RE: [xml-dev] Semantic web?

We've touched on these issues before, and I discussed them
in the Golem article for the now sadly defunct Markup magazine
that MIT published.   The battle for privacy was lost the day 
the first Mosaic browser hit the net.  The web was fielded witlessly.
 
1.  Most information one might want to declare private becomes 
public by multiple means.  For example, you may think you 
are keeping a home address private but you applied for an 
FCC ham license without noticing that the FCC lets ham web sites 
have access to that information for their call sign databases. 
With that and a handy free web search map, bingo, directions 
to your front door.  A simple name search is all one needs 
even if one has never used the web or gotten an email account.
 
Databases leak.
 
2.  The problem is not simply privacy but aggregation (see 1) and 
the illusions of aggregation.   If what is said about you and 
not what you say is the means by which you are classified 
by a search engine, you are the sum of the impressions 
others have, right, wrong, indifferent or malicious.
 
Gossip kills reputations.
 
3. In many cases, your governments are much more 
tightly constrained over the information they collect 
and share.   Dissemination management policies 
are legally instituted in all American states and 
probably in Europe as well.  There are also purge 
statutes on the books that enforce removing information 
from these databases after a period of time or under 
certain rules (eg, juvenile status).   Law enforcement 
institutions are constrained as to information they 
can share with one another.  Yes, 911 resulted in a 
loosening of these controls, but failure to coordinate 
exposed the public to threat.  Can the genie be put 
back in the bottle?  I doubt it, but  by contrast, 
the web has none of this.
 
No rules cuts equally.
 
The web routes around restraints; even ones that 
protect privacy, decency, and ethical use.
 
The Web is not a democratizing institution in that 
it empowers without constraint.   The problem is 
not what information is collected but the authority 
and abilities others have to use it without your
consent and without legal oversight.
 
Like it or not, the damage to privacy that has most 
affected the most people was done by the web 
and those who promoted a laissez faire technology 
for information publication and aggregation.
 
They is Us.
 
len

-----Original Message-----
From: Danny Ayers [mailto:danny666@virgilio.it]



 [Andrew said] 
Perhaps, in a broader context, an even more important aspect is the notion of eXtreme Monitoring Language! 

The article from TBL et al in Scientific American started with an example where medical data which, in Europe at least, would be seen as confidential information was passed around with what at least some would view as gay abandon. 

If machine processing of semantics is implemented we, as individuals, are highly likely to lose control of the privacy of our personal information if we cannot know or influence directly which parts of personal information (and its meaning) is accessible to "Big Brother".