The other day I took the decision to delete my Facebook account.

There has been a lot about Facebook and privacy in the tech press over the past few weeks – making live chats public, the ABC bug, criminalising violations of their terms of service, etc.

Facebook has a clear habit of leaking data, and a general disdain for their user’s privacy. As we can see by the changes to their Terms of Service and default privacy settings over time this is a deliberate strategy, which makes perfect sense since Facebook’s entire business model depends on their users sharing everything.

There’s a problem here of course, because even if you delete your account or were never on Facebook to begin with, the chances are you still are on Facebook.

Crowd sourced surveillance

Facebook crowd sources its intelligence gathering by encouraging your friends to continually update it with fairly sizable amounts of information about you, even if you are not a member. The simplest example of this would be the invite system… Facebook user Alice uses the Facebook interface to invite Bob, who is outside of Facebook, to a party… innocuous at first glance, until you consider that Alice has just told Facebook (and by extension: advertisers, government agencies, application developers etc) that Alice knows Bob (expanding the social graph) and has informed them of Bobs email address.

Image tagging presents another interesting problem. Facial recognition has reached a stage where by a machine can tell whether a face belongs too the same person from picture to picture. This feature was included in the latest version of iPhoto for example, but even without facial recognition, a tagged photo provides confirmation that a group of people were together at a certain time – and with geotagging enabled – in a certain place.

Facial recogniton is on Facebook now (via a third party app – although I would imagine Facebook will be developing their own version), Google is also following similar lines of research.

Of course, the algorithm can’t know who you are…

… until someone helpfully tags you of course. At which point you can be identified in any image on Facebook and the wider internet.

Governments have access to this technology as well of course (biometric passports anyone?), and we have already seen moves to incorporate this sort of face tracking and recognition technology in the next generation of CCTV cameras allowing automated tracking of people throughout our cities.

Anyone considering wearing a mask or similar as an obvious countermeasure should take note that the wording of the “burka ban” law recently passed in Belgium… which does not specifically ban the burka, rather bans any clothing that conceals the wearers identity. French and German MEPs are pushing for similar laws throughout the EU.

… first they came for the hoodies, then they came for the Muslims…

Question of ownership

I could easily be accused of being paranoid, but all this is perfectly possible and is an extrapolation of current trends.  It also serves to underline two central problems; first, that information is collected and added about you regardless of you do, and second, that this data is not considered to be yours - leading to unintended outcomes should the people holding the data change how they use it.

So much data is collected about you through the usage of online systems. Facebook in particular has extended this intelligence gathering capability out into the wider internet with its seemingly innocuous “like” button, or by secretly installing applications (which have full access to your profile) when you visit Facebook enabled websites (decidedly less innocuous).

Each bit of information gathered is fairly harmless on its own, but when aggregated over time present an incredibly detailed picture of your life – online and offline.

This information is packaged and sold.

That this data doesn’t belong to the person its about – even if it is of a deeply personal nature – is, I think, a rather corrosive assumption. Unfortunately we see this assumption at work all over the place both in government and the private sector, and although I’ve focussed particularly on Facebook in this post, it is only one part of a much wider problem.

Question of control

Fundamentally if you don’t own your data, you can’t possibly control what is done with it. Privacy controls and the like are at best a comforting placebo.

For this reason, I am suspicious of “free” services as money must be being made somewhere, and if it is not a direct fee then where?

So how can you keep control?

This is actually a very hard problem, because the obvious solution – not using the services in the first place – increasingly handicaps you.

Facebook has made a push to become the social architecture of the web with their “like” button, which isn’t the end of the world. However, more and more sites are using Facebook, Twitter etc for logon. Linking sites around the internet together and forming a more complete picture of your online habits.

If I want to use Microsoft’s online word processor Docs.com, my only option is to sign in with Facebook. Google docs needs a google account etc..

As Twitter, Facebook and Google etc all compete to be “You” on the internet you will see this kind of thing happening more and more.

Can I live without these services? Possibly. But what if a client uses them to share a specification document, can I refuse to view it? I guess it depends on how understanding your client is.

Is privacy dead?

Privacy is important, and anyone who says that “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” should be encouraged to read Anne Frank’s diary.

However, we now live in a world were both online and offline we are encouraged to give away more and more of our private information. What information we don’t give away is obtained by monitoring our actions or provided by others – “Marcus was so wasted at Dave’s party last week, look here’s a picture of him passed out on the floor! LOL”

So much of this is out of your control, and what data is generated is not yours, but at the moment you still have a little wiggle room – if only because all these systems are still rather fragmented.

However, I believe that privacy is going to be one of the main societal battle grounds of the 21st century, and the first salvos have already been fired.

Privacy may not be quite dead yet, but it is certainly missing in action.

Image from ICanHasCheezburger

So, I’ve been a little bit quiet over the whole Barcamp transparency thing in recent months for one reason or another – but not because nothing has been happening!

As the UK enters into an election year, and with legislation such as the infamous Digital Economy Bill being rushed through parliament, and all parties promising to clean up politics, 2010 looks to be an exciting year for transparency related issues.

I am therefore delighted to confirm that Barcamp Transparency will be happening again later this year, with more speakers, more interesting conversations and more beer afterwards!

Transparency isn’t just a hot topic in the UK of course, so we are currently actively putting together plans for holding similar events elsewhere in the world.  If you would be interested in helping out, please get in touch!

Finally, it has come to light from the conversations that we have been having that there is a need for an online community space to help organise these events and let people from around the world discuss and collaborate on transparency related issues.

Therefore, I am delighted to say that we are currently putting this together and that Ben Werdmuller (of Elgg fame) has agreed to become our Community Manager!

Get in touch and let us know what you want to see in the future!

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” - John Gilmore, Time Magazine 6th December 1993

This quote – made almost 16 years ago – sums up in a nutshell why I love the internet sometimes.

As is obvious from the ongoing events this morning that the law firm Carter-Ruck didn’t really understand just how badly it was going to shoot itself in the foot when it gagged the Guardian newspaper in an attempt to prevent them reporting on open questions asked in parliament.

These questions referred to the Minton Report regarding illegal toxic waste dumping.

I guess we should really thank them, because had they not done I wouldn’t have this delicious feeling of schadenfreude as thousands of people find out about their client Trafigura illegally dumping toxic waste off the Ivory Coast, in possibly the largest toxic waste scandal of the 21st century.

The story broke this morning, and has been widely circulated around blogs and twitter, passed around like a note in a giant electronic classroom (Interestingly, at time of writing at least, the BBC have not picked up the story. Make of that what you will).

The internet is people (as my esteemed friend says so often), and when people are connected secrets become much harder to keep, and cover-ups much harder to orchestrate.

People power ftw.

Update: The gag order on the Guardian has been lifted shortly before they were due to appear in the high court.

… or maybe not.

Yesterday, all the hard work we put in to getting Barcamp Transparency 2009 ready paid off, and I have to admit I am really pleased with how it went!

Judging by the feedback I’ve been getting throughout the day you guys enjoyed it as well, but please let me know if there’s anything that we could do better next year!

Of course the event wouldn’t have been possible without our sponsors… Google who were kind enough to cover the cost of the venue (and thanks to the Oxford Club for being so good to us on the day!). Thanks to our other sponsors – 1000 heads, Proactive, Outmap, Moo and TerminateTheRate.org as well.

Also, thanks to our media sponsors: Global voices, Mashable and JackFM.

Most of all, thanks to all of you who came!

There were plenty of interesting conversations had, and we’ve already spawned a couple of interesting projects – do write in and tell me about yours, we’d love to do a followup!

Check out our flick group, and if you have any photos feel free to upload them to the group pool.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on…see you next year!

I can barely contain my excitement, but we are now only a few hours away from the start of the Barcamp Transparency event weekend!

The weekend kicks off tonight at 7pm BST (6 GMT) with our virtual event – find us on Friendfeed!

Tomorrow, those of you who are coming down the night before are welcome to join us in the Gardener’s Arms from about 7pm for food, beers and a bit of socialising… look out for the group with Barcamp Transparency posters (thanks Ben Werdmuller for designing those!).

Don’t forget to @mapkyca on Twitter if you get lost!

Finally, the main Barcamp Transparency event kicks off at 10am on Sunday in the Oxford University Club on Mansfield road. Detailed instructions for getting there can be found on the Barcamp Transparency website!

See you there!