In 2006, Harvard sociologists struck a mother lode of social-science data, offering a new way to answer big questions about how race and cultural tastes affect relationships.The source: some 1,700 Facebook profiles, downloaded from an entire class of students at an “anonymous” university, that could reveal how friendships and interests evolve over time.

It was the kind of collection that hundreds of scholars would find interesting. And in 2008, the Harvard team began to realize that potential by publicly releasing part of its archive.

But today the data-sharing venture has collapsed. The Facebook archive is more like plutonium than gold—its contents yanked offline, its future release uncertain, its creators scolded by some scholars for downloading the profiles without students’ knowledge and for failing to protect their privacy. Those students have been identified as Harvard College’s Class of 2009.

When Cass was a sophomore, planned to go to Swarthmore
But she changed her mind one day….

Sometimes I think I’m aging backwards.

I’ve yet to read the book (full disclosure) so I can realistically only say so much, but there’s one tentative observation I can make on the basis of the talk, her prior work, and some of the discourse around the new release.  For those unfamiliar with Turkle’s work, she has been at MIT for roughly three decades, a “Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology” and so is very much a fixture within the intellectual landscape of the field of STS.  Her formal academic training at Harvard was in the fields of sociology and psychology, but she often describes her approach as “ethnographic” and in fact she self-identifies as an anthropologist in the prologue of Alone Together  (this was also affirmed at one point in the talk when she identified herself as “an ethnographer”).

I certainly don’t consider myself a disciplinary flag-waver, but part of what gives her work such relevance to my own is this self-identification and the tacit “We” of her title.  Her previous work was in many ways among the best I’ve encountered on its topics, yet I’ve always marveled that it could be so analytically incisive and nuanced in its observational detail on the one hand and, on the other, so universalizing and exclusively focused on the American context.

A non-trivial part of the buzz around Alone Together is its strong contrast with the optimism of her earlier works.  She confirmed the claims of a New York Times reviewer during her talk, suggesting that in this volume “all is not well.”  My guess is that I will find her trepidation refreshing, but from what I’ve seen and heard to date Alone Together promises little in the way of sorely needed cross-cultural (or interdisciplinary) innovation in the study of digital media and IT.  In some ways this is a banal and not especially useful observation, just one obvious example of long-standing disciplinary schisms, but I think (in the spirit of rapprochement) it illuminates a yawning chasm that trained anthropologists have yet to help bridge.

Yesterday a report appeared in the Guardian alleging that documents had been obtained in Egypt showing that UK-based firm Gamma International UK Limited, part of the Gamma Group, “offered to sell a program to the Egyptian security services that experts say could infect computers, hack into web-based email and communications tools such as Skype and even take control of other groups’ systems remotely, according to documents seen by the Guardian.”

Other documents, written in Arabic and marked “ultimately confidential”, state that after being offered a “free trial version” of Gamma’s Finfisher software to test its ability to hack into email accounts, the SSI concluded it was “a high-level security system” that could get into email accounts of Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo, as well as allowing “full control” of the computers of “targeted elements”. It went on to describe the software’s “success in breaking through personal accounts on Skype network, which is considered the most secure method of communication used by members of the elements of the harmful activity because it is encrypted”.

The find throws a spotlight on western companies that provide software to security services and agents of oppressive regimes to spy on, censor and block the websites with which activists communicate. Last month a report by OpenNet Initiative said nine countries across the Middle East and North Africa used US and Canadian technology to impede access to online content, including sites with political, social and religious material.

Mostafa Hussein, a Cairo blogger and physician who took the documents, said they formed important evidence against the SSI’s activities. “This proposal was sent to a department well known for torture, for abuse of human rights, for spying on political campaigners. This company, Gamma, should be exposed as collaborators in the crimes of trying to invade our privacy and arrest activists.”

The report closes by noting that in a response statement Gamma International  said it “complies, in all its dealings, with all relevant UK legislation and regulation”.  Presumably those companies that made Auschwitz and Birkenau not just possible but profitable also complied, in all their dealings, with all the relevant German legislation and regulation of the time.  Corporate ethics bears a resemblance to corporate lawfulness, but the two are clearly quite distinct.

The head of INTERPOL has emphasized the need for a globally verifiable electronic identity card (e-ID) system for migrant workers at an international forum on citizen ID projects, e-passports, and border control management. INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said: “At a time when global migration is reaching record levels, there is a need for governments to put in place systems at the national level that would permit the identity of migrants and their documents to be verified internationally via INTERPOL.” Issuing migrant workers e-ID cards in a globally verifiable format will also reduce corruption and enable cardholders to be eligible for electronic remittance schemes that will foster greater economic development and prosperity in INTERPOL member countries.

Second item: an interesting conversation on the London Hackspace listserv in regards to alleged aspects of the policies of various internet service providers (including Orange Mobile, T-Mobile, and Hutchinson 3G).  Several posters observe that these firms are classing online material related to “hacking” as “adult content,” making it inaccessible through their services by default and until a customer specifically turns off “adult filtering” via their account configuration options.  Aside from the complexity of that operation for the average user, once the filtering mechanism is turned off, of course, pornographic and other content simultaneously become available.  The quoted “Orange Safeguard” policy, for example, lists not only pornography, gambling, anorexia, bombs, racism, and spyware among its filtered topics, but also “Hackers: Containing info on hacking, pirated and illegal software as well as software used for hacking.”

Arguably this could simply be an anachronistic understanding of the term “hacker,” but one poster states:

They refuse to show me websites for hackdays, hackerspaces, etc and instead show a screen full of adverts for pornography. They wont switch it off without paying them too.

suggesting that even spaces and events related to the alternative meanings of “hacker”—tinkerer, DIY enthusiast, activist technophile—are being filtered.  Another notes:

T-mobile content lock also blocked this kind of thing. Couldn’t visit hackaday for example. Had to go into a t-mobile store to get it disabled but was fine.

As you can imagine, their server is going to be getting a lot of traffic for a bit, so you might want to catch it on YouTube instead.