TT warrant. But in addition to routing information, e-mail headers include the subject line, which is part of the substance of a communication - on a letter, for example, it would clearly be inside the envelope.

In some cases, it is certainly possible that candidates taking this position actually believe what they are saying. But I really have a hard time believing that either Gingrich or Romney do not know any better. Of course they do, and at least in Gingrich's case, knew just how far they could go in finessing their response so that voters would hear what they wanted, but they would not veer too far from being technically correct. Still not sure how these guys sleep at night...

The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sarah: You know what's good for him?
Burt: To win.
Sarah: For whom and for what?
Burt: What makes the world go round? For money and for glory.
Sarah: For whom?
Burt: Today for me. Tomorrow for himself.
Sarah: You own all the tomorrows because you buy them today, and you buy cheap.
- The Hustler

"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light."
- The Fountainhead

Rand is the champion of the prime mover. The Fountainhead drives a stake into the heart of collectivism. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", how beautifully egalitarian, what could possibly go wrong? But hidden beneath this would-be nirvana lies a dark underbelly. Nothing less than the systematic stripping away of our fundamental human nature. Our nature to think, to reason, to create and to move mankind forward. Rand shines a bright light onto this dark underbelly of collectivism.


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Myth and the New Atheists

The so-called New Atheists have levied a strong charge against organized religion, and in particular the manner in which organized religion is practiced in the West today. Much of the arguments inherent in this movement are traceable to the excellent essay Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell in 1927.

From a purely rational perspective I find these works, and in particular Russell's position, to be difficult, if not impossible, to tear down. I believe this is an interesting question not only because an important charge made by Russell and the New Atheists is utilitarian in that the lay out the damage caused by organized religion in the modern age, but also the inherent conflict this movement has with the fundamental fact that so many people, educated and otherwise, find religion to be such an important part of their lives. These facts lead to all kinds of intellectual conflicts, such as the number of great scientists often acting as "apologists" for organized religion, trying to find any manner of complex argument to rectify science and religion.

One approach that may have some merit is the notion of myth. We can understand myth as at least one important foundation of any modern organized religion. The literal interpretation of ancient gospel, such as the Bible, is easy prey for the likes of Dawkins and Russell. However, as Karen Armstrong points out in The Case For God, this kind of literal interpretation is really a modern phenomena, and I think results in a straw-man attack, leaving out the heart of the matter. Consider the very powerful Christian myth: "Jesus, the son of God, died for your sins." This myth hits at a very emotional level. The emotional impact is very different than the kind of language relevant to a literal interpretation of the Bible attacked by the New Atheists. It resonates instead at a personal level. I don't need to think about distracting details such as why God would have have a mortal human son, or why an all-powerful God would need to impress mankind in this way. From an emotional level this is immaterial. In this context a sacrifice is being made, the ultimate sacrifice open to God and one that as a parent or child I can feel directly, and it is levied directly at me. Consider how different the impact would be if it read: "Jesus, the son of God, died for our sins." This is a personal statement, directly from God to me. It resonates at a personal, emotional level. Rational considerations are not relevant here.

I believe this is the power that myth plays in the context of religion. Taken together, the myths associated with, say, the Bible resonate with fundamental needs and concerns we have as people to understand and get at basic questions we have about who we are, why we're here, what our purpose is, etc. Rationally it very well may be the case that these questions cannot be answered (beyond the answers provided by, say, natural selection.) But at some emotional level it may be possible through myth to satisfy curiosities of this type.

If this is true, an important observation can be made. In the end, it does not matter at all that these myths are based in any rational or factual foundation. Rationality and some kind of consistent historic fact is simply not relevant here. The litmus test for myth to have value here is that at some emotional level these stories resonate with people and as mentioned above provide some satisfaction to these basic, abstract questions. For example, the Native American Sioux have a myth whereby a group of girls are chased by a bear, they pray to the Great Spirit to save them, and the Devil's Tower rises up from the ground saving the girls. When the girls reach the sky they are turned into the constellation Pleiades. Did this really happen? Is this how the stars of Pleiades was actually formed? Does it really matter? This myth allowed the Sioux to relate to the world around them. It brought the distant stars into something they could relate to more directly, at least in an emotional way.

Occupy Wall Street

I can't help but think that the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is a direct reaction to the progressives disappointment with President Obama. Yes, things are bad. We have what looks like an essentially jobless recovery, and gaps between the haves and the have-nots are reaching unprecedented levels, but even with this, the OWS movement would quite possibly not have happened, and likely not gained the momentum it has, if progressives felt they had a voice in the White House.

Unfortunately they don't. We all knew when we put him in office that Obama was more of a centrist than a progressive. At least that's what his voting record implied. But the campaign speeches and campaign promises at least provided some hope that once in office Obama would be the champion of progressive causes he could have been. However, after escalating operations in Afghanistan, failing to close Guantanamo, signing into law four more years of the Patriot Act, and a long list of other disappointments, it is clear that Obama will not be delivering on that hope.

This means that progressives have painted themselves into a corner. Coming out of the dark years with G.W. Bush, Obama was seen as perhaps more than we could have hoped for in terms of someone who could restore our confidence. Someone who could take steps to turn back at least some of the damage done. In foreign policy someone who would build bridges with the Middle East, finding a peaceful long-term solution to our differences. But this was not meant to be. And worse, with Obama's approval ratings at an all-time low, it is likely he will be replaced with a Republican in 2012. Yikes!

So, if this is all true, where do progressives turn?

The first step to fixing a problem is admitting there is one. In some collective sense, with the OWS movement the American middle class may be doing just that.

I'll admit, my first reaction to the movement was that America was a nation of laws, and if people are unhappy with the greed coming out of Wall Street then they have two choices: prosecute those that have broken the laws and/or modify the laws to make the behavior they disagreed with illegal. Either way, they were yelling at the wrong people. They should be in Washington going after the law makers (and the SEC, etc.)

While I still agree that it will need to come to this for the movement to affect change, I am warming up to the initial phase of targeting Wall Street. After all, this is where all the trouble began, and no doubt this is where we (politicians and citizens alike) will need to focus our attention if we are going fix what is broken.

Identity and Anonymity in the Digital Age

The importance of anonymity in a functioning society is summarized well in the following quote from Justice John Paul Stevens from 1995:

"Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse."

The question of anonymity is relevant today as social network providers struggle over the perceived tradeoff between anonymity and self-expression on the one hand and accountability on the other hand. For example, Google Plus has received some attention over their naming policy which includes the provision that your Common Name should be "the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you."

There has been some great commentary regarding the restrictive nature of this kind of policy (see for example this piece from the Electronic Frontier Foundation), and I certainly agree that these arguments regarding privacy and security alone are convincing. However, an additional argument can be made with respect to the transcendent nature of identity in the age of social networks. In particular, the consideration of the kinds of abuse that Google and others are attempting to mitigate.

A primary concern for Google and others is the proliferation of spam that comes along with allowing anonymous interaction. This is well known. However, the requirement that accounts be directly tied to real-world identities seems to be a fairly blunt reaction. Historically the use of pseudonyms in digital interaction has been the source of rich dialog. Is it possible to prevent this kind of abuse without taking such drastic action? A digital identity separate from a real-world identity can over time take on many of the responsibilities normally associated with a real-world identity that can hinder the kinds of abuse considered here. Is it possible for Google and others to create a privacy policy that can tap into this, thus allowing for separate digital identities?

US vetoes Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements

Continued disappointment.

The other 14 members of the Council voted for the resolution, which demanded that "Israel, as the occupying power, immediately and completely ceases all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem and that it fully respect its legal obligations in this regard." But as one of the five permanent members, the negative US vote is the equivalent of a veto.

In explaining her veto, US Ambassador Susan E. Rice said the vote should not be misunderstood as support for settlement activity.

"On the contrary, we reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity," she declared. "Continued settlement activity violates Israel's international commitments, devastates trust between the parties, and threatens the prospects for peace..."

Sorry, I'm no politician, but if we reject these settlements "in the strongest terms", wouldn't that include joining a UN Resolution on the topic? And H. Clinton's hair splitting of "illegitimate" vs. "illegal" sounds like doublespeak (or maybe newspeak...?)

Reminder of statement Obama made in Cairo:

"Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's," Mr. Obama said. "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop."

Scott

The Case For God

The Case for God by Karen Armstrong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Armstrong makes a compelling argument against what has been called the "new atheism". Debunking the use of a literal interpretation of the Bible as something wholly modern and something that would be completely surprising and foreign to followers of the Christian faith up until at least the Enlightenment, she argues that instead religion is not an intellectual concept or dogma, but rather it is something you do. That without an active involvement, religion loses its essential value.

I find this to be a striking counter-attack to the rather tired arguments made by the new atheists, and one I'm not entirely clear how to address. From a second perspective the argument may be made this way: the act of devoting oneself actively to the pursuit of a particular religious faith, through things like prayer, meditation, and the willful act of separating oneself from a purely rational approach to understanding this world we find ourselves in may in fact have the potential of exposing us (in a mental sense) to something that we could not otherwise approach through purely rational thought. In my mind this is an argument not easily reckoned with or pushed aside.

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Not Even Wrong

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory And the Search for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A tour de force against the string theory establishment. For thirty years string theory has been the leading contender for uniting general relativity and quantum mechanics. Woit spells out in detail how string theory has failed to provide a single testable hypothesis (a fundamental requirement of the scientific method), and further how this fact seems unlikely to change at least in the foreseeable future.

Woit goes on to argue convincingly how the dynamics of modern-day academia work to continue this program, both retaining the best minds in theoretical physics and to draw top young graduate students to the topic, long after rational consideration would otherwise dictate.

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Privacy and Dinner Conversation

It's fashionable these days to say that "privacy is dead". Take, for example, these comments from Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. I can't decide if this is political on his part, or truly disingenuous. In either case, I could not disagree more.

The counter-example I like to give is very simple. It is the dinner conversation. Consider:

You've made it through a hard day at work. You make it home and sit across from the dinner table with your wife, discussing your day. You talk about what happened, share your feelings, etc. This is a healthy, rejuvenating experience.

Now imagine the same scenario, but instead of you speaking privately with your wife, the entire conversation is recorded. It MAY be viewable by your boss or your co-workers, your friends, your government, maybe even the entire world. Does this change things? Do you now have to be on guard, more careful? Is the experience potentially less healthy? Less rejuvenating?

It seems pretty clear to me. I'd consider just such an example as proof that privacy is not dead (yet).

New is Hard

"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light."

  -- Ayn Rand, "The Fountainhead"

Creating something new is hard. Yes, this is not news, but a few things hit home today for me that brought this into perspective. My company is trying to do something truly new in telecom and public safety, I should have known this would not be easy. I've identified the following sources of friction:

1. Lawyers. Lawyers are in their element when they are enforcing the status quo. They are the "sticky" in "sticky spaghetti".
2. Bureaucrats. We all know what a bureaucrat is. I think the most direct definition is this: it is someone who succeeds by effectively making others fail.
3. Fear of failure. This is a hard one. In fact we probably all fear failure to some extent (yes, I acknowledge that the rare exception exists, and we need these people too...) This is probably an important survival trait, but in modern society subverting it can be a challenge.
4. Paralysis by analysis. This is common in business. We need analysts. People who can sift through the data, add up the columns, and come up with the decision that maximizes benefit while minimizing risk, etc., etc. I just don't want these people responsible for actually making the decision. That is just plain dangerous.

We'll get there.

Salinger and Kerouac

I recently came across this interesting juxtaposition of J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac in the New York Review of Books. I especially liked:

There's no alternative "lifestyle" for Holden Caulfield or the members of the Glass family to retreat to, as there is for the Beats, no group of like-minded adventurers. Salinger's characters aren't after thrills. Their quest is for an impossible purity that drives them away from the workaday world, toward a dangerous, self-burying seclusion. "We're...freaks with freakish standards," says Zooey Glass to his sister Franny. "We're the Tattooed Lady, and we're never going to have a minute's peace, the rest of our lives, till everybody else is tattooed too."

Exporting the Social Graph

In a recent blog post Jason Calacanis suggested five ways Facebook could improve its position with regard to customer privacy. Although it is not clear from the post how serious these suggestions are, in this post I will take a closer look at the first suggestion, namely "add an export key".

To understand this, we need to consider what Calacanis means by this suggestion, and further, what it would mean for FB to allow this kind of export. Fundamentally, the value of a social network is contained in two things:

1. The User Profile. This would typically include some kind of identity information (such as reliable contact information), personal information about the user, and personal media, such as photos and videos.
2. The Social Graph. That is, some definition of who the user's friends and family are, or more generally, who they wish to communicate with.

What Calacanis is suggesting is that users be given the ability to "export" these things externally so that they may be used to participate in other social services that would make use of them. Before addressing the likelihood of such a feature, let's first consider why the social graph is so important.

Social networks are about sharing information. Regarding the content I create, I don't always want to share everything with everyone. Some things, such as family photos, I may only want to share with family and friends. In the language of Twitter, these are the folks that are following me. Regarding content I consume, of all the content created, there's only a very small percentage I actually care about. This is typically content created by friends, family, colleagues, etc. These are the folks that I am following. Together, these make up the social graph. In other words, the social graph is a realization of folks and things I care about, and folks I am comfortable sharing my content with.

Any time a user logs into FB for the purposes of either sharing content or managing their social connections (or social graph), FB wins. From the user's perspective, they are building (at least part of) their social community around the FB ecosystem, and becoming more and more "locked in" to this network. This is in fact the primary goal (at least for now) of FB, namely, getting users to invest time and energy into building this relationship.

Based on all of this, it may seem counter-intuitive for FB to share this kind of information with outside parties, but that is exactly what they are doing with Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect allows external services to access profile and social graph information for consenting FB users. Of course they expose this not for the purposes of "exporting" the data for use in other social networks, but rather so that other services can build on top of this existing "social infrastructure", further strengthening their position in terms of having the end user "locked in" to their FB profile and social graph.

What Calacanis is suggesting is something very different. He is questioning the concept of ownership and the underlying closed nature of FB. He is suggesting in fact that FB support a more open environment where users are free to "pack up" their profile and social graph information and take it to another (potentially competing) social network.

In short, FB will not do this. And the bad news (at least for proponents of an open web) is that it doesn't really matter whether they do or not. Even if such an "export key" existed, there's no really compelling reason for anyone to use it. For this to be compelling to consumers, two things are needed: 1. Something about FB that makes them want to move out, and 2. An alternative place for them to move to. Or, as Mickey Roarke said in Rumble Fish: If you're going to lead people, you have to have somewhere to go.

Alternatives are possible, such as Diaspora, but it's still too early to tell whether or not such "open" efforts can overcome the network effect FB has so obviously achieved.

Location Privacy and the Courts

"One who does not wish to disclose his movements to the government need not use a cellular telephone."

-- DOJ under G.W. Bush

Recently, the question of using location derived from cellular networks for the purposes of law enforcement has come up in the courts. The DOJ under President Obama has appealed to a Philadelphia court an earlier decision that access to location requires a search warrant based on probable cause. In particular, the brief put up by the Obama DOJ states that as part of using a cell phone, the user assumes the risk that location will be accessible by the government.

The argument the government is making is essentially this: it is reasonable to believe that the user of cellular services understands that the service provider must have some knowledge of the whereabouts of the user in order to provide the service, and thus by participating in this service, they are in effect providing information about their whereabouts to the service provider, and in turn to the government.

OK, there are a number of obvious concerns I have with this line of argument. Here is my shortlist:

1. It's not at all clear why sharing location information with my service provider would imply a willingness to share it with the government.
2. In order to provide cellular service, the service provider also has access to a variety of other information, including who the user communicates with, and the information communicated. They certainly need to know the former, and for practical purposes have access to the latter. Does this then imply that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding this information?

In short, I believe that instead of continuing to fight for these draconian measures initiated by the Bush administration, the Obama administration would be well served to move in favor of the Fourth Amendment here and drop this appeal. It would not be a stretch to consider this issue in the context of Obama's promise while running for office to eliminate warrantless wiretaps.

Evaluation Criteria for Location Privacy

I ran across an interesting study the other day out of the U.C. Berkeley School of Information. The study considered the privacy provisions laid out in the W3C Geolocation API, and recommendations for its improvement. The Geolocation API is a part of the HTML5 specification, and as such will play an important role in location-based mobile web applications as mobile devices continue the rapid adoption of HTML5.

While the conclusions of the study were certainly excellent, I found most interesting the list of privacy-related criteria that were derived after considering a range of existing frameworks and standards. These are reprinted here:

1. Appropriateness: Is the collection of location information appropriate given the context of the service or application?
2. Minimization: Is the minimum necessary granularity of location information distributed or collected?
3. User Control: How much ongoing control does the user have over location information? Is the user a passive receiver of notices or an active transmitter of policies? Are there defaults? Do they privilege privacy or information flow?
4. Notice: Can requesters transmit information about their identity and practices? What information is required to be provided to the user by the requesting entity? What rules can individuals establish attach to their location information and transmit? Is there a standard language for such rules?
5. Consent: Is the user in control of decisions to disclose location information? Is control provided on a per use, per recipient or some other basis? Is it operationalized as an opt-in, opt-out or opt model?
6. Secondary Use: Is user consent required for secondary use (a use beyond the one for which the information was supplied by the user)? Do mechanisms facilitate setting of limits or asking permission for secondary uses?
7. Distribution: Is distribution of location information limited to the entity with whom the individual believes they are interacting or is information re-transmitted to others?
8. Retention: Are timestamps for limiting retention attached to location information? How can policy statements about retention be made?
9. Transparency and Feedback: Are flows of information transparent to the individual? Does the specification facilitate individual access and related rights? Are there mechanisms to log location information requests and is it easy for individuals to access such logs?
10. Aggregation: Does the standard facilitate aggregation of location information on specific users or users generally? Does the specification create persistent unique identifiers?

When designing Veriplace, we considered these very same questions. In some cases (such as appropriateness and minimization) the application developer is largely in control of managing these issues. Veriplace addresses these cases by working with the developer, ensuring that guidelines such as these are followed. In other cases (such as user control, consent and transparency) Veriplace is more actively involved, building these requirements and safeguards directly into the platform architecture.

Taken together, this is a great list, and expands in important ways on existing guidelines, such as the CTIA Best Practices and Guidelines for LBS. Although perhaps an implementation detail, I might add one item: Uniform Privacy Management Interface. As LBS services proliferate, it will become more difficult for the end user to effectively manage location privacy. Providing a unified, consistent interface for managing access to location across services will be critical to ensuring the simplicity and transparency necessary to safeguard user privacy.