Will Facebook follow Obama's lead on Holocaust denial?

I wonder how management at Facebook might have reacted should they have come across some of President Obama's words Friday.

The president was speaking at the Buchenwald concentration camp, one of whose sub-camps, Ohrdruf, was liberated by his own great uncle. And he made sure to express his own feelings very clearly on a subject that Facebook believes should freely be discussed, Holocaust denial.

"To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened--a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful," he said. "This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history."

Facebook's defense for allowing Holocaust denial groups on its site centers around the notion that Holocaust denial is not, in itself, hateful. The company insists that, although it finds Holocaust denial "repulsive and ignorant," Holocaust denial groups do not contravene its terms of service.

The interior of Buchenwald, which President Obama visited.

(Credit: CC Joel Zimmer/Flickr)

Facebook's terms are very clearly written: "You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence."

So the president says Holocaust denial is, by its very definition, hateful, while Facebook insists it is not.

However, just the briefest visit to one Facebook group, Holohoax, produces wall posts such as this: "Jews are pretty good liars most of the time, but they tell so many lies they are bound to trip themselves up sometimes. Their exaggerations, half-truths, and outright inventions about the so-called "Holocaust," easily the most lied-about topic ever, are a good example."

Such groups are generally small. Holohoax has 40 members, whereas a newer counter-group, United Against Holocaust Denial on Facebook, has more than 40,000.

However, in light of the president's comments, might Facebook decide to apply its own terms of service against many groups, not just Holocaust denial groups, that seem to have only a hateful purpose?

Here's just one example: "I Hate Muslims in Oz."

Surely this group, by its very name, just might have fallen foul of Facebook's hateful content rule.

Should Facebook decide to make a stand for its own terms of service, it would not be an affront to free speech. It would be a statement about what kind of brand Facebook chooses to be.

eBay and Yahoo made a clear and simple stand against the sale of Nazi memorabilia on their sites. And this was in 2001. Both companies decided they simply didn't want to be associated with that kind of thing.

Of course, Facebook could also decide to change its terms of service and remove the stricture against hateful posts. That would also make things clear.

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The cloud conversation is changing

pdate: Updated link to Hoff's terminology map and related image to his latest version.

I was privileged to be a part of the Enterprise Cloud Summit that took place at the beginning of Interop in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. The program was excellent, with an all-star list of cloud experts and a surprisingly large number of attendees who were new to cloud computing and trying to get a sense of what it was all about.

What was different from prior cloud-related conferences, however, at least for me, were the types of questions this inquisitive audience was asking. Almost nobody asked around defining cloud computing, but many took advantage of the show to ask panelists and speakers to describe how they could put the cloud to use in their own businesses.

The cloud conversation is moving from "what is it?" to "how would I use it for my business or institution?"

(Credit: Chris Hoff / Rational Survivability)

I find this very exciting--and, quite frankly, very refreshing. The amount of energy spent on presenting and defending terminology and taxonomy has become a huge time-sink for those trying to advance the cloud discussion. It's not that I mind walking people through the differences between cloud computing and virtualization, but I'd rather focus my efforts on business cases and customer success stories (or even failures).

It's not that the industry has arrived at a common cloud definition--though the NIST definition has some legs, and I'm a huge fan of Chris Hoff's terminology map (pictured here). Rather, the market seems to have come to the conclusion that cloud computing has a lot in common with obscenity--you may not be able to define it, but you'll know it when you see it.

Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of this shift is the fact that we should start seeing some real business cases, use cases, and best-practice discussions appear in the cloud-computing discussion.

Best Buy running on Google App Engine; stories about impressive gains by the venerable New York Times andAnimoto when they used Amazon Web Services; and Eli Lilly's tale of redefining research projects: all these serve as examples of cloud's value in the right contexts. We know from these examples that "batch jobs" are great cloud fodder (such as grid computing and image processing), as are applications with unpredictable scale.

We need to see more such examples publicized, however. Where are the financials with their complex models and data mining? Biotech with its constant data processing demand? Manufacturing with its "just in time" supply chain management?

Perhaps the examples will continue to be more of the same, but that's OK to me. Then we know where cloud's strengths and weaknesses are, and we can move the conversation forward from there.

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Dramatic Gopher Hahahah
http://tr.im/nBuo

A more streamlined Facebook for BlackBerry

Warning: This is not its actual size.

(Credit: RIM/BlackBerry)

It's only been about a month and a half since RIM released the last update to Facebook for Blackberry (and then a fix to that update just after that), and BlackBerry's maker has already come out with a more streamlined version of the popular social networking app it codeveloped with Facebook's help.

Facebook for BlackBerry 1.6 folds its status feed content, originally in its own screen, right onto the home page. The result is immediate access to view your friends' status update, and a slightly quicker way to update your own status message. The same goes for poking a friend or commenting on their photos.

Use the pearl to scroll through friends' photos.

(Credit: RIM/BlackBerry)

In addition, the app update removes some of the hassle in the previous version of getting to your pal's Wall. Instead of having to switch to the mobile site to view it in its glory, a click to your buddy's profile picture shows you their wall within the application itself. Facebook for BlackBerry 1.6 also shows photo albums in a modified slideshow ticker format. In the past, you needed to click on each thumbnail to see the image; now you can scroll.

The final change is added support for Thai, Indonesian, and Portuguese (European) languages.

Get Facebook for BlackBerry 1.6 for free on your BlackBerry--running version 4.2 of the operating system or higher--by pointing the mobile or desktop browser to www.blackberry.com/facebook.

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House curbs 'virtual strip searches' at airports

WASHINGTON--The Transportation Security Agency's plans to use X-rays to peek under air travelers' clothes may soon be shelved.

In a 310-118 vote on Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation that curbs the growing use of what critics call "virtual strip searches" at airport checkpoints.

Privacy groups say that the low-energy backscatter X-rays allow "a highly realistic image to be reconstructed... of the traveler's nude form" that's "detailed enough to show genitalia." The TSA, on the other hand, says it has made improvements to its scanning technology including a "privacy algorithm" that will provide the operator with vaguer outlines of body parts. (See related CBS News video.)

The House vote attached an amendment drafted by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, to a broader TSA bill.

TSA's X-ray backscatter scanning with "privacy filter," front view

(Credit: TSA.gov)

Chaffetz's amendment says that whole body imaging "may not be used" as the primary method of passenger screening, and that passengers have the right to refuse it and "shall be offered a pat-down search" as an alternative. It also prohibits the storage or transmission of the whole-body images after they're no longer necessary for screening.

"Whole-body imaging is exactly what it says; it allows TSA employees to conduct the equivalent of a strip search," Chaffetz said in a statement after the vote. "Nobody needs to see my wife and kids naked to secure an airplane."

Chaffetz had first introduced the measure as a standalone bill in April. His original bill made it a federal crime for a TSA screener to share or copy a passenger image; that penalty vanished in the final version attached as an amendment.

Backscatter X-rays are relatively low-power and are believed to be safe even for frequent flyers. One manufacturer, Rapiscan Systems, boasts that its equipment can detect "explosives, narcotics, ceramic weapons" such as ceramic knives that traditional metal detectors can't. (A competing technology is called millimeter wave.)

On May 31, a coalition of advocacy groups including the ACLU, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Gun Owners of America, and the Consumer Federation of America sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking her to "suspend the program until the privacy and security risks are fully evaluated."

TSA's "millimeter wave" technology

(Credit: TSA.gov)

TSA says that it's currently using millimeter wave technology at 19 U.S. airports, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Washington Reagan National.

During the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., Peter Pietra, the TSA's director for privacy policy and compliance, defended full-body scanning technology. (See CNET's 2006 interview with Pietra.)

"It's much better for me than going through a magnetometer," Pietra said. There's "an awful lot of work that's gone into it." Any suggestions on how to improve the privacy of the screening process, he said, could be sent to tsaprivacy@dhs.gov.

On Thursday, the full House approved the Transportation Security Administration Authorization Act by a vote of 397 to 25. Now the bill heads to the Senate, which could choose to preserve or strip out the privacy amendments.

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Hacker named to Homeland Security Advisory Council

Defcon founder Jeff Moss, aka Dark Tangent, is one of the newest members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

(Credit: Defcon)

Jeff Moss, founder of the Black Hat and Defcon hacker and security conferences, was among 16 people sworn in on Friday to the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

The HSAC members will provide recommendations and advice directly to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

Moss' background as a computer hacker (aka "Dark Tangent") and role as a luminary among young hackers who flock to Defcon in Las Vegas every summer might seem to make him an odd choice to swear allegiance to the government. (Although before running his computer conferences, Moss also worked in the information system security division at Ernst & Young.)

I'd like to hear some of the banter as he rubs elbows with the likes of former CIA (Bill Webster) and FBI directors (Louis Freeh), Los Angeles County sheriff, Miami mayor, New York police commissioner, governors of Maryland and Georgia, former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, and the president of the Navajo Nation.

In an interview late on Friday, Moss said he was surprised when he got the call and was asked to join the group.

"I know there is a newfound emphasis on cybersecurity and they're looking to diversify the members and to have alternative viewpoints," he said. "I think they needed a skeptical outsider's view because that has been missing."

Asked if there was anything in particular he would advocate, Moss said: "There will be more cyber announcements in coming weeks and once that happens my role will become more clear. This meeting was focused on Southwest border protection... With things like Fastpass and Safe Flight, everything they are doing has some kind of technology component."

Moss, who is genuinely humble, said he was "fantastically honored and excited to contribute" to the HSAC and not concerned with losing any street cred among what some would call his fan base. He did concede that his new position would give him an unfair advantage in Defcon's "Spot The Fed" contest in which people win prizes for successfully outing undercover government agents.

Security consultant Kevin Mitnick, who spent five years in prison on computer-related charges and was on the FBI's most wanted list, praised Moss' diplomacy, but said: "I'm surprised to see Jeff on the list. I would have expected (crypto/security guru and author) Bruce Schneier to be on the council."

Moss "is a great crowd pleaser" and "he's just bad enough for them to say 'we're crossing the ranks,'" said journalist and threat analyst Adrian Lamo, who served two years of probation for breaking into computer networks. "But the reality is he's as corporate as hiring someone out of Microsoft."

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Weekend project: Scan your books into Google

The official Google Books blog has a fun post on how to scan your books into the service's "My Books" feature by using a USB barcode scanner. The My Books section of Google Books is similar to the popular Mac applicationDelicious Library in letting you keep a list of all your titles in a digital card catalog that can be shared with others. Of course you can do this without the USB barcode scanner simply by searching for the book, but Google's Matt Cutts makes it look like fun:

As Cutts mentions in the video, one of the benefits of building up your Google Books library is that you can limit in-text searches to just the titles you own. Not mentioned, however, is that it's a great way to build up a personal effects value estimate for insurance purposes.

Having recently given away an entire bookshelf while doing some spring cleaning, using a system like this would have made it easier to keep track of all of the things I've read throughout my life. This is something that the Kindle and other e-book readers can provide for future generations of readers without as much elbow grease.

If you don't feel like giving all that personal information to Google you can also use some other Web services to do this, including Shelfari, GoodReads, and Library Thing. However Google's big ISBN entry screen is the most barcode-friendly of the bunch.

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