New Concepts in Data, Compliance and Marketing or The Overly Dramatic Truth

Like the rest of the world, I read J. Cline's article on the upcoming data eclipse while listening to El P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead, which is the best way to read it.

J. Cline is prophesyin' the impending darkness where all corporations will crumble 'neath the cleated boot of data governance.

Mr. Cline identifies the signs of the data eclipse endtimes: Ford has abandoned autos to focus on quality improvement. Wal Mart has unburdened themselves of the lucrative Chinese tube sock trade for supply chain management. In the post-eclipse world, we must surrender control of our enterprises to the wanton desires of regulators, lawyers and audit chimps such as myself. We no longer make the decisions, but wait for them to be passed down from these distant parties who ponder our fate far from the red meat and hot breath of corporate operations. It's not the moon, after all, but the pointing finger of compliance and legality we should focus on.

I may have been born yesterday, sir, but I've been up all night. Like a diamond bullet between the eyes, I was struck with an aces-on Notion (with a little backing I think I could turn it into an Idea) which will make me the fortune I frankly deserve. A methodology that will empower the document generating wherewithal of ten thousand legions of certified information control professionals.

I will call it the Compliance Legal Object Audit Client Architecture: CLOACA. Look for my booth at a tradeshow near you.

CLOACA: You'll Be Surprised What Can Come Out Of It!

Learn to Play Sonic Reducer

I was going to write about this article on Dark Reading, that includes this power-quote of insight and mind-blowitude:

"A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet," noted OSC Director Douglas Naquin in an interview with The Washington Times.

...but I figured my time (and yours) would be better spent learning to play "Sonic Reducer" with Cheetah Chrome.

E flat, C sharp, and lots of feedback.





Photo of Mr. Chrome from John Santanello

Provably Private?

From the Guardian, I read this curious article on privacy and contextual
integrity. "Linear temporal logic," eh? I wish I could groove to what that means. So I read Wikipedia, then I started researching the folks mentioned in the article, finding the paper mentioned in the Guardian article: Privacy and Contextual Integrity: Framework and Applications.

Two things I liked, from what I've been able to digest so far (but I'm a lover, not a logician, so I am likely indigesting as well).
First:

"Unlike a number of prominent normative accounts of privacy, the approach taken here rejects the idea that a simple dichotomy-usually between public and private (sensitive, intimate) information-is sufficient for adjudicating privacy claims. Instead, there is potentially an indefinite variety of types of information that could feature in the informational norms of a given context."

That sounds right to me, but I'm going to have read more to make sure fully understand the if the words mean what I think. I also really like the idea of time as a factor to enter into the privacy question.
I also found figure 4 irresistible and disturbing:
Irresistible? Because I like the idea of the fistful of regulations and laws boiled down to a set of numbers, letters, (and especially) symbols.

Disturbing? Because it looks too much like compliance. Wrestling the GLB down to a series of equations is noble and mostly cool. However, if it falls in to the wrong hands, it could launch a raft of ill advised applications that get the auditor's seal of approval, are "provably compliant" and yet don't do much in the way of privacy. (This is a knee-jerk reaction.)

The paper covers the US privacy law hit parade (COPA, HIPAA, GLBA), but wait! What about everybody's favorite - SB 1386?

"Finally, our current language faces a limitation common to many policy languages. Consider SB 1386, a California law requiring businesses that inappropriately disclose personal information to notify the subjects of the information. This provision cannot be expressed properly in the language because it takes effect only when an agent violates norms. In our model, agents never violate norms and thus would never be required to notify individuals. However, such notifications are common in California. To express such “defense in depth” provisions, we plan to extend our model to account for agents who occasionally (perhaps unintentionally) violate the norms. We expect this to require modifications to the current logic."

Hmmm.