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<font face="Verdana">All this is daily news stuff, but still... This
is what I read today<br>
<br>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Avast CEO shared analysis done by
company of top 100 applications on Android in the month of
September.<br>
<br>
As per the analysis, 99 per cent of these
applications have entire control of mobile phone which means they
remotely operate phone as a user does and 92 per cent can view
network connections.<br>
<br>
One out of 10 of top 100 applications can
record audio and take pictures and videos and 9 out of 10 are able
to
read storage content which can modify or delete, as per the
report.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">(ends)<br>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/google-whatsapp-and-facebook-breaching-users-privacy-claims-cyber-security-firm-avast/49572113">http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/google-whatsapp-and-facebook-breaching-users-privacy-claims-cyber-security-firm-avast/49572113</a></p>
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Hopefully it will indeed scare people here one day enough to
decide to do something, within the limited degrees of options for
civil society players. <br>
<br>
parminder <br>
</font><br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On Wednesday 28 October 2015 07:35 PM,
parminder wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:5630D636.7010401@itforchange.net" type="cite">
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<font face="Verdana">Milton<br>
<br>
You basically do not agree with the proposition I advanced that
the Internet is getting more and more centralised and to that
extent less people centric, and you consider the two examples I
gave in this regard as 'not encouraging'. Whereby, I understand
it to mean that your view is that the Internet keeps getting
more and more decentralised, and thus more and more
people-centric, or at least there is no proof to the contrary.
Am I right in making such a deduction?<br>
<br>
I stand by my examples as proving my proposition, and I can cite
a lot of papers, even books, and others sources, even
initiatives aiming at 're-decentralising the Internet' but I
dont think that is going to matter to you. Meanwhile, the
proposition of increasing concentration of power on and due to
the Internet, unless deliberate interventions to the contrary
are employed, is so basic to the work that my organisation and
also our wider networks undertake that I am not sure where I can
take this argument any further with you. It is like saying that
globalisation causes no economic injustices, which is of course
something that you might as well believe. The only thing I can
say, especially since you frequently employ this allegation, is
that such a viewpoint is no less ideological than one which
claims that globalisation does cause economic injustices. <br>
<br>
In any case, the evidences that you provide to show that all is
well with the Internet (at least on the economic and social
rights/ justice side) are very interesting. Most of your case
rests on a single pillar, that of user choice - since a lot of
people are using the Internet, and increasingly so, it must be
providing them value, and that seals the argument for you.<br>
<br>
This is a typically erroneous way of looking at any technology's
impact on the society, especially such a pervasively general
purpose, and social, one as the new ICTs. Any new technology
paradigm provides an immediate cascade of useful possibilities,
and value propositions. That much is but obvious. However a
claim that this 'fact' by itself proves the currently dominant
trajectory and manner of technology evolution as the best one
may not hold water. Other trajectories could yield more benefit,
overall, and/ or in the distributional aspect. I am sure that
you are not such a techno- deterministic so as to believe that
there is indeed only one possible path, that which we witness
around us or have witnessed. As the World Social Forum ( i can
already see the derision on your face :) ) says 'Another World
is Possible'. We think that another path for techno-social
evolution of the Internet and associated social phenomena is
possible. As you perhaps know, there is a plan to hold an
Internet Social Forum next year, with the slogan 'Another
Internet is Possible'. (Meanwhile, do see the recent posting by
Lee on 'platform cooperativism' for an example of charting a
;different path' forward.)<br>
<br>
I am sure you do not have time for all this 'ideological stuff'.
But you certainly have time to declare that the Internet is
neoliberal, and this new communication paradigm would or needs
to follow none of the old-world soft stuff of public, community
or otherwise collectivist approaches that do often get applied
to communication and media systems . And all this belief of
yours is some kind of a given technical fact, and nothing of an
ideology!<br>
<br>
Milton, user choices cannot determine everything and dont prove
much. Users make choices within the constrained structures that
they are subject to, and these structures themselves may not be
easily mutable or influenced by simple series of consumer
choices. Such facts are well known in sociological theory, and
it is just an ideologically motivated stream of economic thought
that over-relies on 'user choice' to 'prove' that what it in
fact ideologically holds as a prior belief. <br>
<br>
I am sure that you can and will also use your logic of, to
quote, "</font>choices people make to adopt, say, Facebook in
huge and growing numbers" <font face="Verdana"> to prove that
people do not care about a net neutral Internet, neither do they
value their privacy. <br>
<br>
You are so taken by a narrow economic ideology that you seem to
miss every political nuance... When I showed my disappointment
that the Internet has continued to become more closed even under
the watch of IGF, I of course took the IGF as a (hopefully)
participatory sphere for public influence on Internet policies,
but you chose to read it as I trying to put the Internet under a
"</font>centralized system under any single authority's "watch."
<font face="Verdana"><br>
<br>
This quite eloquently shows how different our modes of political
thought and expression are, which is what makes it so much
difficult for us to carry on a conversation here; and,
incidentally, not my stupidity or ignorance which you miss no
opportunity to point to. (yes, I know what a p2p technology is.
I spoke of email as p2p as you would speak of a consumer to
consumer model as against consumer to business.) <br>
<br>
Lastly, I am quite surprised at how narrowly you construct the
field of Internet governance when you say that the Volkswagen
and John Deere cases that I referred to while being interesting
have nothing to do with IG... Dont you see that Volkswagen's
software cheating is only a step away from algorithm cheating
and its possible devastating social impact; and what does the
argument of 'software with mechanical parts' mean in the age of
Internet of Things. I take the field of Internet governance to
widely sweep across the area of governance of the digital realm,
and especially today there is not much difference between a
stand alone digital artefact and a networked one, I mean there
is a clear growing convergence there. <br>
<br>
parminder <br>
<br>
</font><br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On Monday 26 October 2015 02:02 AM,
Mueller, Milton L wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:DM3PR07MB226581D695B0F3AE6BF03B25A1240@DM3PR07MB2265.namprd07.prod.outlook.com"
type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">-----Original Message-----
This is the 10th anniversary of WSIS which called for a people-centred and
development-oriented information society. Let us examine if we have a more
people-centric Internet today than we had in 2005, and if not so, what are the
reasons, and what should have been done, and needs to be done, especially
from the point of view of governance of the Internet.
Can we agree to this being a key element that we should be focussed on?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">No.
Can you provide me with a metric of "people-centeredness"? One that is meaningful to all and not a purely ideological construct? The examples you gave below were not encouraging.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">The Internet to me is rather less people- centric in its 'design' today than it
was 10 years ago... Of course so many more people use the Internet today,
which is rather obvious for a such a breakthrough technical advance, but for
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">So the people who are adopting and using the Internet don't count in your calculation. Interesting. The choices people make to adopt, say, Facebook in huge and growing numbers, does not mean that they see value in this in your book. What then does it mean?
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">the present purpose lets keep the focus on its design; is it more people-centric
today than it was 10 years ago
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">I have no idea what you mean by the 'design' of the Internet. If you are not talking about techno-management, and you are not talking about the design of the standards and protocols, from your examples below it sounds like you are talking about the economic organization or business models of service providers who run "over the top."
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">(1) Email was still the major p2p Internet application in 2005
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">Sigh. Email as P2P. Can someone other than me explain what's wrong with this assertion to P? I don't have time.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">media has overtaken it. Email system was based on public standards written
by IETF and other standards organisations, whereby there were no lock-ins
and every email service could interact with all others based on these public
protocols.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">Every email service can still interact with all others, and so can all the platforms.
I don't think you have a very accurate recollection or a very deep understanding of the compatibility issues here. What was your email client in 2005? Or 1995 for that matter? Mine was MS Outlook in 2005 and Netscape's browser in 1995. Have you tried moving your stored emails from either client to any other one? It was more difficult in 1995 than in 2005, and more difficult in 2005 than now. True, email standards interconnect all different clients then as now but there were various lock-in mechanisms. There is always a dynamic between competition, innovation and standardization, between open and proprietary, and you haven't made much of a case that we are tilting more one way than the other.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Compare that with a Facebook or a Twitter and you will easily see
what I am driving at.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">Sorry, I still don't see what you are driving at. I can see anyone's Tweet on the web, they can email me a link to it. Facebook seems to be a bit more closed off, (I am not a Facebook user (yeah, we do exist), so I am less sure of how users allow or do not allow access to their pages), but there were equivalent platforms in 2005. Since these blockages are a result of user choice, how is this a less "people-centered" internet?
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">(2) In 2005, Web was the unchallenged king on the Internet, today proprietary
apps are increasingly taking its place. Again, I am not saying that we should
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">Wrong. Most "proprietary" apps are free, and they link to and complement the web, they do not substitute for it. Furthermore, tons of web sites had (and still have) paywalls or login requirements in 2005.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I think there is a limit to which we can simply keep extolling the great wonder
that the IGF is - we must explain what inter alia has it really contributed, or
failed to contribute, to the mentioned very problematic development, which
have been taking place under its watch, and the watch of a veritable travelling
circus that the global IG scene has become.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">Even though I largely agree with the implied criticism of the IGF, and 100% agree that we must always ask what it has contributed, I think when you say the Internet has developed in the way it has "under its watch" you are exaggerating the significance of what the IGF is or could be. The Internet, like the overall economy, is not a centralized system under any single authority's "watch."
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">In this background, ones heart cringes to witness, as I had to witness last week
in New York, how the UN's WSIS + 10 review process is behaving as if there is
just nothing wrong with the Internet, and the manner in which it is effecting
large-scale structural changes in the world, in almost all sectors. There was
practically no mention at all of the numerous issues in this regard that we
read almost daily in the newspapers (Volkswagen's software cheating, John
Deere claiming that its tractors are in fact software with mechanical parts,
and so on. To mention just two news that I read over the last 2-3 weeks alone.
The list in fact is unending).
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">These are interesting developments in IT, but have no connection whatsoever to Internet governance.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">There was no political energy at all in the room (at
WSIS review), and everyone seemed wanting the proceedings to end quickly
so that they could leave. This is quite in contrast to the politically charged
discussions during the original WSIS... What has happened in the meanwhile?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">Interesting question. Worth discussing. I have my ideas about that, but you probably would not like them.
</pre>
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