New economy vs. old economy

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With the rise of the so-called “Sharing Culture” there’s been a recent upswing in the types of business that focus on connecting people point to point with others that can provide services that people need without a lot of the fuss of other intermediaries. There are, of course, a few pioneers in this type of activity, Napster, Kazaa, but also more “Legitimate” companies, such as eBay, PayPal, and Craigslist. These caused disruption, but not on a seriously massive level. eBay expanded the amount of people that could or would auction off their goods. It more likely impacted the amount of garage sales or donations to Goodwill. Craigslist did have a negative impact on newspaper’s income – however newspapers were having other issues because people just weren’t buying them, so it was somewhat moot. Now, however, there are companies springing up that are impacting much larger less “fringe” portions of our economy.

I first heard of companies like this while in the Netherlands where some of my friends were using Couchsurfing. Which connected people that were passing through an area for a night to two to crash on someone’s couch. I don’t think any money was exchanging hands. I believe that this site was a natural precursor for AirBnB, which has gotten in a lot of hot water lately. This site, for those unaware, allows people to rent out rooms of their house or their entire house for short periods of time. The idea is that the renters can use the stuff in the house and have a cheaper place to stay compared to a hotel. While the owners are able to rent out unused space. For instance, I could rent out my third bedroom if I wanted too.

A lot of people aren’t happy with this notion. For one, it does violate a lot of zoning laws and people are pissed about their neighbors renting out rooms to god knows who. Secondly, it does violate those laws and New York City has decided to do something about that. They’ve asked for information on 15k users in the city. This will likely be a large blow to membership there. If users feel that they are likely to be hit by a law suit or forced to pay licenses to rent out the rooms, renting the rooms will be much less appealing. This of course will thrill hotels as they can continue to enjoy a higher cost.

Part of this stems from the fact that this is new and scary. People don’t understand the change. Part of it comes from the fact that the city doesn’t want people to do this instead of normal rental agreements which “protect” both parties in different ways. An AirBnB arrangement is very different and likely has a lower level of protection (mostly social norm based rather than legal based). Part of it probably has to do with money. The city likely earns less taxes from people renting rooms this way than from Hotels.

These types of differences are going to be occurring on a more frequent basis. We need to help steer the conversation as internet savvy folks and look into how we can create accommodations for both sides. I’m not saying for the hotels, I’m talking about for your neighbors and community. Work with them to help them explain what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what they can do to help develop the social norms for websites like AirBnB rather than destroying it before it has a chance to be successful.

I’m hoping there will be a lot more experimentation in these types of sites even if I never use them. I firmly believe that it’s your house you should be able to use it as you see fit as long as it doesn’t cause harm to other people. Having a two way conversation and educating the different stakeholders involved is crucial to ensuring the survival and continued experimentation in these spaces.

The NSA, FBI, and Internet Security

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Over the past few months we’ve learned a lot about how the US government looks at its own citizens. We’ve learned this through the actions of Edward Snowden. He’s done us a great service by forcing a conversation that the NSA and FBI didn’t want us to have. The NSA lied to the Senate recently by claiming that it never tracked US citizens through Cell Phones. We would never have known about these activities if it wasn’t for Snowden.

Snowden was using email to send information back and forth between himself and Glenn Greenwald. Since email is in one of those fuzzy gray areas of the law around data retention and government access to it this has caused a bit of a problem. It make things more difficult Snowden used an encrypted email service called Lavabit. It’s encryption was at such a level that when the FBI requested data from it, they were confounded and essentially attempted to blackmail (legally of course) the owner into handing over the encryption key. This would have effectively rendered the service these people were paying for worthless. They were paying to have their email traffic be secured from both public and private entities.

As we hear and more about how the US government has been behaving towards internet security, the more we’re learning that the NSA and other US agencies are doing their best to thwart it. They have worked with the NIST and weakened the encryption key they developed. The problem with these backdoors is that if it’s there for the “good guys” (whoever that might be) it’s also there for the “bad guys” (whoever that might be). This isn’t just general encryption keys, it’s things that we use every day without using it. Whenever we are using any website that includes “https” we are using a basic encryption protocol called SSL. Think about when you’re banking, you see the https. Google now allows you to use this when you send information to and from them. This encryption has also been broken by the NSA. This is our personal stuff and if it’s broken by the NSA it can be broken by other people. Now does this mean we’re likely to have a rash of new fraud cases or theft cases? No, as it’s been compromised for some time. However, people do know about it now and this of course is a greater cause for concern.

What can we do about this? Well, first, look into more secure encryption methods. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google and applications like HTTPS everywhere will change their algorithm in result. Second, contact your representative and your senator. I’m lucky my senator in Oregon is very vocal (Ron Wyden) not everyone is so please help inform your leaders. Third, buy from companies that you know haven’t given up data to the NSA, don’t use Facebook and the like and basically try to follow the great writing that Sean did several months ago over on KBMOD. He nailed it then and it’s even more pressing than before to keep up with security.

Review of Without Their Permission

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I was inspired to begin writing again by reading Alexis Ohanian of reddit fame’s debut book, titled “Without Their Permission” for those that were regular readers and know me are aware of my interest in the startup community, technology, and activism during the SOPA/PIPA days. So reading this book happily fell into many of those interests.

First of all, this book was entertaining. It’s a rather self aware book and in some cases the humor of it reminded me of Drew Curtis’s book “It’s not News it’s Fark” which is a humorous book that really pokes fun at mainstream media. There’s some of that in this book, but it’s much more playful and selfaware of how important the media has been to Alexis’s success.

During my Master’s thesis research I read a lot of scientific studies that looked at the types of businesses, industries, education, and so forth of founders. Which really focused on the technical skills of the founders. This book didn’t. Alexis wasn’t the technical brains behind reddit, he was the “other stuff” that helped make reddit reddit. I believe that this is a fantastic view point to bring to the conversation on start ups, incubators, accelerators, etc… because it’s something that’s missing.

I have to say at first while reading the book I was really annoyed by the line “every link is created equal” because in any network this simply isn’t try. Any unconnected link is equal, but as soon as the Internet is the Internet links become less equal because of interconnectedness of the Internet. At first this prevented me from enjoying the book because I was so focused on this, however after working 8 hours I forgot about it until it was mentioned later. I only bring this up, because a large portion of the book is spent discussing how important networking is to the success of a startup. It became clear to me that Alexis gets it.

I also found this book enjoyable because it is much less self congratulatory about the Internet entrpreneurs than other books such as Makers, the New industrial revolution, Micro Wikinomics and Macro Wikinomics which cover very similar topics and ideas. In fact any time it felt to be getting too overly optimistic Alexis would point out that everything comes from hard work. It’s work that almost everyone can do, but it takes dedication.

Alexis points out a lot of successes that he’s been involved with as an investor, which provide a lot of great anecdotal experience as well as a graduate’s perspective from the Y-Combinator. I think these views are all helpful as we begin to look for more unique ways to fund startups beyond the traditional VC method.

Finally, I enjoyed the section about SOPA/PIPA which was interesting as I was actively involved on reddit and blogging to inform others about what was happening. Some of that included sharing the interviews Alexis did during that time period.

In general this book is definitely a great introduction to a more realistic view of Internet entrepreneurship from a successful founder, a great introduction to many unique startups out there that are very inclusive, and a great introduction to SOPA/PIPA for people that weren’t paying attention.

Get out there and make something great happen.
5/5

Why now in Syria?

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Today Obama announced that we’re going to begin military aid to the Syria rebel group Supreme Military Council. Supposedly, this is because the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on rebels and civilians. Despite the fact that we’ve repeatedly condemned Russia for seeking to aid the Syrian regime, we’re going to do the opposite and arm the opposition which has a massive group of hardline extremists that will likely turn against the US as soon as they are in the position to do so. Furthermore, there are rumors, according to the UN, that the Syrian rebellion has also used chemical weapons. This combined with the fact that 93,000 civilians have been compared to the 150 killed with the chemical weapons usage makes me think that this is a shaky argument at best. I certainly hope we don’t find ourselves arming a group that also used chemical weapons.

Before this announcement and continuing after, John McCain has and is calling for a “No Fly Zone” in Syria, while the Obama administration has declined to implement one because of Syria’s air capabilities. However, it’s been effectively confirmed that Israel has in the past bombed Syria. A no fly zone would preclude Israel from bombing Syria in anyway shape or form. In fact, when Russia wanted to enact a no Israeli fly zone, through providing anti aircraft weapons (only capable of hitting planes), the US condemned this as aiding the Syrian regime. It’s also likely that those same systems would have been able to hit the majority of US planes as well as the Israeli Air Force, so we were as much protesting anything that would have prevented our Air Force from dominating the sky above Syria.

Based on the interviews I’ve heard, I don’t think the end result in Syria is going to be a beneficial one for the US unless something magical happens. Where we arm the right people and they are the only ones we help and they automagically kick the Syrian Regime out of the country. It’s not going to happen. Even after Assad is overthrown (if he is) it’s likely that Syria will continue to be consumed by a civil war, which will likely be even more of a religious civil war than it is now. Now it’s as much ethic based as not.

On Reddit, there’s a meme that’s arguing that the reason we entered Syria now is an attempt to distract the US media from the NSA and Prism debacles. This could be on the right trail. The news is dominated by the fact that we’re supplying aid to the rebels, what the implications of these actions will be and what won’t be. I think getting involved in another conflict in any manner isn’t good for the US, especially if the side we backs fails, which it is still likely to do so. We’ve lost any moral authority we had with Russia in an argument regarding supplying weapons to either side.

I do not think that this will pull people away from the NSA issue, we’re going to keep seeing it. I’m going to keep writing about it – I just wanted to post something about the hypocrisy of the US entering the Syrian civil war. The big story for this week and next week is still the NSA and PRISM. We are going to continue seeing new developments in this area and we need to keep our eyes on it. If we don’t keep pushing this, it will become ‘ok’ through passive consent. That’s not acceptable.

NSA and Edward Snowden

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Today saw the unveiling of the NSA leaker, Edward Snowden, a highschool dropout that worked his way through sheer capabilities as a programmer. To me this guy is pretty amazing. He cares about the people that he could have put in harms way, he made sure that he did not release any information that would put anyone in harms way, even though he had the capabilities. He learned from Bradley Manning and worked to ensure there would be no risks of physical injury. He felt that these actions violated the constitution and decided to expose these deeds to the public even though he knew his life was over. He believes he’s likely to be targeted by the US government or an agent, such as a member of the Triad gang (he’s in Hong Kong), to be executed.

Not only he is clearly concerned, but the media seems to think that this is also true. My roommate was watching ABC news with Diane Sawyer and during one segue she mentioned that he may have left because he feared for his life and was likely in danger. Think about it. It’s publicly acknowledged by our press, that it’s likely a whistleblower might be killed by the US government. This is a US citizen that has a family history of serving (father a member of the coast guard and mother a legal clerk) the US government. He is afraid for his life because he believes that the US government would murder him. If he dies and his body is found the blame will automatically fall upon the government. Edward will not be able to answer phone calls, call anyone, and is essentially on his own to make it to a country that has no extradition treaty with the US. This is a travesty – the fact that many people believe this man is going to die within the next few weeks – killed by his own government without his right to a trial.

Why does what he said matter? A lot of people are talking about it being only Metadata – here’s an excellent article explaining what would have happened if the British had meta data during the revolutionary war. It would have ID’d Paul Revere as a likely revolutionary based on his association. Knowing nothing else about him other than a few clubs he and 254 other people in Boston were members of it was possible to deduce the entire social network and who was at the center of the networks.

As I mentioned in my last blog post this network analysis would have caused the changes in my Facebook network to raise some red flags. I suddenly move to Europe (I didn’t list Eindhoven has my city of residence it would have been inferred from my friends), some of my first connects in Europe on Facebook were 2 Colombians, 2 Pakistanis, an Iranian, and a Turk. These changes represented a major shift in my circle of friends. I had few non-americans as friends and no Iranians or Pakistanis in my network. Using the full history of my data they wouldn’t have found much except that I liked to drink and wrote drunk posts on Facebook while in college. However, it’s likely I would have remained someone to keep an eye on, and since then I’ve written numerous posts about Anonymous, LulzSec and other controversial topics.

Anyway, it’s important to keep this in mind when selecting the companies you decide to store your information with, even if it’s “only” metadata. Where you go, who you talk to, and what you do online are all representations of you and a lot of information can be gleaned from that.

What can we do? Vote all the bums out of office next go around for one. Start companies that only hand over encrypted data that the end users are the only ones that can decrypt it. Educate your friends, family, co-workers, and anyone politically minded you know. We need to drive change otherwise this will continue and will only get worse. At what point do we need to start worrying that the NSA/US Government will start killing your friends because of who they talk to and what they believe?