Vogel Internet, Information Technology and e-Discovery Blog : Texas Internet, Information Technology, eCommerce & E-Discovery Lawyer & Attorney Peter S. Vogel : Gardere Wynne Sewell Law Firm : Dallas TX

For purposes of dealing with web 2.0 the White House Memo released on April 7, 2010 about social media specifically states that “interactive meeting tools—including but not limited to public conference calls, webinars, blogs, discussion boards, forums, message boards, chat sessions, social networks, and online communities—to be equivalent to in-person public meetings.” The White House Memo is a follow-up to President Obama’s January 21, 2009 (day after the President was sworn-in) “calling for the establishment of ‘a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.’” Fascinating development that blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Yelp, and the like are public meetings which means that one should expect little privacy from use of these online services.

Majority of Government Agencies Use Social Networks

This report states that a majority of government agencies now use social networks is hardly a news flash, but put in context of the White House’s Memo that use of social networks are public meetings may change the public view of how they communicate. Of the 400+ million Facebook members of an estimated 70% are outside the US, and one may wonder how communications across international borders impacts the declaration that social media is public meetings.

Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0

This recently filed class action suit accuses Yelp of extortion to get bad comments removed from Yelp and lower rankings by reviewers. It remains to be seen whether this case will succeed, but if Yelp is considered a public meeting by the White House it makes one wonder how extortion fits in. Not to mention that the 50 million a day of tweets on Twitter are considered public meetings, even though at least 14,000 are followers of a Doonesbury’s cartoon character Roland Hedley! Web 2.0 is definitely taking us in interesting directions!

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A recent report that Web 2.0 (Facebook, Twiter, MySapce, et al) continues to encourage friends to share private information at an alarming rate is hardly a surprise. Research at a number of universities demonstrates that things are probably worse than most people image. For instance, the 2009 paper entitled “Predicting Social Security numbers from public data” from Carnegie Mellon explained how easy it is to predict patterns of data that leads to accurate predictions of Social Security numbers (SSNs) and birth dates from public data. Cyber thieves are taking advantage of the personal information on the Internet as we are well aware.

Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

To make matters more interesting the expansion of EHRs over the next four years will expose more personal medical information on the Internet. The US deadline of 2015 implementing all EHRs may sound great to some, but we should be concerned about how well that personal information is protected. Actually the EHRs may make the personal information a bigger target to cyber thieves. Recent warning about cyber threats from the FBI and DHS should make us all uneasy.

SSNs Used for Personal Identification

As many of us remember for many years health insurance companies used SSNs for their insureds’ account numbers and a number of states used SSNs for drivers’ license numbers.  So there are millions of historic records on US citizens that include SSNs. As a matter of fact, millions of Internet court records include divorce decrees, motions, and affidavits with SSNs, drivers’ license numbers, credit card numbers, and bank account numbers. Many states now limit posting of this personal information on the Internet, but records from the past abound with personal information. Given our open government view of open records laws which sprang forth after Watergate in 1972 most people think government and court records should be open, but a hidden danger lurks in protecting personal information within those court records.

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Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s General Counsel, reported the governance vote results that 74.37% of the 665,654 cast ballots in support of the new Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Principles (Statement). The new Statement was adopted with less far than 1% even of Facebook friends casting ballots. It’s refreshing that there was a democratic vote on the largest social network in the world, but amazing that so few voted.

Statement Requires 30% to Vote

Well that was the plan, but with such a small turn out Facebook decided that the 30% cannot even be the threshold. Facebook will go back to the drawing board to determine what percentage should be the minimum, and it will be a low percentage.

Democracy Web 2.0 Style

The reason for the governance vote to begin with was that Facebook was changing policies only to get Facebook friends vocal pushback. Facebook provided democracy by allowing the New Statement to be vetted in virtual town hall forums and a vote of the friends. As the Internet evolves in the future perhaps we can look back at this governance vote as a sea change that social network users should have a say in the governance. However, since so few individuals ever read terms of service or privacy policies this may also be the only vote ever conducted on social networking governance.

What do you think?
 

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From April 16 through 23, 2009 the 200 million Facebook users have a chance to vote on their own governance, but the new governance will only be adopted if 30% of the Facebooks friends vote. This vote follows a virtual town hall meeting that allowed comments on the proposed governance terms. It seems to make sense that the users should have some control over their own social networking activities.

Friends Complain

Hundreds of thousands Facebook friends sent emails complaining about a new privacy policy in September 2006, and as a result Facebook decided not to adopt the new privacy policy. Earlier this year Facebook decided to retain all items posted forever, and another ground swell of opposition stopped these changes. These messages indicate a sense of ownership that Facebook users have about Facebook, which led Facebook to promise to be more transparent, and as a result the right to vote on governance.

All Facebook Users Should Review the Proposed Governance

Since few individuals ever bother to read terms of use, privacy policies, or click agreements, this is a novel opportunity for Web 2.0 to encourage the users to establish policies. This may have an impact on future policies for the Internet, so stay tuned for the election results.
 

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After teaching the Law of eCommerce since 2000 I have established my own perspective of 5 Big Bangs which propelled the Internet, three of which were described in a recent blog:

1st Big Bang- Invention of the punch card for the 1890 census by Dr. Herman Holerith (which led to the IBM);

2nd Big Bang- World War II invention of the first modern day computer for monitoring the tides to help with the June 6, 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy;

3rd Big Bang- Launch of the IBM Personal Computer in August 1981;

4th Big Bang- Distribution of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in July 1995 with Windows 95; and,

5th Big Bang- Web 2.0 with the advent of social networking as predicted by Tim O’Reilly in 2002.

Where is the Internet Going?

It’s very difficult to tell, but when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, no one could have predicted that I would use my cell phone to make a phone call atop the Great Wall of China in 2005. So where the Internet is going is not easy to predict, but as we observe changes it’s clear that the direction is not entirely what we may expect. In 1998 when Google launched no one could have predicted its success and that would account for more than 63% of all Internet searches, have vast wealth, and that Google would provide an Operating System among many accomplishments.

Web 2.0: FaceBook at its 200 Million User, Doubles Membership in 8 Months!

Big celebrations in August 2008 FaceBook when it registered its 100 million user, now about 8 months later about to register its 200 million user. Web 2.0 (my 5th Big Bang of the Internet) must be for real, but why has FaceBook been so successful? It must be fulfilling a social need. Without question when FaceBook when started in February 2004 it was aimed at college students, but today the fastest growing segment of its membership is the 35 year and older category. As social networking evolves other Internet activities might replace FaceBook, but for the time being the growth is mind-boggling. Please stay tuned for the 6th Big Bang!
 

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A report that Roman Catholic bishops in Italy are urging Italian Catholics to give up texting for lent sends a very interesting message. This suggestion is more than a no-meat Fridays, to stop communicating with texts for 5 weeks. However there’s more at play than it seems. Most Millennials communicate by text rather than phone or email, so one might wonder if this message was directed at trying to get Millennials more involved with their religion.

Political & Social Issue

All cell phone and many other chips rely on Coltan, short for columbite tantalite, and 80% comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. So the political side of the no texting for lent is to highlight the years of conflict in the Congo where apparently farmers and children have been enslaved to dig for Coltan and the monies have been used against the citizens.  As well many of the wildlife preserves are being destroyed. There is even a “No blood on my cell phone” campaign as part of a requested embargo against the use of Coltan.

Web 2.0 Issue

Without question the Web 2.0 world has changed the way in which we communicate, and hundreds of millions of individuals regularly spend time texting, sending emails, and posting information on FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and/or Twitter. So giving up texting for lent does not seem like a very pragmatic proposal since such a proposal is not much different than giving up talking to for lent. Actually FaceBook just announced that it was expanding the amount of information about each friend and instead of a 5,000 friend limit, there will be no limit. So clearly Web 2.0 will only expand and giving up any Web 2.0 for lent seems impractical.
 

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The UK’s plan to bring broadband Internet service to every home by 2012 is a very bold plan since based on recent reports only about 68% of the UK population are currently Internet users. In the meantime about 72% of the population of the US are Internet users. However these are not exactly apples to apples comparisons since these statistics do not tell what percentages of homes have broadband, rather these statistics shed light on the number of users. In the US cable television is a major provider of Internet access, and there are still dial-up users who are primarily outside of the heavily populated regions in rural America.

What about Rural America?

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and USDA (US Department of Agriculture) are working on a joint initiative to bring high speed Internet access to the rural US over broadband over power lines (BPL), satellite, wireless, and other means. However for the most part this effort not speeding along. Specifically this Blog is being written on a computer in the rural Texas (Milam County, Texas) which has dial-up only, not WIFI, or any other broadband Internet option available. This is reality for rural America where citizens still have white and yellow pages, which is something my home in Dallas has not had for many years.

Internet in More Homes

As we look to the future of the Internet more high speed Internet access is a necessity given the proliferation of eCommerce, and expansion of Web 2.0 into Web 3.0. Of course there’s also the age divide which is changing the use of eCommerce, now that FaceBook has more than 150 Million users, the demographics have changed so that a larger and larger percentage of users are 35 or older. It seems pretty clear that as our younger generations rely on the social networking and texting, everyone has to get with it, even in rural America. Not a surprise that on January 21, 2009 (day after the Inauguration) President Obama launched his YouTube site, but equally as interesting was the following week that the Pope launched his YouTube site. Clearly both the President and Pope know that the primary way to communicate is through the Internet. The UK is on the right path, and hopefully the US will not be far behind in having high speed Internet in every home by 2012.

What priorities should America have to bring high speed Internet access to rural citizens? To every home?
 

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