Social Networks: Thinking of the Children

By Nicole

Flickr Creative Commons| MichelleMcCormack |

By Linton Weeks | NPR | July11, 2011 |

Andy Affleck is debating whether to allow his 11-year-old son, Jack, to have a Facebook account. Director of engineering at a small tech company near Providence, R.I., Affleck says he feels very strongly “that children need to be socialized in the online world just as much as they do in the real world.”

So Affleck the elder, who ponders these things on his Webcrumbs blog, is thinking about creating a Facebook page for Affleck the younger.

It all began last fall when young Affleck was playing FreeRealms, an online fantasy game, and wanted to be able to chat with his fellow gamers. He also was annoyed by the limits to interaction on the designed-for-kids Webkinz site. And he got interested in videoconferencing with friends on Skype. Then he told his dad he wanted a Facebook account.

If Andy Affleck does sign Jack up for Facebook, he won’t be alone. Despite ominous reports of cyberbullying and “Facebook depression” among young people, the number of parents who are cool with their children — between the ages of 10 and 12 — having a social media account has doubled in a year.

It is legally verboten — by the Children’s Online Protection Act of 1998 — for a website to collect personal information or track the cybertrail of anyone younger than 13, without parental consent. Rather than create software to prevent digital tracking, most sites insist that users be of age. Many general-interest, multigenerational social media websites — like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter — solve the problem by requiring that all users be at least 13 years old.

Still, kids will be kids. And recently it has come to light that millions of young people are flouting the rules to create accounts on the social networking sites. According to the New York Times, a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project reported that 38 percent of 12-year-olds in the United States participate in social networks. And in June 2011, Consumer Reports estimated that about 7.5 million people who use Facebook are younger than 13.

Facebook — the mother of all social networks with some 500 million users — makes it clear when you sign up for the service: “If you are under age 13, please do not attempt to register for Facebook or provide any personal information about yourself to us.”

In some homes, parents set up accounts in their kids’ names and, perhaps using shared passwords, monitor the activity of their children. In others, young folks are so techno savvy, they easily slip around the rules, lie about their ages and set up their own accounts under false pretenses.

This can open up a world of possibilities — and perils.

Online Hobnobbing

The many dangers of social media for young people are well publicized:

• Predators are on the prowl for vulnerable and innocent users. In one extreme example, police arrested a 25-year-old West Virginia man in February who was using Facebook to set up a meeting with a 10-year-old for sex. According to the Charleston Daily Mail, the girl was pretending to be older — 14 or 15 — and police said her mother knew of and monitored her account.
• Phishing scams, camouflaged as emails or messages from someone trustworthy, can illicitly solicit a child’s personal or financial information — which can lead to identity theft and invasion of privacy.
• Cyberbullying — a broad term encompassing the sending of mean messages, the exclusion of someone from a group and the duping of someone into revealing personal information and other insidious behavior — abounds on many social media sites.

A report in April — released by the American Academy of Pediatrics — titled The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents and Families even warns of “Facebook depression,” a condition caused by obsessing over the social network.

But the academy also says social media can be beneficial to younger users. When the report was published, co-author Gwenn O’Keeffe said, “For some teens and tweens, social media is the primary way they interact socially, rather than at the mall or a friend’s house. … A large part of this generation’s social and emotional development is occurring while on the Internet and on cellphones. Parents need to understand these technologies so they can relate to their children’s online world — and comfortably parent in that world.”

Children using social media should be educated about the possible pitfalls of interaction with strangers, according to the report, and they should be monitored by parents. But the findings also lay out the positive effects of virtual interaction: “Engagement in social media and online communities can enhance communication, facilitate social interaction and help develop technical skills.”

Online hobnobbing can enable youngsters to discover opportunities for community service and volunteering “and can help youth shape their sense of identity,” the report states. “These tools also can be useful adjuncts to — and in some cases are replacing — traditional learning methods in the classroom.”

Use of social media has become so widespread among young people, according to the report, many pediatricians have added this question to their patient forms: “Are you on Facebook?

That’s a question that Facebook would like everyone, of all ages, to answer with a “yes.”

‘A Really, Really Young Age’

Speaking at an education entrepreneurs’ gathering recently, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said social networking websites can be helpful and educational tools for children under 13.

“My philosophy is that for education, you need to start at a really, really young age,” Zuckerberg said. He said he would like for young kids to be on Facebook, but for now the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act makes it unfeasible.

Facebook has no plans to create a social network space for people younger than 13, says the company’s online safety specialist Nicky Jackson Colaco.

“Facebook is currently designed for two age groups — 13- to 18-year-olds and 18 and up — and we provide extensive safety and privacy controls based on the age provided,” Colaco says. “However, recent reports have highlighted just how difficult it is to implement age restrictions on the Internet and that there is no single solution to ensuring younger children don’t circumvent a system or lie about their age.”

“There appears to be some belief that the age of 13 is magical — that children with no other socialization will magically be able to handle the online world and, by the same token, kids younger cannot. What is missing from all of this is parental judgment.”- Andy Affleck

Educating users, Colaco says, “is critical to ensuring that people of all ages use the Internet safely and responsibly. We agree with safety experts that communication between parents or guardians and kids about their use of the Internet is vital. We believe that services such as Facebook have a role to play in encouraging this.”

She points to recent announcements by Facebook about social reporting and its Family Safety Center as testimony “to our ongoing efforts to ensure we are giving detailed and helpful advice to help support these conversations.”

After all, Colaco says, Facebook is based on a real-name culture, where people’s actions are associated with their true names and identities. Users are encouraged to report abuses. And, according to Facebook’s terms of service: “If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from a child under age 13, please contact us.”

‘Back Alleys Of The Web’

Tony Bradley, writing in PCWorld, suggests that Facebook should accommodate younger users by developing additional protections. “Implementing a privacy-by-default model would be a great start,” Bradley writes. “But, Facebook should also provide controls so that only parents can change privacy settings or accept friend requests on accounts for minors, or something to that effect.”

In the end, Bradley writes, “Facebook is far less shady than a lot of other online destinations that kids can get to just fine without parental consent. As far as I’m concerned, I would rather have my kid safely entrenched in Facebook than out wandering the ‘back alleys’ of the Web.”

That is pretty much the conclusion that Andy Affleck has reached. He has also decided that 13 — though set by Congress — is a fairly arbitrary age limit. “There appears to be some belief that the age of 13 is magical,” he says, “that children with no other socialization will magically be able to handle the online world and, by the same token, kids younger cannot. What is missing from all of this is parental judgment.”

Affleck says, “My son is intellectually ready to handle what is out there — at least the walled-garden portions of it such as Facebook and the like. What I believe all of these sites should have is the ability for parents to sign off on their children’s membership, possibly with an agreement that below a certain age they will take an active interest in what they are doing and provide guidance.”

There are other social networks besides Facebook. Some are even designed for the under-13 crowd.

But, says Parry Aftab, a lawyer who specializes in Internet privacy issues, “unless we find alternatives to Facebook for preteens, we will continue to have kids lying about their age, or their parents allowing them to lie, to join Facebook and other full-sized social networks. Also, no one knows who a ‘parent’ is. How would we prove that anyone is the parent — or legally authorized parent — of a preteen?”

Aftab is the author of A Parent’s Guide to the Internet and founder of the online children’s safety organizations WiredSafety and StopCyberbullying. She has advised many social network sites, including Facebook.

Striking the right balance between fun and safety on a social network site for kids can be a Goldilocks-type challenge, Aftab says. “Sites err on too hot or too cold; few do it just right. Several interesting social networks for preteens were created, only to be out of business 10 months later.”

And, to boot, kids don’t necessarily want to hang out with younger kids. They want to be around older kids. “It’s time that we understand that like it or not, preteens want social networking,” she adds. “And until or unless Facebook creates special family accounts or a special Facebook for preteens, there is a need and a market.”

Google Accuses China of Violating W.T.O. Rules on Internet Access

By Kee

Flickr Creative Commons | Beijing Patrol

By Keith Bradsher | New York Times | November 16, 2010

HONG KONG — Google has released a policy paper contending that China violates its World Trade Organization commitments by limiting Chinese Internet users’ access to information providers outside China. The assertion, which was published online Monday but went largely unnoticed until bloggers started writing about it Tuesday, is the latest sign of Google’s ever greater willingness to confront censorship in China.

“Invocation of W.T.O. rules suggests that Google is fed up, and willing to play hardball,” said James Seymour, a specialist in Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  

Bob Boorstin, Google’s public policy director, made the free-trade link forcefully in a posting on Google’s public policy blog, although he stopped short of mentioning China specifically.“It’s pretty wonky stuff,” he wrote in a statement posted on the blog with a link to the paper, “but the premise is simple: In addition to infringing human rights, governments that block the free flow of information on the Internet are also blocking trade and economic growth.”Mr. Boorstin went on to call for Western officials to challenge trade barriers to information. “In the paper we’re releasing today, we urge policy makers in the United States, European Union and elsewhere to take steps to break down barriers to free trade and Internet commerce,” Mr. Boorstin wrote.The policy paper said that more than 40 governments around the world now restrict freedom of information on the Internet — which it said was more than a 10-fold increase in the last decade of governments with such restrictions. Many of the examples of restrictions came from Google’s experience in China.Until January, accommodating China’s policy, Google censored search results delivered to computers in China. Stepping back from that approach, the company in March curtailed its operations in China and began directing Internet users there to its site in Hong Kong. A former British colony, Hong Kong maintains freedom of speech and other individual liberties despite its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.Since March, Google has continued to lobby Beijing, with little success, for unfettered access to the Chinese market.Even before it pulled out of the mainland, Google was losing market share to a Chinese rival, Baidu. And it has lost further market share since then. The latest industry estimates suggest that Google, which before March had about one-third of the mainland market for Internet searches, now has only about one-fifth, with Baidu having the rest.Kaiser Kuo, the director of international communications for Baidu, said that it was wrong to suggest that China’s controls on the Internet were unfairly helping his company.“Google no longer incurs the costs of censorship that we continue to incur; those costs include not only hardware, software and manpower but most importantly the time of our very senior managers,” Mr. Kuo said. “We should not labor under the illusion that censorship is some sort of competitive advantage to Baidu.”Google’s public policy paper emphasized that when the W.T.O. was created in 1995, international free trade rules were broadened in many ways to cover services like Internet search providers. But Chinese officials have consistently said that their commercial policies comply fully with all W.T. O. rules.Google joins a growing chorus of critics of China on trade grounds. The Obama administration opened a broad investigation last month of whether China had violated W.T.O. rules by reportedly subsidizing exports of solar panels, wind turbines and other clean energy products.

Keith Bradsher reported from Hong Kong and Sharon LaFraniere reported from Beijing.

Britain urges U.S. to take down extremist websites

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Maurice

By Jim Wolf | Reuters | October 28, 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Britain on Thursday called on the United States to take down websites used by extremists and urged more concerted action to thwart militant threats before resorting to war.

Al Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan have shown “startling resilience” and their affiliates have both the intent and the capability to strike the West, British Minister of Security Pauline Neville-Jones said.

Overall, Britain’s new national security strategy is evolving “against the background of a global context that we do not assess as especially favorable to Western interests,” Neville-Jones said in remarks prepared for delivery at the Brookings Institution, a Washington research group.

She voiced concern about permitting websites used by extremists such as the preacher Anwar al Awlaqi to recruit anti-Western forces.

“The websites in which feature his terrorist message would categorically not be allowed in the UK,” she said. “If they were hosted in the UK they would be taken down.”

But Neville-Jones said many such sites were hosted in the United States. She said Britain wanted to work closely to find ways of thwarting them despite freedom-of-speech issues.

President Barack Obama’s administration defended its approach as reflecting the right balance between competing interests, including using such sites as a source of intelligence and as an example of Internet freedom that can ultimately reduce violent political extremism.

“Where activities on the Internet pose a clear threat to the public, the U.S. government has significant legal authorities to act as needed to protect the public,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.

Neville-Jones said in July that the West was facing what amounted to a technology arms race with “terrorists.”

Last month, Ronald Noble, secretary general of international police agency Interpol, said the number of extremist sites was skyrocketing, expanding from 12 in 1998 to 4,500 in 2006.

Neville-Jones defended a downsizing of British military forces recently recommended by a government review.

Hard power is expensive and should be used only when soft power fails, she said.

“We do not think it is sustainable in terms of the demands made on our armed forces or the commitment demanded from the public to allow military intervention, of which there has been much in the last decade, to be anything other than an exceptional act in circumstances where no other method of protecting vital interests is available.”

Strikes by remotely piloted U.S. drones and Pakistani forces have put pressure on al Qaeda leadership in tribal areas of Pakistan, Neville-Jones said. Experts say this is likely the refuge of Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York.

“But they have shown startling resilience before and we continue to see threats emanating directly from the region, even under such intense pressure,” she said.

In addition, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen “has both the intent and the capability to attack us,” she said, citing the case of a Nigerian man accused of trying to destroy a Northwest Airlines jumbo jet with explosives sewn in his underwear as it approached Detroit from Amsterdam on Christmas Day last year.

Somalia is another “current and growing concern,” she said. likening it to Afghanistan before the Taliban were overthrown by U.S.-led forces in 2002. “We need to focus now on preventive strategies.”

A new national security strategy that accompanied the review puts conflict prevention at the core of Britain’s strategy, including a stepped-up push to defend cyberspace.

Neville-Jones told Reuters in an interview that the United States and Britain were putting together a “cyber operations” memorandum of understanding that could lead to more joint programs to protect critical infrastructure.

US gives Iran more net freedom – but what about Syria?

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Turkletom

By Jillian C York | The Guardian | June 16, 2010

Iranian web users recently received some good news: following the media frenzy over last year’s elections, the US has chosen to relax export controls related to technology, giving users access to previously unavailable communications tools. The changes will affect not only Iran, but Sudan and Cuba as well, countries where free internet use has long been stifled by US restrictions.

In March the treasury department’s office of foreign assets control (OFAC) announced the amendments to current controls to “ensure that individuals in these countries can exercise their universal right to free speech and information to the greatest extent possible”. The amendments will allow those netizens to download software related to communications, such as instant messaging and chat clients, and tools related to social networking, and also permit the export of the same types of software to Iran and Sudan.

This news comes at a time when dialogue surrounding freedom of expression online is at a fever pitch in the United States. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in her celebrated January speech on internet freedom, stated that American companies need to take a principled stand against censorship, and that it should be part of the country’s “national brand”. In that vein, the amendments to the current export controls are a welcome gesture, both to American companies and to the netizens who benefit from their products.

Iran, of course, is an obvious target for these amendments, with nearly 30 million internet users and significant media attention in recent months. But what about Syria? Although there are no OFAC restrictions placed on Syria, the US department of commerce’s 2004 Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act prohibits the export of most goods containing more than 10% US-manufactured component parts to the country. The act also includes a provision on items deemed imports, including technology or source code controlled on the Commerce Control List, though licences are available for software providers through the bureau of industry and security.

Syrian netizens have long been aware of the effects of export controls on their lives. They are prevented from downloading popular software such as Java and Adobe Acrobat, and browsers such as Google’s Chrome. Microsoft products are available, but in pirated form, or smuggled in illegally. What is surprising to many, however, is when a new ban suddenly emerges; each year, a number of software providers seemingly crack down on Syrian users, often blocking access to entire websites for fear of non-compliance with the act.

For example, in early 2009, Syrian visitors to the professional networking site LinkedIn were surprised to be met with a blockpage. Though the full-on block was quickly removed, to this day users are barred from accessing the site’s proprietary software. Similarly, in January 2010, open-source code repository SourceForge began blocking the IP addresses of users in Iran, Sudan, Cuba, North Korea and Syria, much to the dismay of open-source enthusiasts. Though in the end, SourceForge removed the blanket block – placing responsibility on project managers to choose their level of restriction – the fact remains that a large swath of open-source projects are still off limits to users from restricted countries.

But in Syria, just as in Iran, the internet serves as an important communications and organising tool for dissidents and average users alike. And when you consider the fact that the Syrian government filters the internet internally as well (blocking sites such as Facebook and Blogspot, among many others), you realise that users are left with very little wiggle room.

If Hillary Clinton is serious about promoting internet freedom to all, she would be wise to consider the effects of the Syrian accountability act on the average Syrian netizen and what that means for the United States’ “brand” of internet freedom.

Privacy in Peril: Lawyers, Nations Clamor for Google Wi-Fi Data

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Sébastien Bertrand

By David Kravets | Wired Magazine | June 11, 2010

A hard drive with perhaps several hundred gigabytes of internet surfers’ private data resides under lock and key in a Portland, Oregon, federal courthouse.

Regulators and private lawyers across Europe and the United States are demanding, and in some cases obtaining, access to data that Google sniffed for the past three years from unsecured Wi-Fi hot spots across the globe.

The requests are coming in some of the eight proposed class actions targeting Google that have cropped up across the United States, as well as from various governments investigating whether Google violated their laws.

The demands for data raise a paradox of sorts: How many eyeballs, in the name of privacy, will eventually see the data that likely includes snippets of e-mail, web surfing, documents and other private data?

“It will be relevant evidence in our lawsuit. We will ask for production of that data. Lawyers representing plaintiffs in the case will review the data,” said Patrick Keyes, a top lawyer in one of the proposed class actions lodged in the District of Columbia. “This would be in the context of presenting the legal interests of those who have had their data intercepted, and would typically be produced under a protective order.”

Google has already said it would forward to German, French and Spanish authorities the portion of the data intercepted in those countries.

No government agency in the United States has yet demanded a copy of the intercepted data, but several are investigating Google.

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said he wanted to “scrutinize this situation” while Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has demanded “detailed records on any information taken from networks” from his state.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz told Congress, “We’re going to take a very, very close look at this.”

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said Friday that Google’s actions “warrants a hearing, at minimum.”

Ironically, it appears that protecting privacy and administering justice might just involve violating privacy.

“That’s true. All of this raises a lot of First Amendment questions,” said Jeffrey Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “It is problematic. Some of these lawyers see a quick buck without thinking of the consequences.”

U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman in Oregon has locked away the data (.pdf) as that class action proceeds. ISec Partners, a San Francisco security consulting firm, has made encrypted copies of the drives at Google’s request and destroyed the originals.

“The encryption keys for these drives are possessed by only myself and one other person. and the hard drives are securely stored in a safe controlled by Google’s physical security team,” (.pdf) Alexander Stamos, one of iSec’s founding partners, told the Oregon judge in a court filing before the data was forwarded to the Portland courthouse.

But Aaron Zigler, a lawyer in the Illinois class action, said, “I don’t want to see the actual data that has been intercepted.”

Class members of the lawsuits can be determined without actually reading the contents of the payload data packets, he said. “There is enough data to figure out who everyone is: date, time and location, and unique MAC addresses of the Wi-Fi network they intercepted,” he said.

Pablo Chavez, director of public policy for Google, said in a letter to Congress released Friday that Google is “aware of only two instances when any Google engineer even viewed the payload data.”

“The first instance involved the individual engineer who designed the software,”  (.pdf) he wrote. “The second instance was when we became aware that payload data may have been collected from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, and a single security engineer tested the data to verify that this was the case.”

Google has repeatedly said it is working with the relevant government investigators, and is demanding that all the litigation be consolidated in California, where it’s headquartered.

The Mountain View internet giant maintains the collection of data while taking photos for its Street View program was inadvertent –- the result of a programming error with code written for an early experimental project that wound up in the Street View code (.pdf), an explanation some of the lawyers suing Google have disputed.

Google said it didn’t realize it was sniffing packets of data on unsecured Wi-Fi networks in dozens of countries for the last three years, until German privacy authorities questioned what data Google’s Street View cameras were collecting. Street View is part of Google Maps and Google Earth, and provides panoramic pictures of streets and their surroundings across the globe.

And Google said no U.S. wiretapping laws were breached because the Wi-Fi signals were “readily accessible to the general public” (.pdf).

At least insofar as the proposed class actions were concerned, Jennifer Granick, a civil liberties attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, suggested having a judge or a so-called “special master” sift through the data to determine whose data Google obtained. That should only happen if Google is found to have done something unlawful, she said.

“This raises my eyebrows,” she said. “I don’t think we need to know what any of this data is yet, because there’s nothing to suggest Google did this intentionally.”

Google Calls for U.S., Europe to Crack Down on China Web Censorship

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Tim Yang

By Clint Boulton | eWeek.com | June 10, 2010

Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond wants the U.S. and European governments to nudge China to cease its censorship of the Internet because it restricts free trade. The Internet sector is vital to Google’s hopes for international expansion. China boasts more than 400 million Web users and Baidu is the leading search engine in mainland China. Censorship in the form of the Great Firewall of China has been a long-standing complaint about China from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other companies looking to extend their tendrils in Asia.

Google wants the U.S. and European governments to nudge China to cease its censorship of the Internet, the search engine’s lead lawyer told the Associated Press in Brussels.

David Drummond, chief legal officer and senior vice president of corporate development at Google, June 9 said that China’s censorship restricts free trade for the Web, where Google is hungry to expand in China.

Western governments should defend the free trade for the Internet with the same kind of rules that they use to complain of China’s sale of products below cost, Drummond added.

Censorship in the form of the Great Firewall of China has been a long-standing complaint about China from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other companies looking to extend their tendrils in Asia while enjoying the same fair trade rules they enjoy in the U.S.

The sticky issue reared its head again in January when Google said it discovered a cyber attack originating from China in which users Gmail accounts were accessed.

Threatening to cease doing business in China entirely, Google in March shuttled its Chinese search operations to the region of Hong Kong, which doesn’t follow the same censorship restrictions as mainland China.

Shortly after this move, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told The Guardian he hoped the U.S. would make China’s Web censorship a “high priority.”

While the U.S. publicly supported Google’s position, little has happened on this front.

In country, U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration are dealing with issues such as the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, in which thousands of barrels of crude oil are blotting the Gulf of Mexico each day.

Drummond called the hack attack the “final straw” and reinforced the company’s stance that China’s censorship restricts free trade.

“Censorship, in addition to being a human rights problem, is a trade barrier,” said Drummond, according to the AP. “If you look at what China does — the censorship, of course, is for political purposes but it is also used as a way of keeping multinational companies disadvantaged in the market.”

“It should be obvious that the Internet sector is very important to the west and so we should be working on seeing that that kind of trade is protected.”

Holding sway in China is crucial to Google’s hopes for international expansion. China boasts more than 400 million Web users and Baidu is the leading search engine in mainland China. Being marginalized at Google.hk won’t do anything to help Google challenge the incumbent there.

The U.S. could make a case versus China with the World Trade Organization, though Drummond wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that.

He did say he received some support in the U.S., French and German governments and with the European Union executive for pressing Google’s case against Chinese Web censorship.