Privacy and Transparency: Are They Mutually Exclusive?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is looking out for you and me again. But this time, I’m a little worried that their appropriately principled position may get in the way of real progress.
Essentially, EFF is worried about the significant presence of third-party technologies being used by the Whitehouse.gov website and their standard practice of collecting personally identifiable information.
Specifically at issue are YouTube.com, Akamai, Inc. and Amazon S3. EFF asserts that by collecting cookies and IP addresses (as is part of their normal course of business), private citizens are being put at risk. The theory is that the government (or some other nefarious organization) could come along and piece together a profile of private citizens and their interaction with government websites.
Alternatively, EFF suggests that the federal government host more of its own content and outsource less.
So, in this effort to create an administration that is as open as possible, the White House is partnering with third parties and creating a (presumably unintentional) privacy risk.
How does the administration need to prioritize the various requirements being presented by its constituency in this case?
Is it reasonable to expect the White House to be open and transparent (online) and also guarantee that no third party collects any personally identifiable data?
If so, do we extend this requirement to a search engine’s collection of personally identifiable data by anyone who clicks a link leading to a government website?
Or do we accept that privacy online is a utopian concept that cannot effectively be guaranteed by anyone, anywhere, and instead focus on legislation that regulates how private information must be protected by companies doing business with the government?
Sound off in the comments below!
Technorati Tags: privacy, product strategy, open government, eff, electronic frontier foundation
Yesterday’s Thoughts
These are a few of the articles and events that influenced my thinking yesterday, along with a few comments.
How Not to be a Key Online Influencer | David Henderson - author, journalist
There’s been a lot of flap about @keyinfluencer’s tweet, and FedEX’s response.
In the world of social media, nothing you say is private, and everything you say can have repercussions, even if unintended. No great leap of thought leadership there, I know. But here are my lessons (or reinforcements from this episode)
1. If you don’t have something nice to say, at least try to say it in a constructive, or explanatory way. If you’ve just gotta say it on twitter, 2 tweets is better than 1 misunderstood one. Sometimes, one word can make the difference in clarity. Mark Twain once wrote “The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
2. FedEX has some really unprofessional snippy people in their corporate communications organization. The FedEX response letter to Mr. Andrew’s unclear and unwise tweet was completely reasonable. Their indignation was justified and deserved explanation.
The intentional release of the letter to the public by forwarding to Peter Shankman for publication was unprofessional and inappropriate. I’m a fan of Shankman, and of FedEX, but this display–using a misunderstood “soundbyte” (tweet) to provide a platform for a press release extolling the virtues of FedEX at the expense of a so-called business partner–is PR at its worst, worthy of the cheapest grade of political spinmeisters.
So there is plenty of reprimand to go around, and in my opinion, both parties owe each other an apology.
(For those who don’t know the details of the story, Andrews claims that his tweet was actually inspired by an encounter with an “intolerant” individual when he arrived at the Memphis airport.)
AppleInsider | iPhone developer: App Store rewards “crap” apps
The market on simplicity has not been cornered. According to the article, a single free app with a simple function drives $200 per hour in advertising revenue.
Not bad for a lunchtime effort, huh?
PDMA • Product Development and Management Association
I went to the Georgia PDMA meeting last night where Amanda Setili spoke about “Developing Winning Value Propositions.”
Above all other thoughts from the evening, I was reminded that the concept of the “defining a value proposition,” as old as it is, is still largely misunderstood and misprioritized even in some of the most notable companies, as is the true nature of product innovation.
At one point, a light back and forth emerged between two attendees on the result of successful innovation. Ms. Setili suggested that ultimately, innovation results in delivering greater value for a lower price. Ken Westray (the founder of the Georgia chapter of PDMA) challenged that premise, although I’m frankly unclear as to the exact point he was making.
My view: the root of innovation (in purely academic terms) is delivering the greatest value at the lowest cost. Cost and Price are two entirely different concepts, which should have little bearing on each other, save as a check for viability.