New FTC guidelines on advertising affects bloggers

The U.S. Fair Trade Commission has recently released new rules on advertising that appears in the form of endorsements and testimonials. This is one of those "the times they are a changing" moments given that these guidelines were last updated in 1980, my how the world has changed since then. There are many ways endorsements & testimonials show up which aren't so clearly ethical and the new technologies being developed offer new ways for us to communicate with each other. If the FTC were to remain limited by the old rules written before the Web was invented how would the FTC be able to regulate this new medium?

Let's think a moment about bloggers and endorsements.

Obviously some bloggers spend their blogging time writing about products and either tracking product press releases or doing reviews about products. There's nothing new about that and many magazines revolve around a similar vein of writing.

For decades there has been concern about slanted magazine reviews. That's why the original FTC guidelines came into being, right?

If the principle is "Caveat Emptor" it is up to the customer to decide whether or not to believe a given product review, right? But if payments or freebies provided by the manufacturer are not disclosed then how is the customer to know whether to take the review with a grain of salt? Requiring the reviewer to disclose stuff provided by the manufacturer makes for transparency.

For bloggers the FTC press release has this to say:

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.

Some examples about online payola:-

Belkin’s Online Review Payola Plot Thickens: "A Belkin employee was recently busted offering payment for positive reviews of a Belkin network router—whether or not the reviewer had even seen one"

NBC Analyst Admits Receiving Tech Payola: About a 2005 "payola scheme by NBC tech analyst Cory Greenberg surfaced Wednesday, in which he was receiving upwards of $15,000 a piece from technology companies to positively promote their products on NBC's Today Show."

Links: 

FTC to bloggers: Fess up or pay up

Links: 

FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

Links: 

FTC Plans to Monitor ‘Blogger Payola’

Links: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

Bush Administration proposes labeling for web sites with sexually explicit content

Attorney General Gonzales is proposing a mandatory labeling requirement for web sites publishing sexually explicit material. A web site operator not labeling their sexually explicit web site would face imprisonment.

See Gonzales calls for mandatory Web labeling law and U.S. attorney general calls for 'reasonable' data retention

This kind of discussion is not new, and the articles above give a history of the previous efforts along these lines. The big bugaboo that has people scared, of course, is will their children accidentally stumble across these sites. I've looked at some of those sites, and the raunch people engage in and look at it simply astonishing. Some of that stuff is clearly not for children, and it's quite possible to stumble across it.

e.g. "A second new crime would threaten with imprisonment Web site operators who mislead visitors about sex with deceptive "words or digital images" in their source code--for instance, a site that might pop up in searches for Barbie dolls or Teletubbies but actually features sexually explicit photographs."

One issue mentioned in the article is concerns by search engines. For example the government might decide to make a law requiring that search engines correctly index sexually explicit sites, and then correctly return results based on the sexually explicitness of the query. But, as the search engines pointed out, it's rather difficult to determine whether something is sexually explicit or not. And, in some cases, the raunchy crowd will reuse innocent words to have raunchy meanings.

The whole issue raises a whole range of freedom of speech considerations.

The people who publish and read/view the raunchy material certainly have a right to do so. That's called freedom of speech, but there's a principle I heard a few years ago that's very apropos. Your freedom to swing your fists stops at my nose.

Should their freedom to publish raunch stop somewhere before it reaches childrens eyes?

But, wait, there's more ..

For example, how can this preserve the right of medical researchers to discuss Breast Cancer?

For example, the Dirty Old Mens Association Intermational (DOMAI) exists to publish photographs of naked women. You might think, oh, they'll fall directly into this sexually explicit category. But, I challenge you to look through their site and find sexual explicitness. The purpose for that site is the celebration of beauty, specifically the beauty of the feminine form. They don't publish sexual pictures, but instead the pictures are of naked women in their beauty. Often the sexually explicit pictures are, to my eye, very degrading as it presents a naked woman purely as a sexual object. On the DOMAI site their pictures are very affirming of beauty and femininity.

I will say the proposed law is interesting by explicitly naming the kind of content which must be labeled.

In the past there was always a question over whether something is, or is not, pornographic. Like I said about the DOMAI site, there's a long tradition of non-pornographic artwork depicting naked women as beauty.

They are borrowing definitions from existing federal law: sexual intercourse of all types; bestiality; masturbation; sadistic or masochistic abuse; or lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person. Clearly those categories are easy to verify and enforce, unlike prior standards which.

The second article linked above is a little more chilling. It concerns requirements proposed to be placed on "internet service providers" requiring that "data" be retained for 90 days. They are claiming that the "failure" of ISP's to retain data is hampering investigations into criminal activity, including "gruesome sex crimes".

This may be very innocent and above board, but it also may be coming from the existing government plans to create a ubiquitous spying apparatus akin to Big Brother.

Again, there is a privacy consideration. In this case the "data" is our activities on various web sites, email we send and receive, even chatroom transcripts. The requirement is for that "data" to be retained, so that it can be handed over to government investigators.

Hurm...

Utopia? Maybe...

I just listened to an National Public Radio piece that presents one mans concept of utopia. Namely, individuals or small scale organizations working on small scale work projects.

The guy is a University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, also happens to oversee a blog, a music label and a microbrewery. He's written a book An Army of Davids : How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths, which I haven't read. But I am living what he's talking about, so with that let me write a few things.

In the NPR piece the situation is described thusly.

Up until the Industrial Revolution humans did most things on a small scale. A few people running a farm, or running a mill, etc. These were very human scaled organizations, he claims.

Then the Industrial Revolution happened and suddenly the scale of organizations had to expand dramatically. A cost effective factory for that time was huge, and employed thousands of people. To go along with it was the rise of huge corporations.

But, today, technology has come full circle to being able to enable individuals to work on small scale organizations.

An example is what I do with my web sites. I have a "day job" in a large corporation, but I also am a web site publisher and earn a tidy side income at that. Additionally I see a way to totally divorce myself from the large corporation, and instead operate several small operations each of which would provide part of my income.

In the interview they gave some more examples.

For example all the people making a living (partial or not) via sales through eBay.COM. He exemplified eBay as a wave of future business style. Another example was someone making custom guitars at home, and he uses eMachineShop.com for parts production.

The way eBay makes their money is through taking advantage of others doing what they want to do. This is drastically different from the large corporate style organization, where the organization exists to tell thousands of people what to do. There are dozens of companies making money through enabling others to do what they want. Google, for example, makes a lot of money from individuals like me who run AdSense advertising on their web sites.

I think, though, he's selling a bit of a pipe dream.

These individuals making their small organizations are riding on the back of some very large organizations. An individual selling stuff through eBay is absolutely dependant on eBay, as well as the package delivery industry (FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc). These are all very large companies who operate in the top-down style of telling their employees what to do.

Let's take another example. Suppose you have a great salsa recipe and you want to make and sell salsa. Go to any farmers market and you'll find several people living a similar dream. It's relatively simple, you need to pass health inspections, be able to operate a healthy kitchen and production facility, find FDA certified packaging, get a FDA certified label made showing the ingredients, etc. One could launch a salsa business with a small group of people, and then go to farmers markets or local Whole Foods stores to sell your product. If you keep working at it, you might eventually have national distribution and so on.

But, let's get back to the beginning. Where does your packaging come from? Are you going to make the packaging, or are you going to buy that? How big is the company who makes the packaging? Where do you buy the ingredients? The local farmer, or from an agribusiness?

What I'm getting at is that this utopia Glenn Reynolds holds out in front of us won't be there for all of us. Some of us will have to work in large organizations like UPS so that others of us can run our humanely-sized home businesses. And that's probably okay, because not everybody is inspired to do this. Many people seem content to go to work and be told what to do with their lives. If that's what they want to do, then more power to them.

U.S. Spies plan massive data sweep of Internet

There's this current story about massive snooping into telephone conversations by the NSA. The NSA and CIA and other spy agencies are supposed to turn their efforts on targets outside the U.S. but under Bush Administration edict they've been working inside the U.S., in opposition to U.S. law. Yes, the President has been breaking the law.

The conduct of the U.S. Administration is that this is not a war on Terror, but instead a war on Personal Freedom.

Consider: US plans massive data sweep Little-known data-collection system could troll news, blogs, even e-mails. Will it go too far? (Christian Science Monitor, February 09, 2006)

The article describes a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE), a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio.

The project it describes is very similar to the process of search engine companies like Google, Yahoo, Technorati, etc. It's to scoop up a vast amount of data from the Internet and to draw out extra information from it. The technical phrase is "data mining" which is a practice of taking one data source, and putting it to a different use. Data mining is widely performed in businesses.

For example credit card companies perform data mining to detect fraudulent use of credit cards. e.g. they might look for your card being used to make an abnormally large purchase, or a purchase made far from your normal area of activity. And if they see it, they could give you a phone call saying "we noticed suspicious activity, did you make purchase X on date Y".

So long as the ADVISE system is collecting publicly available data, is there a problem?

The difference here between the government activity and what, e.g. Google, would do with it is: The government is looking for "terrorists", and the government has people with guns who are known to use those guns to kill people.

The problem with the government's hunt for terrorists, is they've got a rather loose definition and they make mistakes. For example in the Extraordinary Rendition stories, one was a German tourist who the U.S. agents identified as Al Qaeda linked, they kidnapped him, flew him to Afghanistan, tortured him for months, eventually realized they mistakenly identified him, and dropped him off penniless in Kosovo. And for loose definitions of terrorism, we can think of the people arrested for "ecoterrorism" where they are taking their protests of e.g. logging activities to doing property damage and whatnot. Sure, commiting property damage is illegal and they should be punished, but labeling them as terrorists is going too far.

In other words, I think it's legal to collect data that's publicly available (e.g. published on a web site) and to make secondary uses of it. If it's good enough for Google or Technorati, then it's good enough for the U.S. Government. But there needs to be oversight and measurement to ensure they don't overstep themselves.

For example, what if they made a deal with Google or other search engines to capture some of the private search query data which the search engines have on hand. That is, each time you make a search engine query, the company running your preferred search engine receives your IP address, your web browser, your operating system, etc, along with the query terms. If you've registered with the search engine (e.g. signed into your "mail" account) then the search engine can know exactly who you are.

Now, that's private data which the search engine collects. One way they use it is to further tailor your search results based on past queries you've made. But what if they began handing that data over to the government, which the government would than incorporate into this ADVISE system?

Would you get a knock on the door just because you had a hankering to learn about terrorists and did a lot of google searches about activities done by terrorists? Or you wanted to see for yourself just how easy (or not) it is to get information on making nuclear bombs?

I want to close by reminding the reader of the Total Information Awareness system. TIA is/was a Department of Defense project to that acted as an umbrella over several inter-related projects, some of which would use data mining techniques of the kind described in the CS Monitor article. While a couple minor TIA projects were shut down, it's clear the bulk of them went forward, and that the intent of the Government for several years has been to create a technologically advanced system that can effectively track every action and look for "dangerous" patterns.

The TIA existed before the September 11, 2001 events which "changed everything". The TIA existed before the Bush administration. This is just an ongoing desire by government agencies to vastly step up their capabilities to spy on everyone.

Re: Do Internet companies need to be regulated to ensure they respect free expression ?

Reporters sans Frontiers has made a call for action/change about Internet companies that do business with repressive countries. Do Internet companies need to be regulated to ensure they respect free expression ? They cite several cases of Internet and Technology companies cooperating with repressive countries, for example Google and Yahoo filter search results based on blacklists provided by the countries in question.

In case you don't grasp the significance of this ... In the 1930's and 1940's IBM gave a lot of help to Hitlers government in Nazi Germany. They used the just-developed punched card machines (not quite computers, but close) to record and track information about Jews, so that they could more efficiently perform the Holocaust.

Todays computer equipment and technology are far more efficient and capable than the crude toys IBM used to help Nazi Germany commit the Holocaust. And, of course, that means any country that deploys their technology for repressive purposes, will be able to do so much more effectively than did Nazi Germany.

In a sense this is very simple. If these companies want to do business in those countries -- e.g. China is among these repressive countries, and China is a huge and burgeoning market which any technology company would be foolish to ignore -- then they have to do so within the laws of the country in question. In particular, under what justification would some company have the right to ignore the laws of some country in which they do business? None. Countries are supposed to trump companies.

But RSF makes a very interesting point. They cite several instances where technology companies cooperated with repressive countries, and claim those are violations of article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was proclaimed by the United Nations when it was founded and which is supposed to apply to everyone, including business corporations.

They offer several proposals that would limit "U.S. Companies" in what they can do inside a repressive country. For example

No US company would be allowed to host e-mail servers within a repressive country*. So, if the authorities of a repressive country want personal information about the user of a US company’s e-mail service, they would have to request it under a procedure supervised by US.

The activities seem geared to keeping equipment and services outside the repressive countries, so that repressive countries have to abide by U.S. law in order to take certain repressive actions. And, they say the list of repressive countries will be defined by the U.S. State Department.

I think they're pissing into the wind, but you have to admire the integrity with which they are approaching this.

However, as a practical matter, how can we trust the U.S. State Department to be a fair arbiter of repressive governments? We, the U.S., are actively engaged with China as a business partner, for example. And there is the matter of Indonesia where the U.S. actively helped them in repressing the East Timor peoples.

Also discussed by:

Dan Gillmor: A Dangerous Question and Smart Mobs: Regulate internet companies to make them respect freedom of speech: Reporters Without Borders

Blogging may be hazardous to your job - The Clarion-Ledger

If blogging can be hazardous to your job (as this article says: Blogging may be hazardous to your job By Amy Rosewater, The Baltimore Sun) just how is that so? And, don't we have freedom of speech engraved in the U.S. Constitution?

What the article talks about is bitching about co-workers etc on the blog. That people get fired over that.

Well... okay...

A lot of people feel irritated etc over their job. No doubt bitching about your boss or coworkers has happened throughout history. Maybe that's why Judas turned Jesus in to the authorities?

Seriously, what's important is to consider how you handle the inevitable irritation you have over co-workers and your boss. For example, therapy? There's a zillion ways of working through emotional duress that don't involve bitching in public.

When you're writing a blog it may seem you're in private. Maybe you've locked the door to the room, it's late at night, etc and nobody is around and you can pour out your deepest thoughts. But, really, who is your audience? Once that blog posting hits the web, it's public.

If you want to use writing as therapy, get one of those blank journaling books.

Do you really want to post your therapeutic writing for the whole world to see?

Hyped up panic on Jeremy Hermanns dot org about Alaska Flight #536 - Rapid De-Pressurization and Panic at 30K Feet

Boy what a mountain formed out of this mole-hill. Jeremy Hermans was on an Alaska Airlines flight that experienced sudden cabin depressurization shortly after takeoff and made an emergency landing safely without anybody being hurt. But what made this emergency different is that Jeremy took a few pictures and wrote about it on his blog. His blog posting is full of emotion we who weren't there can only guess at. If we haven't been through something similar, how can we gauge the validity of his emotions? In any case a stir of controversy is swirling around this blog posting, and a couple professional advisors of business blogging have weighed in.

From Dave Taylor we have: Alaska Airlines and the death of truth and from Teresa Valdez Klein we have: Alaska Airlines Attacked by Blog Mob with Pitchforks and Torches ... the two of them seem to be their own mini-echo-chamber.

What I see in the responses by Dave Taylor and Teresa Klein is a nutty attempt to corral bloggers into a journalistic mold. Say what? Blogging is an individual thing and is practiced by each blogger in their own way. Blogging does not have to be a journalistic endeavor, but someone can certainly approach blogging in that way.

For example they talk about fact checking. You expect professional journalists to do fact checking, but that's too much to expect of bloggers. If there's any commonality to the practice of blogging, it's that a blog posting is very much about what's known in the present moment. One of the commenters to Dave Taylors posting said it very well:

Debbie seems to be suggesting that bloggers have some sort of obligation to contact companies to get their side of the story, but I don't think that flys very far in the blogosphere. For most of us, Blogging is 110% about expressing our *own* opinions. If we *happen* to mention a few odd facts interspersed in our opinions, then of course we should do a diligent job of verifying facts, to the extent that it is easily within our means. But if time or other constraints preclude a thorough vetting on facts vs. suspicions, we do the best we can. That's a key difference between blogging and journalism, regardless of whether you consider either to be a professional or amaeur activity.

Another meme being tossed around is about "the credibility of the blogosphere is lowered a couple of notches". That's treating the "blogosphere" as one whole, and expecting all bloggers to be tarnished or polished the same way. But blogging is practiced (generally) by individuals acting on their own. Each individual blogger has their own reputation and approach to truth. How can there be a "credibility of the blogosphere" when it's a mass of individuals?

An example rumbling in my head is one which Dave is going to be very aware of. I know of Dave from his Usenet background (especially on soc.singles) and have met him once many years ago at a soc.singles event in the Bay Area. The point is I know that Dave is very intimately familiar with Usenet history, if only because he had a big role in making part of that history.

Jeremy's blog posting just reminds me of the same kind of rambling threads of discussion. One persons posting might somehow incite a long thread of followups, debating fine points of the truth of the original posting, devolving into name calling, or nitpicking over spelling, or accusing each other of being a shill, etc. It was typical of Usenet, and it is very interesting seeing it all distilled into one page like this. In a way Blogs are to this Internet era what Usenet was to the 80's version of the Internet.

Having lived through the 80's and some of the 90's on Usenet (I used to be in the Usenet backbone committee), I'm sure there's something about human psychological processes that make this kind of discussion thread. To wish that the public would act in a more truth-centered fact-checking mode is like pissing into the wind, or like that apocryphal story of the old King of Norway (Canute?) yelling at the ocean waves to be quiet.

Dave Taylor, with your Usenet history, you should know better. But maybe you were one of those who always took the fact-checking-demander-of-citations side of the argument?

One of the frequent debate techniques on Usenet was for someone to demand "what is the citation that justifies the assertion you made"? Usenet, like blogging, is more akin to people chatting in the hallway. Since when do people chatting in the hallway give citations?

On the other hand some bloggers clearly try to be journalists. Again, we all approach our blogging in different ways.

Job descriptions add ability to blog, aid PR

Corporate blogging is on the rise. The big sign given in this article is that some job postings are now asking for an "ability to blog". That's certainly a sign ... Job descriptions add ability to blog, aid PR (Mary Jacobs, Dallas Morning News, Dec. 31, 2005 12:00 AM) The way Mary Jacobs spins this story, bloggers have been beating up on corporations for so long, and now it's time for corporations to bring some of them inside the corporate walls and use their knowledge of blogging practices for corporate benefit.

"Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective," a recent BusinessWeek article declared. "They're a prerequisite."

... "A company that gets a blog needs to know that it's informal and involves give-and-take," said Tom Mighell, a veteran blogger who is senior counsel and litigation technology support coordinator at Cowles & Thompson in Dallas.

"You need to be willing to push the envelope a little bit and show that you're willing to share with your public."

... Currently, only 4 percent of major U.S. corporations offer public blogs, according to a survey by New York research firm eMarketer. Still, ads for blogging jobs are turning up on online job boards, and many expect the field to grow.

Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki - Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki

Here's a useful resource to help understand the scope of blogging by corporations. Corporate blogging is distinct from personal blogging in that the blogger is writing for the benefit of the corporation. Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki This is a list of the Fortune 500 companies who have blogging activities.

Re: Federal law may make blogging at work illegal

I have in front of me an article with a misleading title, but talking about something with wide ranging consequences. The U.S. Federal Election Commission oversees the conduct of U.S. elections. Over the last year or two they've been mulling the role of blogging in politics, and some bloggers have been really concerned over whether a bungling government agency might accidently strangle blogging.

See, it's clear that some political bloggers are being paid under the covers to promote political agendas. You might think that falls under "free speach", but it's really paid advertising. There's an existing rule that paid political advertising needs to be declared to the FEC and also carry notices as to who placed the advertising. This helps the public in interpreting the message.

Federal law may make blogging at work illegal Law falls under campaign-finance reform (By: Justin Malvin, California Aggie, December 9, 2005)

The article refers to this blog posting: The Reformers' Trojan Horse: Killing the Office Blogger ... and I think it's fair to summarize that blog posting as one mans theory and personal interpretation of a rule proposal being made by the FEC.

The danger proposed is this ... the FEC proposed rule that is cited limits an employee of a company to blogging (on company time, using company equipment) for more than an hour per week. According to a quote in the California Aggie article, this is just an extension of an existing rule about employee use of company time and equipment. And, to my eye this is a very benign rule as one would expect employers to be really concerned about employees blogging while on the clock.

To my eye they're making a mountain out of a molehill, and along the way trying to smear the FEC for some reason.

It's clear that while an employee is "on the clock" and using company equipment, they should be performing their job. What's the big deal?

Especially as one big concern in election law is a corporation using their employees as political activists. Suppose a company wanted to influence an election? One way is to tell your employees "blog supportively of candidate X" and lead them to believe candidate X will be good for their jobs. For example a few years ago when the push to expense stock options was being made, Scott McNealy sent an email to Sun's employees (where I work) exhorting us to support efforts to prevent that rule from being enacted. He claimed it was an important part of how we get paid, but I wonder also just how much his personal interest swayed his opinion (as a huge part of his "salary" is stock options).

I think political blogging does need some attention by the regulators. There is a huge amount of room for political blogging to affect elections. The 2004 election cycle was a prime example with bloggers playing a big role in taking down several big figures, and in general playing a big role in shaping the debate. I think that bloggers who are being paid by a political organization to blog need to declare it both to the FEC and in a banner on their blog, and that doing so would be a simple extension of existing laws.

At the same time there's a vast quantity of blogging which isn't political and doesn't need FEC regulations. So I expect the FEC to be careful in defining just what blogging the rules apply to.

The CIA and Open Source and Blogging, oh my

Boy, this is strange. I suppose Corporate Transparency as a meme is traversing into all corners of society, including the CIA. You think of the CIA as the poster child of secrecy and closed access. Well, actually, I'd think the NSA is even more the poster child, but then the NSA is so secretive nobody knows much about them, unlike the CIA.

Anyway, here's the deal:

CIA using its own blogs to gather, analyze information (By Susan B. Glasser, The Washington Post, November 27, 2005)

The article says the CIA has a blogging website. It's tasked with publishing news tidbits from around the world. It is called the "Open Source Center" and began life in 1941 as the Foreign Broadcast Information Service. The tasking then was the monitoring and translation of "media" from around the world.

Given the discussion in the article, they've changed focus somewhat. They're continuing to monitor and translate media but broadened the media to include the newfangled stuff on the Internet. For example, the article says they have a blog on blogging, that is, studying the blogging scene on the Internet.

The site is here: https://www.fbis.gov/

Curiously on my way into the site was a dialog saying my browser couldn't verify the identity of the site. You'd think the CIA with the full power and weight of the U.S. government behind it ought to be able to have a properly registered HTTPS certificate, yes?

To see them use the phrase "Open Source Center" tweaks me as it does timboucher.com. To me, one who works in the computer industry, "Open Source" has a specific meaning. Namely, an object developed in the open, whose documentation, workings, implementation, and more are available to anybody, can be copied and modified by anybody. The term originated with computer software, but the process can be applied to anything.

I suspect the CIA has a different meaning in mind. I suspect for them "Source" means their Intelligence Sources, hence an "Open Source" might be a source from the open communications in the world such as news media or blogs. Hence a "Closed Source" might require the typical cloak-and-dagger operations you typically associate with the CIA.

In any case, the website has a banner saying

Welcome to the website of the Open Source Center. OSC provides foreign media reporting and analysis to policymakers, government institutions and strategic partners. We deliver targeted, timely and authoritative open source intelligence for analysis, operations and policymaking.

And further goes on to insist the site has protected access, that access to the site will be monitored, etc. All that's on the front page are these warnings, a login screen, and a "Request Account" screen. And clicking on that button tells me to indicate my affiliation giving me this list of choices:

• US Government Employee
• US Government Contractor
• State and Local Government Employees
• State and Local Government Contractor
• BBC Monitoring Employee
• Foreign Liaison with US Government

Sigh, I'm none of those. However the "BBC Monitoring Employee" choice is curious. Do you suppose the BBC is part of Big Brother after all?

Here's what GlobalSecurity.org has to say about BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk/top.htm)

The proliferation of radio and television broadcasting in recent years has significantly increased the importance of media monitoring as a prime source of economic and political open source intelligence. BBC Monitoring scans radio, television and news agencies in over 140 countries, providing fast, reliable information in a variety of ways. It provides a range of commercially available services, and operates in conjunction with the CIA Foreign Broadcast Information Service. The Research and Information Unit at BBC Monitoring is dedicated to collecting and verifying data on political parties, events and leading political figures throughout the world.

I find it curious the same use of the "open source intelligence" phrase as above. Perhaps my guess above was correct?

Dennis Hastert, U.S. Speaker of the House, is now a blogger

On the official Speaker of the House web site, Dennis Hastert has started a blog.

So far there's two entries. There's no RSS feed, that I can find, which will limit the impact. But then there's plenty of places where an RSS feed would be fabulous, such as their "newsroom" page, but the RSS feed is lacking.

Attack bloggers on the loose???

There's a lovely piece in Forbes magazine slamming the blogging community. Yet the article itself is a prime example of the over-the-top slam story that's lacking in the kind of credibility you get when you check your facts carefully.

Attack of the Blogs (Daniel Lyons, 11.14.05, forbes.com, registration required)

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.

And with that bit of distortion as the foundation for the article, can we expect fair and balanced journalism?

The article leads off with the story of Gregory Halpern and the woes of his company. His company offered several products for sale, and was going fine until a blogger latched on:

Then the bloggers attacked. A supposed crusading journalist launched an online campaign long on invective and wobbly on facts, posting articles on his Web log (blog) calling Halpern "deceitful,""unethical,""incredibly stupid" and "a pathological liar" who had misled investors. The author claimed to be Nick Tracy, a London writer who started his one-man "watchdog" Web site, our-street.com, to expose corporate fraud. He put out press releases saying he had filed complaints against Circle with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

The result of the "attack" has been a drastic decline in the company stock price, their deal with Nestle never came through, etc. The "journalist" turned out to be an out of work stock analyst who later was indicted and convicted in stock a pump-and-dump scheme.

Okay, fine, perhaps Halpern and his company are innocent victims. But is "bloging" the culprit here? The whole slant of the article is to label bloggers as a vicious horde out to damage and destroy for some kind of evil ends. But is that true?

A blog is merely a web site of a particular shape and functionality. The fake "journalist" mentioned above could have done the same damage using a regular web site. That he used blog software has nothing to do with the effect of what he did.

For example here's another section of the article:

"Bloggers are more of a threat than people realize, and they are only going to get more toxic. This is the new reality," says Peter Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek, a Cincinnati firm that sifts through millions of blogs to provide watch-your-back service to 75 clients, including Procter & Gamble and Ford. "The potential for brand damage is really high," says Frank Shaw, executive vice president at Microsoft's main public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom. "There is bad information out there in the blog space, and you have only hours to get ahead of it and cut it off, especially if it's juicy."

These people are confused ... Sure, there probably is bad information out there. But it doesn't matter whether it's a blog or not. Blogs are not the enemy.

Some companies now use blogs as a weapon, unleashing swarms of critics on their rivals. "I'd say 50% to 60% of attacks are sponsored by competitors," says Bruce Fischman, a lawyer in Miami for targets of online abuse. He says he represents a high-tech firm thrashed by blogs that were secretly funded by a rival; the parties are in talks to settle out of court. One blog, Groklaw, exists primarily to bash software maker SCOGroup in its Linux patent lawsuit against IBM, producing laughably biased, pro-IBMcoverage; its origins are a mystery (see box, p. 136).

In other words, this is the same old process (corporate PR warfare) moved into a new arena.

Corporations have been slamming each other for years. Faked up slam stories have been circulated for years. PR firms have for years specialized in making spin and counter spin work to create or destroy public image. There's nothing new here, it's the same old practices clothed in new technology.

But here's one of the few interesting thoughts in the article:

Google and other services operate with government-sanctioned impunity, protected from any liability for anything posted on the blogs they host. Thus they serve up vitriolic "content" without bearing any legal responsibility for ensuring it is fair or accurate; at times they even sell ads alongside the diatribes. "We don't get involved in adjudicating whether something is libel or slander," says Jason Goldman, a manager at Google's blogging division. In squabbles between anonymous bloggers and victims Google sides with the attackers, refusing to turn over any information unless a judge orders it to open up. "We'll do it if we believe we are required to by law," he says.

There are several large blog hosting services such as Google (Blogger.com), TypePad, LiveJournal and Movable Type plus others. What this paragraph suggests is that perhaps the blog hosting services ought to be held accountable for the statements of the people for whom they host blogs.

Okay, let's ponder this for a moment.

At first blush the attraction to operating a blog is one has a virtual soapbox from which to speak to the world. Everybody has their own message to bring to the world (as I discuss here), and not everybody's message is one of love and light. Further, there are many messages to speak to the world that the corporatists would find damaging to their precious businesses. Hence, it would behoove a blog hosting service to not censor what the users of the service write.

They might not get many customers to their blog hosting service if they were very heavy-handed in censoring what the bloggers write.

For example the blogger.com terms of service spell it out pretty well.

5. PRIVACY POLICY ... It is Pyra's policy to respect the privacy of Members. Therefore, Pyra will not disclose to any third party Member's name or contact information. Pyra will also not monitor, edit, or disclose the contents of a Member's information unless required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (1) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on Pyra; (2) protect and defend the rights or property of Pyra; or (3) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of BTS members or the public; (4) fix or debug problems with the Blogger software/service.

... 6b. CONTENT RESPONSIBILITY Member acknowledges and agrees that Pyra neither endorses the contents of any Member communications nor assumes responsibility for any threatening, libelous, obscene, harassing or offensive material contained therein, any infringement of third party intellectual property rights arising therefrom or any crime facilitated thereby.

... 12. MEMBER CONDUCT ... (2) not to use the Service for illegal purposes; ... Member agrees not to transmit through the Service any unlawful, harassing, libelous, abusive, threatening, or harmful material of any kind or nature. Member further agrees not to transmit any material that encourages conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law or regulation. Attempts to gain unauthorized access to other computer systems are prohibited.

...

The way I read the policy, the intent is to portray blogger.com as a soapbox from which people can write pretty much what they want within some reasonably loose bounds of acceptibility. However one of the restrictions is against posting libelous or abusive material, so if blogger.com were to adhere to their publicly claimed policies then they would cancel blogs which are deemed libelous or abusive. What's the problem, then?

Not that one really needs blogger.com to launch a blog. It's trivially easy to set up a blog with blogger.com, but it's only slightly harder to do so with a regular web hosting company.

That is, suppose someone dearly wanted to be posting abusively libelous material. Suppose blogger.com were hardline about terminating accounts of people who post abusively libelous material? How would that someone go about posting their abusively libelous material? Simple ... they go to any of the dozens of web hosting companies, get an account, install blog software, and they're online with a blog.

Why should the hosting company be held liable for the actions of one of their customers?

Let's take a physical world example. Say a drug dealer was renting a storefront as a cover for their drug dealing operation. Is the building owner responsible? No. When the police capture the drug dealer, would the building owner also be accused of any crime? No.

That's the kind of arrangement we have going on here. Hosting companies are operating a kind of rental operation, where they run computers and offer people the space to store their web sites. Why should the hosting company be held liable for what their customers are doing? Yet, that's what the Forbes article suggests, that the hosting company should be liable.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) blogging information resource

EFF: Fighting for Bloggers' Rights (http://www.eff.org/bloggers/

If you're a blogger, this website is for you.

EFF's goal is to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger, to let you know you have rights, and to encourage you to blog freely with the knowledge that your legitimate speech is protected.

To that end, we have created the Legal Guide for Bloggers, a collection of blogger-specific FAQs addressing everything from fair use to defamation law to workplace whistle-blowing.

Should your company have a corporate blogging policy?

Corporations are seemingly driven by the policy statement. The policy statement lays out certain behaviors and expectations by the corporation of its employees. I suppose they might serve the same role as "laws" in governments.

So, we've entered the brave new world. The latest gift (?boondoggle?) the technological wizards have brought us is the "Blog" (web log).

While blogs are nothing more than websites organized in a specific fashion, they are catching on like crazy. They enable people to more easily publish websites, plus blogs have a built in community-forming system where people can connect blog postings to other blog postings. This has been wonderful to watch, and lowers the barrier to entry of individual people becoming providers of Internet content, rather than just passive destinations to which content is delivered.

'Corporate blogging policy? What blogging policy?' UK bosses keeping staff in the dark about blog behaviour (By Jo Best, silicon.com, Published: Monday 26 September 2005)

The article has its perspective based in the UK, but probably applies to anywhere. Blogging is such a new thing that most corporate bosses might not have caught on. The question is, do corporate bosses really need to care?

I think this question depends on the content of the blogging. And, that the question also is not far removed from other already existing policies governing writings and speach by employees.

There's already a tradition that employees typically do not disclose certain corporate information such as product details, price lists, discussion of defects. That is, unless they're specifically blessed by the corporate bosses to do so. That should apply to nearly any blog written by an employee, just as it would apply to any other employee speech.

At issue is the corporations limitation on what is otherwise peoples right to freedom of speech.

In practice it's a little fuzzy when and where corporations can or should limit their employees blogging. For example if the blog postings are unrelated to the employees work or the companies products, then the corporation should have no control over what the employee writes. But this is just like an employee who writes books in their spare time.

Similarly there's a distinction based on where the blog is posted. If it's posted on a company owned web site, then the employee is effectively speaking on company property as an employee of the company. In such a case one could say the employee is speaking for the company, and anything the employee says can be interpreted as a statement by the company. Hence blogs on a company web site would be under control of the corporate blogging policy.

'How to blog about your boss and not get sacked' New guide aims to turn bloggers into P45 dodgers (By Jo Best, silicon.com, Published: Monday 11 April 2005) ... short article referring to the EFF guide: How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else) (Published April 6, 2005, Updated May 31, 2005, eff.org)

Should you want to blog anonymously ...

Blogging and Running Your Website Anonymously - An Introduction

It's a set of recommendations by someone who says:

I blog everyday. I blog about my company. I enjoy talking about stuff that could get me fired. The hot and sexy stuff that is dangerous is what draws tons of people to my blog everyday. By using the tools listed above (and a lot of common sense), I exercise my freedom to whine and moan and groan and complain. All in the safety of my own blog.

EFF's guide to anonymous blogging

I have mixed feelings about total anonymity. While I'm alarmed by the massive intrusions on privacy going on around us in our society, anonymity is also the refuge of rascals.

For example, one thing that makes the virus problem on MS Windows so insane is the easy anonymity with which the virii can be distributed. If there were strong accountability in the email system then virus writers, spammers, etc, would think twice or thrice about distributing their "wares".

On the other hand, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) clearly sees this differently.

How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else) (Published April 6, 2005 - EFF.ORG)

Here is their warning:

If you blog, there are no guarantees you'll attract a readership of thousands. But at least a few readers will find your blog, and they may be the people you'd least want or expect. These include potential or current employers, coworkers, and professional colleagues; your neighbors; your spouse or partner; your family; and anyone else curious enough to type your name, email address or screen name into Google or Feedster and click a few links.

The point is that anyone can eventually find your blog if your real identity is tied to it in some way. And there may be consequences. Family members may be shocked or upset when they read your uncensored thoughts. A potential boss may think twice about hiring you. But these concerns shouldn't stop you from writing. Instead, they should inspire you to keep your blog private, or accessible only to certain trusted people.

Now, I don't know about you, but for me blogging is a way to publish articles and writing. It's not necessarily "uncensored thoughts".

Their general recommendation? Blog anonymously. That would mean, find a vehicle through which you can blog without giving away any identifying factors of yourself.

In practice being totally anonymous is going to be difficult. For example if you register a domain name, you must provide name and address information. So if you blog on your own domain, like I'm doing, then someone need only look up the domain registration to find out who it is writing. But the EFF kindly points to a couple of anonymyzing services.

One of their recommendations is really weird. Namely, to make your content ungooglable. Okay, strange, because to my eyes you want google to find you because then your writings are useful because they are findable.

It's as if the writers of these recommendations believe a) that everybody who blogs is writing stream of conscious uncensored thoughts, that 3) those uncensored thoughts will offend people, q) that offended people will fire or shun the blogger.

I believe that the place to write uncensored thoughts is in a diary you keep private somewhere. They don't belong being plastered on the Internet for the world to see. That still leaves a lot of room for blog usefulness, as a blog is merely a web site where the articles are arranged in chronological order. For my purposes it is perfectly fine to expose who I am, though I am careful of exposing things like my address or phone number.

On the other hand, a "whistleblower" might find an anonymous blog a convenient avenue to blow their whistle in safety. There are many whose life purpose involves exposing information that the authorities in charge would find dangerous. If they had to identify themselves in order to publish the information, they would be threatened. In such cases the anonymizing services are entirely appropriate.