[Air-l] FOAF and privacy

[elw at stderr.org]

John Paolillo and Sarah Mercure and I (along with a few others) have had 
many, many conversations about the way in which end-user privacy and FOAF 
relate.  Stefan Decker, do you read this list?


There are a few hints of that in the paper that John and I did for the 1st 
annual workshop on friend of a friend in Fall 04, and a few more (muted 
hints) in the paper from ISWC last October.

You can find both of those via links in the sidebar at www.blogninja.com

We'd be happy to talk to you offlist (or onlist) about your thoughts or 
concerns re: privacy as it pertains to social software data exchange.


As an aside, i *strongly* disagree with people who perceive that 'the data 
genie is already out of the bottle', and use that as a logical basis for 
stating that it is okay to use people's demographic and personal data 
however one likes.  [We've heard this argument from people on numerous 
occasions, now.] I think that kind of ethical blindness is... well, 
extremely shortsighted and ill-considered.


--elijah



On Fri, 17 Feb 2006, Rowin Young wrote:

> Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 11:59:17 +0000
> From: Rowin Young <rowin.young at strath.ac.uk>
> Reply-To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> To: "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> Subject: [Air-l] FOAF and privacy
> 
> Hello all,
>
> I wondered if anyone had any opinions or could recommend good material on
> the FOAF (friend of a friend) project, particularly in relation to the
> privacy of the people who are listed on (so called!) friends' foaf files
> without their knowledge or permission.
>
> I did find one very interesting article at
> http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/events/foaf-galway/papers/fp/technical_and_
> privacy_challenges/, but one thing that struck me was the quite aggressive
> tone (I felt) it took in the discussion of privacy, stressing that the data
> owner has the right to do what they want with their data, and the data
> subject has no rights over information about them.  I'd be interested to
> know if this is the case in UK law as well as US.
>
> Many thanks for any thoughts or insights on this!
>
> Dr Rowin Young
> University of Strathclyde
>
>
>
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