Censorship: Yahoo, Microsoft, Google Agree on Code of Conduct

With the start of the Olympics in Beijing being only a few days away, a lot of focus in the technology blogosphere has been on the restrictions put on Chinese Internet users by the Chinese government and the role of major US Internet companies in this. According to US Senator Dick Durbin, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are close to agreeing on a code of conduct that would govern how these companies would operate in restrictive environments like China.

According to letters send by the three companies to Durbin’s office, the companies will announce the details of this code of conduct later this year. Besides the three American companies, Vodafone and France Telecom also joined in the efforts to create this code.

The letters sent to Durbin are not very concrete in their description of the code, though they all stress the following three core components:

Principles on Freedom of Expression and Privacy that provide direction and guidance to the ICT industry and its stakeholders in protecting and advancing the enjoyment of freedom of expression and privacy globally. The Principles describe key commitments in the following areas: Freedom of Expression; Privacy; Responsible Company Decision Making; Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration; Governance, Accountability, Transparency.

Implementation Guidelines that provide further details on how participating companies will put the Principles into practice. The Implementation Guidelines describe a set of actions which constitute compliance with the Principles and provide companies with guidance on how to implement the Principles.

A Governance, Accountability and Learning Framework founded on the notion that an organizational and multi-stakeholder governance structure is required to support the Principles and that participating companies should be held accountable for their role in the implementation of the Principles through a system of independent assessment.

All three companies also stress that this code could potentially have far-reaching effects on their operations in countries like China and that they have already established internal rules for how to deal with these issues.

During the Olympics, even journalists will not be allowed to access the full and open Internet, thanks to an agreement between the IOC and China, though China eased at least some of these restrictions after the first reports on this.

As Jim Puzzanghera notes in the LA Times, Yahoo especially has been criticized heavily for the way it handled the case of journalist Shi Tao in 2006. At that time, Yahoo revealed his identity as being linked to a Yahoo e-mail address after being pressured by Chinese officials. Shi Tao was later sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Google, province team up on online mapping database

The B.C. government unveiled a new Internet mapping service yesterday, in partnership with technology company Google, which it says will help the public plot out everything from campsites to coal reserves on free customizable maps.

The province calls the system GeoBC and said it brings together otherwise hard-to-find government data previously accessible only through complicated and specialized mapping software.

The government’s data warehouse holds a bounty of data on B.C.’s Crown land, including park boundaries, air-quality reports, logging roads, airfields, underground pipes and wires, wildlife habitat areas, campgrounds, forest tenures and areas designated as coal, mineral and gas reserves.

“It used to be all the spatial information was used by a tiny number of power users who used it to make maps for other people … but there’s a huge demand now for these services,” said Mark Zacharias, GeoBC executive director.

“We’re bringing together all of government’s natural resource information. You’ll be able to find anything very quickly and be able to look at it on Google Earth and, if you want, be able to download the files to your computer.”

Eventually, Zacharias said everything will be available through Google’s free Google Earth software and mapping browser. When the province updates its databases, so will Google, he said.

British Columbia is the first Canadian province to provide Google with access to its detailed databases.

Google did not pay any money for the data, said Zacharias. The province does not have the capacity or resources to put everything online itself, and so benefits from being able to use Google technology already on the desktops of most computer users, said Zacharias.

The B.C. government also gave Google access to its high-resolution, one-metre to one-pixel satellite imagery. So far, Google has placed about one-third of it online, said Zacharias.

The government says Google image maps of Port Alberni show a visible improvement with the technology. The western half of the Island community has been updated with the government’s satellite imagery, and is clear enough to see individual houses and trees on the streets. The eastern half of the city uses old imagery, and appears a fuzzy mess of green and grey computer pixels.

The long-term plan for GeoBC is to expand into mapping social data, such as education and health care, said Zacharias.

“People want to see what do school achievement rates look like in their district, by grade, and if I’m going to get a daycare centre I want to be able to see if there’s any contaminated sites nearby,” said Zacharias.

B.C.’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner isn’t sure what it thinks about the deal with Google, because it wasn’t consulted, said Mary Carlson, executive director. “I think it would be worth an inquiry in the future,” she said.

The federal privacy commissioner raised concerns in 2007 that some Google maps use street-level images of people and may violate Canadian privacy laws. In response, Google said it would blur people’s faces. Street-level images are not part of the deal with the B.C. government, which only provided data and satellite imagery.

The GeoBC website is at http://www.geobc.gov.bc.ca.

rfshaw@tc.canwest.com

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2008

Hard Lesson in Google Data Breach

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has found itself in a number of privacy-related controversies, ranging from general user concerns over search records to its new Google Health site for storing personal medical records. But now some of its own employees face the threat of identity theft.

Last week the search giant revealed that on May 26, thieves broke into the offices of Colt Express Outsourcing Services of Walnut Creek, Calif., and stole several PCs containing the personal information of Google employees, along with employees of CNET Networks and other clients of the firm.

This wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that the data was not encrypted in any way, so the thieves can power up the PCs and get at all of the information.

Colt didn’t have truly sensitive information, such as credit cards, bank records or PINs, but it did have names, addresses and social security numbers, more than enough to acquire a credit card under false pretenses. Google is now in the process of notifying States attorneys general and its employees about the breach.

Google ended its relationship with Colt on Dec. 31, 2005, but data from employees hired before Jan. 1, 2006, was still with the company. It would not say why.

Most data breaches come from lost or stolen laptops, but in the break-in at Colt’s offices a number of desktop PCs were stolen. There was no answer at Colt’s offices, and if the company’s home page is any indication, there isn’t much of a company left, either.

Google said it does check on the security processes for its outsource partners to insure they have proper data protections. Beyond that, it would only refer to a statement it has issued to all press: “We take the security of our employees very seriously and are taking appropriate measures to ensure that all affected Googlers are properly protected. No users were affected, and no Google systems were compromised.”

Companies need to take the security precautions of their outsourcing partners as seriously as their own, said Avivah Litan, senior analyst for security with Gartner (NYSE: IT).

“The takeaway here is that a lot of companies think that in outsourcing their data processing or storage, you’re off the hook or the scope of your security efforts is greatly reduced. What they don’t do is due diligence on their outsourced service provider,” she told InternetNews.com.

Targeting sensitive data?

Litan wondered if Colt was targeted because it had sensitive data. “In this case, if they are going after a set of computers, [the thieves] may have more information than we know about,” she said. “They may know that company has sensitive employee data. So it could have been a deliberate attack on the data, not just the computers, in which case there is a much higher chance the data will be abused.”

Companies are looking to outsourcing more and more, but need to realize that the buck stops with them, not the service provider, because it’s their data, Litan went on to say.

“It’s their customers, their employees,” she said. “If they use an outsource service provider that doesn’t use secure practices, that’s their problem. You can’t just throw the data over the fence and hope your problems go away,” she said.

Google Talk chatback

Monday, February 25, 2008 11:23 AM

Do you have a blog, online profile, or some other personal web page? Would you like to communicate more with your visitors? Today we’re launching a new Google Talk feature that lets visitors to your web site chat with you. We call it “chatback” because instead of you doing all the talking on your blog, your visitors can talk back to you. Sure, they could leave comments, but those are public and hard to use for a real conversation. With chatback, it’s a real instant message session.

To use chatback, you must have a Google Talk account … but your visitors don’t have to! They don’t even need to have an email address, or to have ever used instant messaging.

When they visit your site, they’ll see a badge like the one on the right showing your online status (available, busy, offline) and, if you’re available, they can just click and start chatting. Chatback uses the web-based Google Talk Gadget so your visitors don’t need to download anything. It opens in a new window so they can keep chatting with you even if they browse to other pages.

Of course, chatback isn’t just for blogs. You can use it on any web page that you can add HTML content to. To get started, visit the chatback start page. (This is also linked from the Google Talk homepage.) Then just copy the provided HTML snippet to your web site. Visitors will then see a badge on your site indicating your availability, and can click to start a chat with you. If there’s a time when you don’t want to be distracted, just set your online status to “busy” and visitors won’t be able to chat with you until you change your status back to “available.”

If you’re not already a Google Talk user, it’s easy to become one. If you’ve got a Gmail account, then you already have a Google Talk account. If not, just go to www.google.com/talk or www.gmail.com to get started.

Bruce Leban
Software Engineer