Berkman Buzz: November 24, 2014

A DECADE ago, dozens of former fighters from both sides of Northern Ireland's Troubles sat down to talk about their roles for the oral history the Belfast Project. They were assured that the recordings would not be made public until after their deaths. But in July 2013, Boston College, which had been storing the recordings, was forced to release several tapes to Northern Ireland's police service as part of an investigation into the 1972 murder of Jean McConville.

Such transgressions have got Jonathan Zittrain, director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, thinking about how to ensure that data are protected for the promised time period. Among other concerns, he worries for philanthropic donations of papers or personal effects to libraries and the like. Often, such donations are made with a proviso that they not be revealed for a fixed period of time. "That type of donation will not happen if their stuff is only one subpoena away from disclosure," he says.

Uber is in the bad publicity hot seat again with a leading story about comments made by Uber Senior Vice President Emil Michael on digging up dirt on critical journalists. Sarah Lacy, editor at PandoDaily, writes that she is in Uber's targets for her critical pieces of the company. Uber's God View, a real time view of passengers, has been used as a party trick, questionable from a privacy perspective, and Business Insider reports that this tool has been used to track a journalist's position. Alex Howard broadens the implications from journalists to politics noting the popularity of the service among members of Congress. Uber knows, and likes to show off, what the company can do with it's data. In addition to God View, two years ago Uber used their data to calculate the use of the service for overnight stays, or in Uber's terms, "Rides of Glory".

ACCORDING TO a recent Harris poll, Americans ages 18 to 44 believe that five years from now most interactions with cashiers, cab drivers, and waiters will be handled by online apps. They think there will be "big data" health services that provide real-time medical monitoring and alert their doctors when they're in danger. And they’re confident they will be asking for help from companies who can send them needed products before they have to order them.

This streamlined future will happen on the streets of America's cities, where more than 80 percent of us live. Municipalities are just starting to use data to improve urban conditions. Imagine a local government that could handle its citizen interactions seamlessly online, predict traffic problems, air quality issues, well-being deficits, and other needs, and allocate resources preemptively where they were most needed.

Potty training is an amazing process. In order for a human being to effectively use a toilet, she needs to develop a marvelous array of skills: an internal awareness of pressure on her bladder, a geo-spatial sense of where the nearest toilet is and how to navigate there, the fine motor skills to manipulate doors and zippers, the executive function to identify the obstacles that stand between her and the successful deposition of waste in an approved location, and the linguistic and social skills to summon adult assistance when those obstacles are insurmountable.

How on earth could we possibly measure those complex neurological and physiological processes that span the entire central and peripheral nervous system, from the most basic awareness of sensory input to the most complex problem-solving that young people do?

Over the past two years, systematic Internet regulation has increased more in Russia than anywhere else in the world. A series of progressively more restrictive legislative developments between the summer of 2012 and the summer of 2014 have increased the power of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office and federal agency Roskomnadzor to block or take down websites for a wide range of alleged infractions. New legislation has also mandated the registration of bloggers with the federal government and greatly increased Russian law enforcement access to user data, among other changes. This paper examines this growing web of regulations and explores how Russian Internet users and freedom of information advocates are responding through online and offline protests, circumvention, and a range of other tactics.

Today sees the launch of the first release of the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS). The standard, as I've written before, brings together concrete guidance on the kinds of documents and data that are needed for increased transparency in processes of public contracting, with a technical specification describing how to represent contract data and meta-data in common ways.

The video below provides a brief overview of how it works (or you can read the briefing note), and you can find full documentation at http://standard.open-contracting.org.

Kyrgyzstan is falling into line with international standards by requiring citizens to submit biometric data for new passports. But some citizens, wary of creeping authoritarianism in the country and a lack of transparency in local law enforcement, are resisting the call.

The procedure officially began on August 28, 2014, when Prime Minister of the Kyrgyz Republic, Jomart Otorbaev, and Mayor of the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, Kubanychbek Kulmatov, submitted their biometric data.

Since then, there have been numerous controversies connected to the call, mostly focussed on the failure of the notoriously corrupt State Registry Service (SRS) to ensure biometric data points are properly equipped.