Monday, August 31, 2009
Twitter demands precision
Having a tweet of mine cited by a CBC story confirmed the importance of attention to precision on Twitter. With Twitter, you only get 140 characters to express a thought, so you need to be succinct. [see Mark Evans' post on this yesterday]When I broke the story on Friday about the Office of the Privacy Commissioner releasing its findings about Bell's use of deep packet inspection, I wrote 4 tweets about various aspects of the report, including one that said:
Office of Privacy Commission (OPC) approves Bell's use of DPI: http://tinyurl.com/kr9o7kCBC's story credits me with breaking the story, listing my tweet right above a couple paragraphs that go on to say:
A spokesperson for the commissioner, however, said the office was certainly not approving DPI.The juxtaposing might lead some to think that OPC was contradicting me. Of course, I didn't tweet that the OPC approves DPI. I said that the OPC approved Bell's use of DPI, and then provided the link to the full story on my blog.
"It would not be accurate to suggest, in reading the finding, that we are endorsing DPI," she said.
And, as the CBC wrote:
Bell has stated that the DPI platform it uses has this capability, but that it is currently not using it for this purpose. It has also assured this office that any added purpose for which it currently uses PI would respect the company's privacy obligations... its own privacy policies an applicable customer agreements.The process for the privacy commission's review was started by a CIPPIC letter in May 2008 that, at the time, CBC quoted as stating:
Practices [such as] those involving the collection and use of personal information are not necessary to ensure network integrity and quality of service.The OPC disagreed and said these complaints were not well founded.
Moreover, subscribers whose traffic is being inspected have not consented to the inspection and use of their data for this purpose.
Precision is important.
Posted by Mark Goldberg @ 8/31/2009 06:33:00 AM 
Comments:
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True, but the title of said blog post was: "DPI doesn't invade privacy". The OPC report expressly raised that concern, that DPI could indeed invade privacy.
It may have been more precise to title the post something like: "PrivCom finds no evidence that Bell's DPI invades privacy", or words to that effect.
It may have been more precise to title the post something like: "PrivCom finds no evidence that Bell's DPI invades privacy", or words to that effect.
Posted by 
Actinolite : 7:00 PM, August 31, 2009
Actinolite : 7:00 PM, August 31, 2009
Hi Actinolite - thanks for the comment.
I consider blogs very different from Twitter. When you read a blog post, you get all the details - and I even gave a link to the full report. The rules for headlines are very different.
It got you to read the post and even engaged you enough to post a comment!
I consider blogs very different from Twitter. When you read a blog post, you get all the details - and I even gave a link to the full report. The rules for headlines are very different.
It got you to read the post and even engaged you enough to post a comment!
Posted by Mark Goldberg : 7:05 PM, August 31, 2009
Mark Goldberg : 7:05 PM, August 31, 2009
I appreciated that you updated the post to include the OPC decision, so I could come to my own conclusions. I just wish the MSM would some around to this idea, as it is much more transparent.
And yes, I'll certainly admit it was attention-grabbing... :)
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And yes, I'll certainly admit it was attention-grabbing... :)
Posted by Actinolite : 8:20 PM, August 31, 2009
Actinolite : 8:20 PM, August 31, 2009 << Home
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