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The New York Times reports that the National Archives is preparing to take ownership of 50 terabytes of Bush data — 50 times as much data as Clinton left behind. And yet important stuff may be missing, because of Vice President ¬†Cheney’s claims that only he can be the arbiter of what records are personal and what are national property. And then there is this comment from the Vice President:

“I’m told researchers like to come and dig through my files, to see if anything interesting turns up,” Mr. Cheney said. “I want to wish them luck, but the files are pretty thin. I learned early on that if you don’t want your memos to get you in trouble some day, just don’t write any.”

And don’t turn over the ones you did write, I guess.

The Archives may be overwhelmed; it seems seriously possible that it will be next to impossible actually to find anything. The digital explosion indeed.

Since Obama’s victory, an interesting debate has been going on about whether he really tapped the collective energies of Internet users in a collaborative way, or whether the Internet that was just a tool he used to conduct a very effective but fundamentally top-down campaign. There was a conference at the Berkman Center to discuss this and related questions; Yochai Benkler is eloquent in this video taking exception to the way Marshall Ganz had described Obama’s use of the Internet as an organizing tool. Some succinct essays surrounding these issues appear on the Berkman Center site here.

There’s an interesting short article in the Takoma (WA) News Tribune today entitled “Is Obama’s Web-based political revolution real or an illusion?” (It came to my attention because my wife, Marlyn McGrath, was quoted on the subject of how long it takes to read a college application — a number the reporter thought relevant since Obama has received 300,000 online applications for jobs in his administration. Also quoted is Professor Lillian Lee of Cornell, a Harvard PhD who used to be a teaching assistant for me — Lillian notes that the popularity metric used by the change.gov site for allowing certain posts to move up in the list is actually not awfully democratic in practice.)

Obama is trying lots of things, and that’s great. He probably could have been elected without the Internet, though it surely did him no harm to have collected millions of cell phone numbers on the promise that you’d be texted in the middle of the night about his VP pick, and a free “Go! Go! Go! Obama!” ring tone. Figuring out what actually works will take longer.

First, the Chinese Internet censors are back to work following a bit of a break to buff the country’s image during the Olympic games. As of a few days ago, the New York Times web site became inaccessible from inside China. The press couldn’t get a comment from the government, but in the past, it has said that other countries regulate the Internet too. (Thus equating child pornography with the New York Times. Oh well, that’s what totalitarianism is about.)

And second, Gatehouse media, which publishes some suburban newspapers, has sued the New York Times because boston.com (the site of the Boston Globe, which is owned by the Times) was linking to some local stories in the Gatehouse publications. Just listing the headlines, with live link to the Gatehouse publications’ original stories. The legal issues are several — see this good analysis from the Citizen Media Law Project. It’s hard to think that what the Globe is doing is not well within “fair use” from a copyright standpoint. But either way, strategically it’s a head-scratcher. The Globe is steering traffic to the sites of obscure suburban newspapers almost no one reads. As the eloquent David Weinberger asks, why would those papers want that stopped?

Australian authorities are gearing up to test their plans to filter all Internet communications for illegal materials — child pornography in particular, but perhaps other materials as well. The test is focused on blocking access to web sites, and there have been several good articles on BanThisURL.com, a site specifically devoted to opposing the Australian plans. It’s a good object lesson in how hard it is to censor a distributed system and still have it work. Every now and then some member of Congress gives an if-we-can-put-a-man-on-the-moon-we-can-make-the-Internet-safe speech, and the Australian experience is a good object lesson in the special problems the Internet presents.

A good interview with a computer security expert appeared recenctly (thanks, SlashDot). It’s got a heavy dose of tech-speak, but it will be mostly comprehensible to a general reader. Here are a few of the main points.

1. Man-in-the-middle attacks are a big worry. That is, if all Internet traffic is routed through one machine, or a small number of machines, which check for bad stuff, then getting control of one of those machines becomes a big prize. Control it and you can read all the mail going back and forth between Gmail and anyone in Australia, for example. What you do with it is your choice — you can just shut it down if you want to be nasty, or read it and not tell anyone if you want to do creepier things.
2. Denial-of-Service attacks are another. You can make your filtering machines more secure by having fewer of them — but then it makes it easier for someone to try to choke them with thousands of requests every second. The way to beat a DOS attack is to re-architect the system, distributing its workload over thousands of machines — but then you have to worry about security at thousands of sites, bribes being offered to thousands of machine operators, etc.
3. Exploiting software vulnerabilities. If the government buys machines and software from the lowest bidder, and doesn’t install patches with daily devotion, the machine is sure to be compromised by some Bulgarian teenager who is up to date on the latest and greatest attacks and has too much time on his hands.
4. The filters probably won’t work. There are two basic approaches, each with its share of problems.
   1. A blacklist is just a list of URLs of web pages known to have bad content on them. The simplest approach to filtering is just to assemble a blacklist and check to see if the requested page is on the list, and to send back a “page not available” message if it is; otherwise pass the request along. But that would only begin a cat-and-mouse game. As soon as the owner of the restricted page realizes it’s on the government blacklist, he’ll move it to a different URL. Or some enterprising soul will set up a proxy server in another country — so you’ll send the URL of the page you really want to get to the proxy server (encrypted, so the government authorities can’t see what you’re asking for), the server in the other country will get the page and send it back to you (probably encrypted also). The government may blacklist the proxy server, which then moves its URL, and so on ad infinitum, or at least until one side gets tired.
   2. A content filter analyzes what’s actually being transmitted, photos or videos typically, and doesn’t let it through if it’s bad stuff. Now that requires the computer to recognize obscenity, which is a task most courts have a lot of trouble with. You can have a catalog of known bad photos (or their easily extracted hashes, but that’s a detail), but you’d have to keep that catalog up to date — at all the locations where it’s stored. You can flag photos for human screening by the percentage of the screen that is taken up with flesh tones, but that would begin another sort of cat and mouse game. Content filters don’t work very well, and to effectively screen out bad stuff, they have to err on the side of over-inclusiveness and eliminate lots of legal images too (Michaelangelo’s David, perhaps, or Botticelli’s Birth of Venus; not to mention medical illustrations and anatomy diagrams).
5. Whatever kind of analysis is done, has to be done very quickly. Particularly when delivering video content, there just isn’t a lot of time to do the processing to figure out what you’re delivering. The genius of the Internet, as we explain in the Appendix to Blown to Bits, is that in the core, it’s really, really stupid. It just passes bit packets along. Ask it to do more and it will break.
6. And of course everything you are doing has to be kept secret to foil your adversaries. Blacklists themselves become hot property — the blacklist used in Thailand became public a few days ago. It’s interesting to leaf through it — lots of garden-variety political cartoons with no sexual imagery at all.

Meanwhile, the Systems Administrators Guild of Australia has written a letter to the government stating, in essence, that it won’t work and they can’t make it work.

Google, whose mission is to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible, has decided not to organize and make accessible the world’s scientific data. In the interests of economizing, it is canceling its scientific data service, which promised to store massive quantities of scientific date, from the Hubble telescope for example, for shared use.

Google offers lots of wonderful stuff “for free,” and it’s not surprising that in a recession the company is picking its shots. But as Wired reports, Amazon, which also offers cloud data services, is waiting in the wings and may rush in to fill the void.

“Nothing Goes Away,” we say in Blown to Bits. What about the emails of George Bush and Dick Cheney? As the Washington Post reported yesterday,

Federal law requires outgoing White House officials to provide the Archives copies of their records, a cache estimated at more than 300 million messages and 25,000 boxes of documents depicting some of the most sensitive policymaking of the past eight years.

Some of those messages were sent using accounts of the Republican National Committee, it turns out. They are subject to the law, but the RNC seems to be having trouble finding them. And the Vice-President claims that the only records he has to turn over are those related to tasks Bush specifically assigned him, not advice he offered voluntarily, for example, or messages related to legislation. That claim is going to be decided in court, but of course a lot can happen to disks and tapes while the legal issue is being hashed out.

It is awfully hard to get rid of all copies of those emails, from all back-ups. Even if they are “deleted,” a good computer forensics effort might be able to recover them in part. A classic case of the digital explosion — where we can’t live without electronic communications, and then don’t want to leave any footprints. This will be a test of both laws and wills.

Last week’s Wall Street Journal Story claiming that Google was pulling a double-cross on its pro-Network-Neutrality posture has spawned a series of imitators. Today the Boston Herald voices its editorial opinion that Google has been caught in red-handed hypocrisy, and therefore the whole Net Neutrality idea ought to be abandoned. Let the unregulated free market work its wonders and all will be well.

In fact Google explained itself quite well on the morning the WSJ story appeared. Net Neutrality is the principle that the Internet should treat all packets should be treated equally, not favoring those with a particular source or destination. What Google was proposing is called edge caching, locating its servers at points in the network where they can reduce Internet traffic to deliver the same content. It’s not a new idea — lots of companies make a nice living doing it.

Here is some of the Herald’s analogizing:

The FCC should repeal its neutrality policies. The historical accident that telephone companies were organized to connect calls in the order received should not prevent high-value Internet services from being paid for and provided separately from other services. Telephone companies early on leased private lines for exclusive use of customers willing to pay extra. Telegraph companies also leased private lines and charged for telegrams on the public wires at various rates.

But telecomm law has to do with much more than that. The telcos can’t disconnect the service of all Republicans on the eve of an election in order to make it harder for them to get the vote out. And as we say in Blown to Bits, Western Union actually was subject to neutrality legislation, after it colluded with one of the “wire services” to filter the news for political purposes. Those are better analogies for what neutrality means.

In other Google news, Warner Brothers has started to pull its videos off YouTube after failing to reach agreement on contract terms. No more Madonna or Red Hot Chili Peppers on YouTube? We’ll see who gets hurt more. It sounds like a foolish move on the part of an increasingly desperate music industry, unable to staunch the bleeding of bits and of dollars.

It’s a little hard to tell, since I have to rely on Google Translate to render the Dutch reviews into English. Like all mechanical translation efforts over the past fifty years, Google Translate occasionally produces comic results, but it’s generally pretty easy to understand what was intended. That Google offers this wonderful service free, as an adjunct to its advertising-enhanced search engine, is itself a marvel of the digital explosion. (Apparently the Dutch word for “members” — of some kind — is “Ledeen”!)

Review #1, as rendered from the geencommentaar.nl web site into English by Google Translate:

On September 19, 2007 Tanya Rider rode in a ravine near Seattle. Eight days they hung upside down in the wreck of her car before rescue workers had the right to her mobile phone to call for information and to find her.

Hal Abelson, Ken Members and Harry Lewis begin their book “Blown to bits’ with this example to the opportunities and complexities of the digital life in general. Tanya had a mobile phone with them, making the phone company would be able to trace at the time that the device was destroyed in the crash. When Tanya’s husband Tom moved to the police to report her disappearance, but police could not trace the cell phone. Since she has the right not only because of Tanya’s privacy. Only after a week when Tom began to suspect a crime, they could and there were so Tanya, who was seriously injured, but ultimately survived.

In the era before everything was digital this dilemma would not have existed. The information from the mobile phone was simply not there, so there is no need to be invented manners. But now contain numerous computers worldwide personal data of the bank to the flickr account (that of yourself, but also that of others where you maybe in the background is a portrait of someone else, perhaps in the company of someone with whom you are not in the public want to be seen).

Abelson, members and Lewis have each more than forty years of experience in the ICT, in universities and industry. They have the whole process to see happen. In eight chapters analyze them as many phenomena, with the impact these have on the way society works.

Of course, there is the inevitable chapter on privacy, but the chapter about data which you thought he was gone, so is instructive. While it seems easy to erase information, that is not in practice. If you nude ten seconds on the Internet has been, you can be sure that there are already so many copies of it that you do not get out more. Passages in Erased Word documents remain in reality it is only invisible, as the U.S. army to his disgrace had in a research report which appeared sensitive passages removed. And formatting is not really enough to all information from a hard disk to retrieve.

A full chapter is also on Google and other information brokers. Where information used by sheer size was inscrutable, there is now little more of a hindrance. Everything can be found – or not, if you see Google in China, for example. It is not only substantive information, but also meta-information: who has consulted at any moment?

All this information is food become lawyers. Previously copied teenagers plates on straps and nobody could control. But now the way is to become illegal music to come, the record companies suddenly a detection tool. They have succeeded if the law into their hands to set up even if you’re innocent, it is better for the companies to pay as they knock on your door – what they do with enthusiasm. Information is a powerful weapon in the hands of the powerful.

The chapters can be read in any order and there is certainly necessary overlap between. The authors do not lift finger on the digital threat, but try as sober as possible the finger on the sore spots to explain rather surprised than alarmed. People are rescued by the explosion bit, and they killed it. Freedoms are won and lost. Which way the balance eventually will spread, it is not to say.

And Review #2, from ZB Digitaal:

Now it is not my habit to whether to refer to a book that I have not even voted for the half but the book paints a clear picture of such complex Internet issues that I can not wait to gain share with others, especially because the book in its entirety and can be downloaded free-even per individual chapter.

Chapters 2 and 3, I have already read: they influenced my views about online privacy and security aspects of proper documents. I like to do. Blown to Bits highlights not only the dangers of the digital era, the book teaches you a lot about the opportunities and potential. It is a book that the spirit strengthened.

No comment on a discussion in English can be found on Slashdot to find one in English. When the book is obviously also a blog.

And if you intend the book immediately to buy or borrow: watch or even that you not that other orders or applied ….

That last sentence is a warning not to buy the other book by the same name!

As the New Year approaches, and you are wrapping up 2008, please
consider making a charitable contribution in support of Creative
Commons, by donating at http://support.creativecommons.org/join.

I’m immensely proud to be a founder of Creative Commons.
Our planning for Creative Commons started in the summer of 2000, with
the recognition of the  dissonance between copyright law and the
hopes and reality of the  Internet age. Blown to Bits chapter 6
explores some of that dissonance.

Over the past 8 years, Creative Commons has blossomed to become a
central part of the Intenet’s open economy, with an international
network of licenses designed to facilitate sharing over the  Net, and
a large family of volunteers who promote values of open sharing in
education, science, and culture.

Just a few weeks ago, we released the Creative Commons Network, which
lets you identify yourself as a CC supporter, and also provides an
authentication mechanism (based on Open ID) designed for
interoperability with CC licenses, and a visible way to signify your
support for an Open Net.

Please join the CC Network and make donate generously.  The future of
the open Internet rests with all of us.

http://support.creativecommons.org/join

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal (no login required) summarized by CNet¬†here, the Recording Industry Association of America plans to stop its odious practice of extorting thousands of dollars from teenagers and their parents for downloading small amounts of music. The vicious war didn’t work very well anyway, and created lots of ill will.

Under an agreement brokered by NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, enforcement for large-scale downloading will be transferred to ISPs, whom the RIAA will notify of suspected downloaders. The ISP will contact the alleged downloaders, ask them to stop, and terminate their service if they don’t.

This solution isn’t pretty either — there are downsides to having the ISPs be law enforcers — but it’s a lot better than the current “war on piracy.” As of this moment, the RIAA web site gives no indication that the war is over.

And the RIAA is going to save some money in the process.

What will now happen in the case of RIAA v. Joel Tenenbaum, in which Professor Charles Nesson is trying to have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act declared unconstitutional? Now here’s a dramatic speculation: the RIAA took a look at Nesson’s defense of his counterclaims, got scared, and dropped their lawsuits rather than running the risk of winding up with nothing at all.

Postscript. Some key sentences from the WSJ story:

… ISPs, which are increasingly cutting content deals of their own with entertainment companies, may have more incentive to work with the music labels now than in previous years.

The new approach dispenses with one of the most contentious parts of the lawsuit strategy, which involved filing lawsuits requiring ISPs to disclose the identities of file sharers. Under the new strategy, the RIAA would forward its emails to the ISPs without demanding to know the customers’ identity.

Though the industry group is reserving the right to sue people who are particularly heavy file sharers, or who ignore repeated warnings, it expects its lawsuits to decline to a trickle.

… The RIAA said it plans to continue with outstanding lawsuits.

If so, then the constitutionality question may yet be tested.

Second postscript. Two good observations from the blogosphere. First, by removing the enforcement mechanism from the judicial system and placing it in private hands (those of the ISPs), this agreement makes it possible for ISPs to set their own rules — for example, limiting bandwidth or cutting off service to parties doing lots of uploading or downloading, whether or not the activity is actually illegal. As they are cutting content deals with the music industry, this agreement actually empowers them to do something that is commercially advantageous to them.

Second, note this from the WSJ story:

Litigation, [the RIAA chairman] said, was successful in raising the public’s awareness that file-sharing is illegal, but now he wants to try a strategy he thinks could prove more successful.

But downloading isn’t any more illegal than photocopying is illegal. This is a paraphrase, and we don’t know exactly what the RIAA chairman said, but it’s an indicator of the RIAA’s success in muddying the issue that even the WSJ blandly promotes the false impression that a particular technological practice is unlawful.