Alec Saunders SquawkBox

In a fascinating development, the Indian VoIP market (which was deregulated in 2002) now seems to be closing ranks again.  Call center operators, among others, will have to publish the names of the companies they do business with, and a wide ranging list of offshore operators like Skype and Vonage are banned. 

Om Malik writes: “For a country which views itself as part of Planet Technology, its government is failing to take into account the changing telecom and technology environment.” Tom Evslin goes further in his piece titled India Shoots Self in Foot, noting that you can’t do business with offshore factories that you can’t call.  The India Times has more detail also.

Short sighted, indeed.

My friend Rick Segal is back from two weeks in Antartica.  He’s posted some stunning photos of his trip.

Are you outraged by the actions of HP Chair Patricia Dunn?  A lot of people are, including Scoble.  Caught with her hand in the cookie-jar, so to speak, Patricia Dunn has been forced to resign over reasons of ethics and privacy.

Roll those big words around in your head for a minute.  Ethics. Privacy.

Patty Dunn is just the tip of the iceberg, and truth be told, what she did was undertandable albeit not legal.  Certainly one could argue that outing a leaky board member may have been the best thing for HP’s shareholders.

Robert, you oughta be a whole lot more outraged than you are, but not necessarily about Patty Dunn.  What you should be outraged about is that in America you really have no ability to protect your privacy.  None.  Moreover, corporate surveillance of the American public is rampant.  What Dunn did is only symptomatic of a much larger issue.

Have you ever given out your social security number as identification?  For instance, to apply for credit?  With 10 minutes of searching on Google I learned how to obtain your confidential credit report, and how to buy your social security number. I didn’t buy the report, but it certainly didn’t appear to be hard obtain that information.

That’s scary. Even so, it’s not nearly as spooky as the implications of some of the everyday things we all do.

Shop at Safeway, Albertsons or Costco?  Got a club card?  They know everything about how much you spend, and what you spend it on.  Maybe you’ve got a prescription for Lipitor, or any of a number of other cholesteral reducing drugs that you fulfill at their pharmacy.  Maybe you also have a fondness for marbled beef and red wine.  Safeway knows.  What will they do with that information? 

As it turns out, Safeway’s privacy policy is pretty good.  They acknowledge that they collect all this information, tell you how they will use it, and further commit not to share it with anyone except law enforcement.

Safeway does not sell or lease personally-identifying information to any other non-affiliated company, person or agency. Safeway will disclose personally-identifying information only if required to do so by law, or if requested to do so by a law enforcement agency in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation where such disclosure could be required by subpoena, search warrant or court order. Such request for information must be cleared by our Legal Department.

Costco’s privacy policy, however, offers no such assurances. Costco’s policy includes this statement.

we may disclose personal information in the good faith belief that we are lawfully authorized to do so, or that doing so is reasonably necessary to comply with legal process or authorities, respond to any claims, or to protect the rights, property or personal safety of Costco Wholesale, our customers, our employees or the public. Information about our customers, including personal information, may be disclosed or transferred as part of, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets or acquisition.

You know what’s particularly scary about Costco?  Like Safeway, they sell the nicely marbled steaks, the wine to go with them, and the cholesteral reducing drugs.  But Costco also sells health insurance. They know about your medical risk profile, and whether you’re taking care of yourself.

Albertson’s collects the same data.Their privacy policy tells you what they’re doing with your information today, but makes no assurances that they won’t share it, other than to say that they won’t sell it. 

That’s your personal information.  But Albertson’s and Costco are basically saying that it’s their data, and they can use it any way they please.  Is that ethical?

Deal with a bank?  Maybe you’ve got an overworked credit card that you’d like to keep private. Work out at a gym with a trainer?  Maybe you’re sensitive about your weight.  Buy books? How about that little book on dealing with … erectile disfunction … you bought last month… could be embarrassing if that got out!

Virtually every business collects personal information. In fact, some businesses, like Safeway, make it impossible for you to get a fair price for goods unless you divulge that information.  “What?  You don’t want to pay $5/gallon for milk?  Just get a club card, sir“.  You should have a right to know how they use that information, and to opt out of their data collection process, without penalty. 

Legislation has helped to provide reassurances to the citizens of many countries.  For instance, in Canada all businesses are required to publish a privacy policy, and the law says that you may not use collected information for any purpose other than what is written in that policy.  The EU has similar rules. Those rules makes sense.  Voluntary compliance, which is what you have in the US, doesn’t make sense.

So, forget about Patty Dunn, Robert.  Instead, push for sensible limits on what data corporations can collect, and how they can use that data.  Push your lawmakers to enact safeguards that will really make a difference to ordinary people, everywhere. 

The top story on Techmeme this morning is Warren Buffet’s decision to give his fortune away, much of it to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Buffet’s reasoning for supporting the Gates Foundation?  The organization was at scale, with great leadership.  In otherwords, in keeping with his own management philosophies, Buffet chose not to create another bureaucracy, but rather to leverage the organization already built by someone else.

Buffet plans to give 5% of his fortune away annually, and approximately 5/6th of that will go to the Gates Foundation so long as either Bill or Melinda are living.  His annual donation must be fully dispersed within two years.  He will also join the Board of Trustees of the Gates Foundation.

Buffet’s gift will more than double the annual disbursement of the Gates Foundation.  The foundation gives a little less than $1.5 billion annually. Buffet’s money will increase that by about $1.5 billion.  To put that in perspective, the annual budget of the UN is about the same.  The World Health Organizaton spends about a billion annually.   The International Red Cross, about $750 million.

The Gates Foundation is a private institution with the ability, and the legal requirement, to spend at the level of the largest international institutions.  And, as Don Dodge notes, it can spend at those levels without the bureacracy of the UN.

It’s mind boggling.

The papers have been talking a lot about the Al Gore documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. This morning’s Ottawa Citizen had a three page(!) article, and multiple sidebar articles.  This write up from the Sydney Film Festival in Australia is particularly good.  

Anyway, the movie is playing here in Ottawa, at the Bytown Cinema, until the 18th of June. We saw it, and have been discussing it all afternoon and over dinner. Some characterize this as a shockumentary, but to me it was relentlessly factual.  And so I say, wherever you are, go see this film.  This could be the turning point in the climate debate.  It’s that important, and it’s that good. And Gore, well, he’s wonderful - human, funny, persuasive.  America - would you had elected this man instead of Bush!

Here’s a Google link to more blog commentary.  A lot of it is like this:

From Australia: This is one of those films that ALL people should see, no matter which country they’re from.

From Greater Democracy: Who lost the Environment? Who lost 8 precious years that could have made a real difference?

From LadyJayne’s Blog: “An Inconvenient Truth” shows that it’s not too late to make progressive, effective, and constructive change in this country in terms of our political, moral, and natural environment, a change that will be positive for us, and the planet, too.