My phone was confiscated, but it was being held nearby. I was wearing an Apple Watch for product testing, and was able to send Lian a text message over the watch (the whole time we were held I was not allowed a phone call or any contact otherwise). I somehow doubt that this particular use case is one that Apple will promote, but it was the most compelling one I’ve found so far…
— What happens after you’re arrested at a protest in New York. — Medium
I neglected to link to Lessons Learned Too Well: Anonymity in a Time of Surveillance, the paper I’m presenting at #yalefesc. A very very small number of people will recognize this as a partial redraft of a paper I started a few years ago, but never published because it didn’t seem quite right. My plan is to get it as right as I can in the next few months, which is why I’m workshopping it.
Next time you stay in a hotel that has a notice like this one on the bedside table… 
…use the earplugs.
I’m in New Haven for the Freedom of Expression Scholars Conference, which uses the wonderful workshop format we adopted for We Robot. The author of the paper being workshopped doesn’t present – the discussant starts by summarizing the paper, which all the attendees are presumed to have read. The author gives a brief response, and it is off to the races.
I’m in the usually unenviable first-thing-Sunday morning slot, the one where you compete with exhaustion (and hangovers) but I actually think that at FESC first-on-Sunday is better than last-on-Saturday, as there is a very very long program.
I am not a core first amendment scholar, not at all, although my work on anonymity obviously intersects, which is why I’m here. It’s very interesting to see the things that concern people who focus on the First Amendment these days; it’s a very different set of concerns from what there was say ten years ago. I learned a lot from reading the papers (or, rather, the fraction of the papers for the sessions I plan to go to – there are three parallel ones in most time slots). Plus I get to meet a lot of new people, more than I do at Internetty events, maybe even more than robotty events now that I’ve been to a bunch of them.
It’s always slightly odd to be back in New Haven, where I spent first four and then later three years. The city is much more cheerful (it helps that its Spring, while memory has a strong overlay of February). There’s been a great deal of turnover in the shops, with many of the small places I liked gone, and a number of chain rather chichi clothing and such shops replacing them. A mixed blessing at best.
And, coming from Miami, almost everyone on the street looks a bit pale.
That big bug looks fixed as of the new version of “Android System WebView” they pushed out yesterday or today. I downloaded the new version 42.0.2311.137 and things seem to be working fine.
When I got home yesterday, this ad (which is actually just the front of a very involved mailer that opens up to have three more sales sheets inside) was waiting for me in the day’s mail. I’m used to getting ‘personalized’ mail that addresses me by name — often by the wrong name since I haven’t been called by my legal name since birth. But this was the first piece of direct mail that linked my name and my wife’s. Since I spend much of the day reading and thinking about databases, identification, and privacy, I wasn’t terribly creeped out about this, but Caroline clearly was, saying it was “excessively personal.” I don’t think the problem was the knowledge that someone knows we are together, since we haven’t made much secret of it for the last 26 years or so. Caroline also asked me to note that the necklace is very ugly.
The ad does make me wonder how often things like this turn up with the wrong name on it (fortunately, my wife’s name is indeed Caroline). Or just after people die, or break up. Could get ugly. Queue references to the famous Target incident.
Note to marketers: I believe that when we had the insides of our wedding rings engraved with our names we exhausted our demand for personalized jewelry.
Jotwell Blenderlaw