Jon Alper's probably insufficiently humble opinion

Aperture has a useful feature called “Places”. Places lets you access GPS metadata stored in your photos or assign location metadata to your photos. With this location metadata, you are able to browse, catalog and re-contextualize your photos using a map-driven interface. It’s very cool.

Aperture will automatically look up the location of an image and drop a pin on a map for you if your camera supports GPS metadata  (iPhone for example but many other cameras do this or support optional accessories to automate it.). You can also, if you choose to, use the map UI to assign location meta data to your photos. This allows you to browse your photos by location. Want to see every picture you took at<insert politically incorrect location here>? You need only locate that place with a handy dandy pushpin on the map. Want to see the path you took cross country stopping at each cool looking diner along the way for a black and white milkshake while hauling <insert politically incorrect cargo here>? Want to know where exactly took that photo of that bald eagle you accidentally shot while duck hunting? All these things are easy and convenient with Aperture’s ‘Places’.

The two options for using places are “Never” and “Automatically”. If “Automatically” is not enabled, Places is entirely disabled. The preference isn’t labeled “Look up places online from Apple and Google”. Hell, it doesn’t even say “Look Up Places Online” it just says “Look Up Places”.

All well and good. Handy. The problem is: Places, if you allow it to will connect to, at least, these severs:

• ssl.apple.com,
• www.google.com
• place.apple.pushpin.com
• mt1.google.com

Clearly, there is enormous value to the vast amount of GIS data and services available online but a simple GPS to rudimentary map functionality could and should be available using only local map and coordinate data installed with Aperture.

There is no option to look up places in an ‘on demand’ and per-image basis. No option to hide the UI elements that refer to places. No readily available documentation of exactly what information is sent to Google or Apple when you use the feature. No warning about what information you are licensing implicitly to Apple or Google when you choose to use this feature.

Now, there are a lot of good reasons you may not want to allow even the when and where of your photos to be stored by Apple or Google  no matter how legal, upright and upstanding a person you are. Let’s say you have a gmail address you use anonymously, for example, to post in a political discussion forum when you are the editor of a news program. It’s part of your private life. You don’t use your position with this news program to back up the opinions you discuss. You simply prefer not to have your personal political opinions be fodder for evaluating the validity and objectivity of your reporting. You write about Google or Apple, they look up your records, it leaks, your career is over. This is just one example. If you use Aperture on your laptop, expose your home in Manhattan to burglary while the time stamps and GPS data in the photos shows your in Bora Bora. Leaks of this data could compromise a woman fleeing an abuser. Leaks of this data could eroneously expose you as a person of interest in a data-mining fishing expedition. “Yes, Inspector Gadget, slap the old Patriot Act notice on Google. I want to know the names of everybody at 5th and Main between noon and one on the 25th.”

It is, simply, too easy to potentially give Apple and Google a a record of every place you have ever taken a photograph. It’s simply none of their damned business unless I choose to make it their business and I should damned well be informed about what data is sent and stored on their servers.

Apple should:

• Clearly document precisely what data is sent to Apple and Google. (Apple now owns Pushpin)
• Ensure all data sent to Apple/Google is anonymized and contains no image data.
• Enable more granular control of online lookups.
• Allow you to hide the UI for the feature if you choose not to use it.
• Offer rudimentary location functionality using locally stored map data installed with the program.

You should, think a little more about how convenience and your use of ‘The Cloud’ may compromise your privacy and be a more informed and deliberate consumer of those services.

Pogue David Pogue posted this to his twitter feed:

“Me: Why do GUEST networks require passwords? You: “Security.”

Me: Fine–then why HAVE Guest at all? The regular WiFi already requires login!”

It’s a good question and the annoyance of needing a password to get access to what is, presumptively, open by virtue of being called a “Guest” network does seem a bit silly. The truth is though, it’s good policy to limit access even to ‘Guests’ and, in some cases, it may afford some legal protection.

When operating any network, you have certain responsibilities. To some degree, these apply whether corporate or personal but, obviously, more so when corporate, NGO, or the like:

• Protect the internet at large from the behavior of your users.
• Protect your ‘resident’ users from the public net.
• Protect confidential data on your private net.
• Meet regulatory and certification requirements.

So, guests to your network needing a password means you can ensure they are, at least nominally, invited ones. In cases where you are under regulatory scrutiny, you should generate a unique password for each guest and you might want to log their activities. (no, I don’t LIKE logging people. It offends me but sometimes it’s a job requirement)

By limiting your guests to invited ones, those you give a password, you can:

• Ensure that only people you want to have access to what may be constrained bandwidth.
• Provide them access to a sandboxed network to allow them access to only to resources they need, and, more importantly, you need them to have.
• Segment outgoing traffic to a subnet other than the one your employees and official activities are done with and, possibly, with a unique domain so your ‘guests’ are less likely to accidentally land you on a spamblock or similar list.

Yes, there are those who argue that a wide open network means John Doe claims made against you by the RIAA and the like aren’t ‘you’ because anyone could have used your network but I am of the opinion that one doesn’t leave one’s guns on the porch so you can deny the ballistics data points to you as the killer. To me, there are better ways to have a stand up defense against the xIAA weasels of the world.

Front Of House Online, an online magazine and news sight for production professionals (as in event/concert production) has has in introductory piece about how recently released FCC rules seem to set up a serious problem, actually perpetuate an existing problem, of  ‘stump the band’ when it comes to how to use wireless mics, in ear monitors and wireless instrument belt packs without radio interference.

More to the point for most readers of this site though is that the article is also a good starting point for thinking about the net neutrality issue.

Regulating the use of and allocation of radio spectrum is a necessary evil. Consider the following:

• In the US (and elsewhere) radio frequency spectrum, channels, are considered public property the government must license for use. The government defines what kinds of signals occupy particular channels and charge for the allocation of some those channels as revenue for the state. The state, us, we the people and all that.
• How that spectrum is allocated impacts your freedom. We choose to give up some individual freedoms to function as part of a society.
• Federally regulating the use of radio spectrum ensures our car radios work no matter what state we drive in. Insures that our air traffic controllers can be heard by pilots flying planes over our heads rather than being blasted by the local broadcast of Rush Limbaugh who, unregulated, might pick any channel he liked… or all of them.
• Radio frequencies are as much public property as the little patches of land the ugly poles have been rammed into on the street in front of your house.
• Just as the government, local, state and federal, all allow the telcos and cable companies to foul our view with ugly poles and wires, block traffic, or worse, dig and poorly patch holes in our streets to lay the cables, they license the use of radio spectrum on our behalf.
• When our government licenses the use of our property, a balance must be struck to ensure our individual rights are preserved and the needs of the society as a whole are supported.

Net neutrality isn’t just about ensuring free speech, fair rates, balance in media, basic privacy and security.  It’s about how we demand our property be used when selling us services that rely on access to our resources that we licensed to companies to profit from.