The Washington Post has an article today that talks about what google is doing as of today:

Google's no-opt-out privacy changes and the end of the anonymous Internet

Google announced Tuesday its plans to integrate data from all its services with your profile for logged-in Google+ users.

She makes this assertion in the early part of the article.

The Internet, nowadays, is overwhelmingly dominated by fora in which you hang out as your actual self. Facebook. Twitter. And now, Google.

Tie actions online to our real identities, and suddenly online activity has real-world consequences.

26 Jan 2012 2:54am GMT

Welcome to the Identity Woman Blog. Here are some links to help you get started on understanding identity on the internet:

• My Personal Saga with Google in the [psuedo]NymWars to use the name I choose on their service - annotation of all my posts.

• National! Identity! Cyberspace! Why we shouldn't freak about NSTIC on my Fast Company blog.

• Government Experimenting with Identity Technologies on my Fast Company blog.

• My speech at the Digital Privacy Forum in January 2011 articulating a vision that goes beyond "Do-Not-Track" vs. Business as Usual, creating a new ecosystem where people collect their own data.

• The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace asked industry leaders to share their ideas on how the Identity Ecosystem should be governed and managed. I wrote a response that covers much of the history of the user-centric community along with a vision of how to grow consensus.

• Core User-Centric Identity Concepts Videos on the NSTIC.US Education Page (be sure to scroll down), including Identity, Authentication (AuthN), Authorization (AuthZ), Verification, Enrollment, etc.

Organizations and Events I share leadership in:

• Internet Identity Workshop #14 May 1-3 in Mountain View, CA. This conference has focused on User-Centric Identity since 2005.

• Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium So far there are 16 startups focused on developing the new business opportunities for people collecting and getting value from their own data. We contributed to the World Economic Forum Rethinking Personal Data Project report Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class.

• Identity Commons keeps all the organizations and groups working on user-centric identity linked together.

• OASIS ID Trust Steering Committee representing Planetwork and people.

25 Jan 2012 9:13pm GMT

UpDATE: Google relented a bit, however I am still waiting to see if my name of choice was approved. You can read about the process I had to go through here. The New Google Names Process

-----------------

For those of you coming from the Mercury News story on the NymWars exploding...

I STILL have my Google+ profile suspended for using a [ . ] as my last name. Prior to that I had "Identity Woman" as my last name and prior to that... before I ever got a G+ profile and since I started using Gmail and Google Profiles I had a [ * ]as my last name. [see the complete list of posts about this whole saga below]

It is my right to choose my own name online and how I express it. Names and identities are socially constructed AND contextual... and without the freedom to choose our own names, and the freedom to have different names (and identifiers) across different contexts we will end up with a social reality that I don't want to live in: Participatory Totalitarianism.

The last names that I have had during my life are Young, and currently Hamlin (my soon-to-be ex-husband's last name). I plan to have a last name of my own, different from either of those, within the next few years. I do not choose to "promote" this last name as the HEADLINE of my profile in Google - that is a representation of my professional self online. Yes, people walk up to me IRL (In Real Life) and say "Yeah! You're Identity Woman, aren't you" - yep . It is, believe it or not, a "common" name for me as the G+ "requirements" call for. Just like it is common for BotGirl Questi to be called that when she is in that persona online. Botgirl has the best collection of articles on the web about #nymwars and amazing art protesting what happened to her and all of us who have been suspended - comic book covers, songs re-written with new lyrics, impassioned monologs.

In the digital world "identifiers" are totally linkable across contexts - that is, different communities and contexts that would never meet In Real Life cross online with common identifiers. So if you don't have the freedom to choose which identifiers (name, e-mail address, phone number, physical address,) you don't have the freedom to keep identifiers in different contexts separate, and if you can't keep them separate, that means they are linkable. Without that freedom, you can't explore or be a part of niche communities of interest that are not mainstream or not appropriate for some other context you also belong to. Here are some examples:

• the gambler at church,
• the "crazy" ferret lady at work
• the gardening gun lover
• being part of a minority sexual community
• proactive environmental activist working at a logging company
• being a Buddhist in a part of the country where everyone goes to church on Sunday and doesn't talk about religion because they would be ostracized OR the other way around being a very devout christian in a part of the country where when they do inter-religious services they include everyone except christianity...and you just would rather your faith not be "public"
• going out in the woods every few weekends dressed up like knights and ladies, while being in the Army Reserve on other ones.

This freedom to have multiple personas for multiple contexts, just like the right to vote for our government in a secret ballot box, is essential for a free society. If we do not fight for and maintain these rights, we will end up with Participatory Totalitarianism.

Google+ and my "real" name: Yes, I'm Identity Woman My first post on Google+ surprise to find my profile suspended.... I think this will all be over very soon.

Nymwars: IRL on Google Lawns. My idea to "occupy" the lawn of Google with a colourful range of folks who want the right to choose their names. I wrote this after I figured out a week into this that it wasn't going to end, and they hadn't just made a mistake.

danah boyd writes a very good post on How to design for social norms (and avoid angry mobs) all about the nymwars and what is/was going on.

August 8th Google Suspension Update - they now think I should wait for business accounts.

August 27th Let's try going with the Mononym for Google+

August 28th Google+ says your name is "Toby" NOT "Kunta Kinte"

This post was written after watching Tim O'Reilly talk to Bradley Horowitz the manager for social at Google. In it, Tim calls users asking for the right to choose their own name self-righteous and strident. I make a link to a classic American story, Roots, where Kunta Kinte, a man stolen from his village in Africa, taken to the United States, and sold into slavery refuses to take the name his slaveowner gives him, Toby - he is whipped until he accepts this name. I asked Tim and Brad if Kunta Kinte was self righteous for standing up for his own name... Tim said no, but that is a self-righteous question to ask.... well, that was on Twitter and a very interesting conversation followed with several tweeters, that resulted in Tim framing what was happening as a lynch mob against Google.... you can see that in this post.

August 29th - Is Google+ is being lynched by out-spoken users upset by real names policy?

Please also check out this post about "Tone and Silencing" to understand what the underlying dynamics are in this conversation and speaking up to the powers that be.

"Bonus suppression" Google runs YouTube and they took the clip of the movie scene down for "inappropriate nudity or sexual" - it has neither, it just made a dramatic point and made them look bad. In the clip Kunta Kinte is facing the camera with part of his chest showing being whipped from behind by a white man who is working for the slaveowner until he breaks. After repeating his name is Kunta Kinte when asked what his name is, he finally says... it is Toby.

August 30sh - One Month of the Gag by Google.

September 5th - Mononym officially not accepted. I am Kaliya - Google, Get a clue.

Posted Sept 9th.

Potential Future: Google-Zon

Relevant background

Who is Harmed by Real Names Policies developed by the Geek Feminism Community... prophetically I included in the response I gave to the Notice of Inquiry about governance of the Identity Ecosystem as outlined in the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace that I wrote, before I myself was affected.

25 Jan 2012 9:11pm GMT

Today people were tweeting/writing about the new google+ names policies. Well. I just went through it and it involves many screens and an appeal into the Kafkaesqe googleplex that takes up to 3 days before they approve your name request. I think they should to this to EVERY user cause how do I know your name "is" David Smith...it just doesn't trigger their dictionaries prompting inquiry into the legitimacy of your name...Ok but I digress...lets see how this works.

First you are discouraged from changing your name and limited to the frequency you can do so. You have to click "change name" to do anything.

Then my Name doesn't meet their Names Policy (at least they dropped the name violation language).

I clicked on the "Click here" to submit an appeal

More are you sure....

Really sure you know what your name is....

Now you can fill out the form....

I put my e-mail address as Kaliya@identitywoman.net (yes I have that one).

I linked to my blog, twitter and a Read Write Web news article that refrences me that way.

For extra documents I uploaded the Laws of Identity that lists me in the opening paragraph amongst all my professional colleagues as "Identity Woman Kaliya." You know if you having your name listed in the thankyous of the Laws of Identity as your profile name on google - I don't know what will qualify.

Andrew Nash the head of Identity at Google is friends with a bunch of us in case you need to know the context Googlers - googling the laws to confirm my/their legitimacy.

Then you get this lovely confirmation....

We shall see...

UPDATE:

Not hearing anything at the e-mail address I submitted to them as my e-mail address. I re-appealed. And of course had to do extra cognitive work to not hit the very attractive blue "cancel" button along the way. This then appeared inside my profile page.

So we shall see....

25 Jan 2012 6:27pm GMT

Nat Sakimura has written a valuable post describing OpenID Connect in a nutshell. It shows by example how simple it is for relying parties to use basic OpenID Connect functionality. If you're involved in OpenID Connect in any way, or are considering becoming involved, his post is well worth reading.

25 Jan 2012 6:29am GMT

factoryjoe posted a photo:

21 Jan 2012 8:56pm GMT

This is to announce the 2012 election of OpenID Foundation community board members. The Foundation plays an important role in the evolution of Internet identity technologies. Those elected will help determine what role the OIDF should play in helping facilitate faster and broader adoption of open standard identity systems.

Last year four community board members were elected to 2-year terms and so are not standing for election:
• Nat Sakimura
• Mike Jones
• John Bradley
• Kick Willemse

Other current community board members may seek re-election. They are:
• Allen Tom
• Axel Nennker
• Chris Messina

Brian Kissel has indicated he will likely not be a candidate. This is a good time to thank Brian, and all the current board members, for their time, attention and leadership over the last year.

For the purposes of the 2012 election, there are 5 confirmed sustaining members: Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Ping Identity, and Symantec. Thus, we will be electing 2 community members to the Board of Directors for 2-year terms. In order to be eligible for election, your candidacy must have been seconded by at least three other members.

The election will be conducted on the following schedule:
Nominations open: Monday, January 9
Nominations close: Monday, January 23
Election begins: Wednesday, January 25
Election ends: Wednesday, February 8
Results announced by: Wednesday, February 15
New board terms start: Thursday, March 1

Times for all dates are Noon, U.S. Pacific Time.

All members of the OpenID Foundation are eligible to nominate themselves, second the nominations of others who self-nominated, and vote for candidates. If you're not already a member of the OpenID Foundation, we encourage you to join now at https://openid.net/foundation/members/registration.

Voting and nominations are conducted using the OpenID you registered when you joined the Foundation. Log in at https://openid.net/foundation/members/ with your OpenID to participate in the nomination and voting. If you are already a member, you will receive an email advising you the election is open and how to participate. If you experience problems participating in the election or joining the foundation, please send an email to help@oidf.org.

Board participation requires a substantial ongoing investment of time and energy. It is a volunteer effort that should not be undertaken lightly. Should you be elected, expect to be called upon to serve both on the board and on its committees where the work of the foundation is conducted. If you're committed to OpenID and advancing open digital identity and are a person who works well with others, we encourage your candidacy. The OIDF's Executive Committee has suggested a few questions candidates may want to publicly address in their candidate statements:

1. What is you view of the opportunity of the OpenID Foundation?
2. What are the key opportunities you see for the OpenID Foundation in 2012?
3. How will you demonstrate your commitment to the work of the foundation in terms of resources, focus and leadership?
4. What would you like to see accomplished over the next year, and how do you personally plan to make these things happen?
5. What resources can you bring to the foundation to help the foundation attain its goals?
6. What current or past experiences, skills, or interests will inform your contributions and views?

Candidates can address these questions in their election statements on various community mailing lists and at http://openid.net - especially openid-general@lists.openid.net, and via blog@oidf.org. Please forward questions, comments and suggestions to me.

Don Thibeau
Executive Director
The OpenID Foundation

03 Jan 2012 5:36pm GMT

The OpenID AB+Connect Working Group recommends approval of the following specifications as OpenID Implementer's Drafts:

• Basic Client Profile - Simple self-contained specification for a web-based Relying Party. (This spec contains a subset of the information in Messages and Standard.)
• Discovery - Defines how user and provider endpoints can be dynamically discovered.
• Dynamic Registration - Defines how clients can dynamically register with OpenID Providers.
• Messages - Defines all the messages that are used in OpenID Connect. (These messages are used by the Standard binding.)
• Standard - Complete HTTP binding of the Messages, for both Relying Parties and OpenID Providers.
• Multiple Response Type Encoding - Registers OAuth 2.0 response_type values used by OpenID Connect.

An Implementer's Draft is a stable version of a specification providing intellectual property protections to implementers of the specification. This note starts the 45 days public review period for the specification drafts in accordance with the OpenID Foundation IPR policies and procedures. This review period will end on Monday, February 6, 2012.

Unless issues are identified during the review that the working group believes must be addressed by revising the drafts, this review period will be followed by a seven day voting period during which OpenID Foundation members will vote on whether to approve these drafts as OpenID Implementer's Drafts.

The specifications are posted at these locations:

• http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-basic-1_0-15.html
• http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-discovery-1_0-07.html
• http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-registration-1_0-08.html
• http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-messages-1_0-07.html
• http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-standard-1_0-07.html
• http://openid.net/specs/oauth-v2-multiple-response-types-1_0-03.html

A description of OpenID Connect can be found at http://openid.net/connect/. The working group page is http://openid.net/wg/connect/.

Information on joining the OpenID Foundation can be found at https://openid.net/foundation/members/registration. Foundation members will be asked to vote on approving these specifications as Implementer's Drafts.

You can send feedback on the specifications in a way that enables the working group to act on your feedback by

1. signing the contribution agreement at http://openid.net/intellectual-property/ to join the AB+Connect working group,
2. joining the working group mailing list at http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-specs-ab, and
3. sending your feedback on that list.

23 Dec 2011 2:41pm GMT

Verizon announced today an important milestone in the Open Identity arena.

Verizon announced that it is the first ever identity provider to achieve a Level 3 US Government certification in providing identity credentials and access management to relying parties. The importance of building a standardized framework that protects valuable personal data from Internet security risks is being recognized and addressed on a global scale and national level.

Verizon has established itself as a leader that is building a foundation for an open and secure Internet-identity ecosystem that people and business can trust. Beyond providing a safeguard for digital identities, certified identity providers will help speed conversations, interactions and transactions for people, businesses and relying parties now and in the future.

As one of the pioneers in building the trust frameworks, Verizon's leadership as an identity provider is at the heart of building this new identity ecosystem. Verizon was one of the founding members of the Open Identity Exchange (OIX) an organization that now includes the leaders in internet, telco and data aggregation industries.

Today's password-focused website login process is unsafe and risky and has led to personal information and data being compromised through phishing and hacking attacks on weak systems. The potentially devastating consequences associated with the hijacking and theft of digital identities highlights the need for a trusted and certified framework that relying parties can depend on for identity authentication.

OIX, its member companies and Verizon aim to provide an open framework that standardizes the security, privacy, and operation policies of identity service providers that people, businesses and governments can trust.

The Internet identity ecosystem is quickly evolving with companies playing many different roles. The OIX is focused on the roles of attribute providers, identity providers, and relying parties. Verizon is playing an important role as a leader and advocate for OpenID. We congratulate Verizon on this significant achievement.

07 Dec 2011 10:37pm GMT

I was asked by Allison Fine to contribute to the Personal Democracy Forum Rebooting America anthology.

This article looks at three leading edge deliberative methods that engage small groups of citizens representing voices of the whole. They all were invented before personal computing and all could be augmented. You can see the methods outline in a chart in Appendix 6 and the eight steps of the processes are described in this article.

This post is Appendix 5 and 6 of Kaliya's NSTIC Governance NOI Response - please see this page for the overview and links to the rest of the posts. Here is a link to the PDF.

This is the section before: People Diversity

This is the section after: Resource Guide on Public Engagement

03 Dec 2011 9:17pm GMT

Read Write Web's Marshak Kirkpatrick just posted a great article outlining the issues with the Carrier IQ issues that have surfaced. It also includes an extensive quote from me about how data has value and it needs to be accessed in ways that are in alignement with people.

02 Dec 2011 4:01pm GMT

Week one in Europe was busy. The day I arrived Esther picked me up and we headed to Qiy's offices where i got to run into John Harrison who I last saw a year ago at IIW Europe. He is organizing a consortium to go in for FP-7 money (80 million) put out for projects around Identity in the European Union.

Wednesday was Nov 9th Identity.Next convened by Robert was great bringing people together from across Europe. 1/2 the day was a regular conference and 1/2 the day was an UnConference that I helped facilitate. I ran a session about personal data and we had a good conversation. I also learned about a German effort that seemed promising - Pidder - their preso in The Hague

November 10th I headed to London for New Digital Economics EMEA along with Maarten from Qiy. It was fantastic to be on stage with 5 different start-up projects all doing Personal Data along with one big one

• William Heath, Founder & Chairman, Mydex
• John Harrison, Personal Information Brokerage
• Marcel Van Galen, CEO/Founder, QIY
• Luk Vervenne, CEO, Synergetics
• Herve Le Jouan, CEO, Privowny
• Richard Benjamins, Director of User Modeling, Telefonica Digital

It was clear that the energy in the whole space had shifted beyond the theoretical and the response from the audience was positive. I shared the landscape map we have been working on to explain elements of the overall ecosystem.

Digital Death Day was November 11th in Amsterdam was small but really good with myself, Stacie and Tamara organizing. We had a small group that included a Funeral Director a whole group form Ziggur. We were sponsored by the company formerly know as DataInherit - they changed their name to SecureSafe. Given that Amsterdam is closer then California to Switzerland we were hopping they would make it given their ongoing support...alas not this year.

One of the key things to come out of the event was an effort to unite the technology companies working on solutions in this area around work to put forward the idea of a special OAuth token for their kind of services perhaps also with a "Trust Framework" that could use the OIX infrastructure.

It as also inspiring to have two two young developers attend.

• Leif Ekas travelled from Norway - I had met him this summer in Boston when he was attending summer school at BU and working on his startup around aspects of digital death.
• Sebastian Hagens - Sebastix

28 Nov 2011 12:35am GMT

Immediately following IIW (post here). I headed to Canada to speak at the International Women in Digital Media Summit.

The iWDMS brings together professionals from traditional and digital media communities, as well as educational/research institutions from around the world. With high level keynotes, cross-sector dialogue, expert panelists, controversial debates and structured networking, the Summit will promote knowledge-sharing, and will explore innovation, skills gaps, policy and research in digital media--including gaming, mobile, and social media--and the impacts on and advancements by women globally.

I gave an "Ideas and Inspiration" talk for 20 min about the Personal Data Ecosystem called The Old Cookies are Crumbling: How Context & Persona aware personal data servcies change everything and will transform the world and was also on a panel about New Media Literacies.

There are a few things I took away from this event:

1) Countries like Canada are very small with just 30 million people and the center of commercial/intellectual life in Toronto an event like this really brings together a core group of high profile women in the media production business that represents much of the industry.

2) Both the government of Canada, provinces like Ontario and universities like Ryerson are very serious about attracting and retaining top technology and media talent with a variety of tax and investment incentives.

3) See point (1) because of that ...one must think internationally about appeal and distribution of any media across the whole world not just one market.

4) The way they talk about diversity used lang had language I never heard before the term "designated groups" included folks with disabilities, first nations people (in the US they would be "American Indians"), women, and ethnic minorities.

5) The idea that people shouldn't be stalked around the web to "monetize" them was new and provoked some thinking amongst those who made their living developing metrics.

It was great to connect to Canada again and I hope that with the IIW coming up in Toronto in February some of the women who I met there can attend and consider how media can change with new tools for people to manage their identity and data.

I got to meet up with Aran Hamilton (@Aranh) who coordinated efforts around the NSTIC of Canada in Toronto. We outlined the possibility of a Satellite IIW in Toronto and I learned more about what is going on there. Basically up to point (1) above...Canada is small. 95% of people have a bank account and of that something like 85% have accounts with one of 5 banks (Bank of Montreal, Toronto Dominion Bank/Canada Trust, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotia Bank) and there are 3 telco's. So it seems like getting an NSTIC like system in place in Canada could involves meetings with a few dozen people. They have the added advantage that Canadians have a higher trust in their government and institutions like banks and telco's and have fewer "privacy rights" organizations. So our IIW should be interesting and I hope that we can get some good cross over between the January 17th event in DC and this one.

After Toronto headed to the 4th MassTLC Innovation Unconference. It was great to be joined by Briana Cavanaugh who is working with me now at UnConference.net. The community was thriving and it was the biggest ever unconference that I have run at 800 people and lots of sessions. Jason Calacanis who apparently has relocated to Boston was there. Jeff Taylor was there and had a rocking "un-official" after party that he DJ'ed. The most notable costume was a guy in a suit with a 99% on his forehead. Yes Occupy Wall Street became a halloween costume.

27 Nov 2011 11:46pm GMT

IIW is always a whirlwind and this one was no exception. The good thing was that even with it being the biggest one yet it was the most organized with the most team members. Phil and I were the executive producers. Doc played is leadership role. Heidi did an amazing job with production coordinating the catering, working with the museum and Kas did a fabulous job leading the notes collection effort and Emma who works of site got things up on the wiki in good order.

We had a session that highlighted all the different standards bodies standards and we are now working on getting the list annotated and plan to maintain it on the Identity Commons wiki that Jamie Clark so aptly called "the switzerland" of identity.

We have a Satellite event for sure in DC January 17th - Registration is Live.

We are working on pulling one together in Toronto Canada in

early February, and Australia in Late March.

ID Collaboration Day is February 27th in SF (we are still Venue hunting).

I am learning that some wonder why I have such strong opinions about standards...the reason being they define the landscape of possibility for any given protocol. When we talk about standards for identity we end up defining how people can express themselves in digital networks and getting it right and making the range of possibility very broad is kinda important. If you are interested in reading more about this I recommend Protocol: and The Exploit. This quote from Bruce Sterling relative to emerging AR [Augmented Reality] Standards.

If Code is Law then Standards are like the Senate.

27 Nov 2011 11:45pm GMT

This is the latest from Google in their "names policy"

We understand that your identity on Google+ is important to you, and our Name Policy may not be for everyone at this time.

Kinda sounds like the owners of stores in the south who said their stores were not for everyone especially black people who didn't have skin color they liked. It is a fundamentally discriminatory policy. If we don't have the freedom to choose our own names in digital space and the freedom to maintain different identifiers across different social spaces we will end up in a very creepy world...Here is my TEDxBrussels talk.

You can find all my previous posts about my Google+ saga and the NymWars here.

I wrote this poem on my way back from Europe.

Occupy Your Identity!

25 Nov 2011 6:59am GMT

This post is about what is going on at a deeper level when Google+ says your name is "Toby" NOT "Kunta Kinte". The punchline video is at the bottom feel free to scroll there and watch if you don't want to read to much.

This whole line of thought to explain to those who don't get what is going on with Google+ names policy arose yesterday after I watched the Bradley Horwitz - Tim O'Reilly interview (they start talking about the real names issue at about minute 24).

More on my personal Google+ suspension that continues to Day 29.

Tim is struck by the Steve Jobs element of how Bradley and Google is talking about designing for the way the world will be not how it is....implying and even explicitly saying that in the future we will just all use our real names for everything so lets get started doing that now. - you know happy future vision of benevolent design choice by humans of large corporate controlled digital systems. Yes, many Googlers like Chris Messina who used to have a handle online "Factory Joe" made the conscious choice to bring it together with his "real name". For him the cost-benefit trade of for this and decided that for him it was no longer worth it. Totally fine choice for him. What is at issue is when his choice becomes all of our choice because he and others like him have the power to decide for all of us.

Young men like Chris have a lot of privilege in the world and they can do things/make choices that others have less freedom (privilege) to make without those choices affecting their lives in material ways (chances of employment, social acceptance between different contexts with different norms, having accepting family members who are not bigoted against their personal life choices). I thought that one of the things Chris got form his years dating Tara Hunt was more of a clue about the issues that women and others who are not young white straight monogamous men living in western liberal democracy, liberal metropolises face. His posts on the topic include the following but some how...I guess he still doesn't get this issue in relation to Google (maybe he does but it seems like people who work at Google stop blogging upon their date of employ and Google employees who have spoken up on the issue have been gagged).

* Kirrily Robert: Standing out in the Crowd where he highlights these posts

• Recruit diversity
• Say it. Mean it.
• Tools. (Tools are easy.)
• Transparency.
• Don't stare.
• Value all contributions.
• Call people on their crap.
• Pay attention.

* Future of the White Boys Clubs

* Future of White Boys' Clubs Redux #fowaspeak

Fundamentally technology systems and techno-social systems are created by people making choices AND it is at this time in the history of the web we get to as a culture and society choose the range of options available for human expression of identity online. IF THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE ALL THE POWER to make this choice in these digital systems have the demographic profile of Brad and Tim then we will get one outcome - it will favor them and their world view and exclude others who are different (ala the very long list of people negatively affected by real names policies). It is an abuse of power as danah boyd eloquently explains on her blog.

Tim goes on to say (at min 28) that his own reaction to "some of the strident calls for you guys [Google+] to change what you are doing" lead him to the conclusion "give me a break, lets try some different things lets figure out what we learn from them..the market will tell you what it really demands"

Lets look at this more deeply - Tim's specific labeling of the resistance to the policies as "strident" is coming from a position of power and privilege that is judging these people in a way that demeans, what they are saying.

From Wiktionary: Strident

1. Loud; shrill, piercing, high-pitched; rough-sounding

   The trumpet sounded strident against the string orchestra.

2. Grating or obnoxious

   The artist chose a strident mixture of colors.

Because the opposition is so sharp and clear - people are speaking up in shrill, piercing, "high-pitched" ways because they are being hurt so badly and deeply by requirement for real names and how suspensions are being handled. The words of these people are being heard by Tim and others in power as grating and obnoxious because they aren't supposed to speak up...they should just accept what is happening to them right?

One response of Google+ leadership and technology leaders like Tim O'Reilly could have is to be to be empathetic, to look inward and connect to the human beings speaking and say something like:

Wow, we had no understanding of how "unfree" some people feel online and in our society broadly.

We had no idea about how many different kinds of people (who are not like us) are affected real names policies.

We didn't really realize existed, or had any needs different then ours and how can we struggle with them to make a more just society so they are not affected negatively if they were out/public about those things.

In the meantime lets really listen and get that they have real and valid needs for safety and the right to express themselves and lets and not ban them from our services for their choice not to use use their real name.

Instead Tim and others are dismissing the real hurt and anguish being felt by people saying they are being "strident" for speaking up for their right to pick their own name and to be for Google's continued insistence they have the right to decide what an acceptable name is for people.

This is about power and those who speak up to it being judged and labeled negatively for doing so. I asked in twitter yesterday if women suffragettes were strident, and were the stonewall rioters and the subsequent movement for gay rights strident? Yes they were! They were standing up for what was right and against and unjust social system that was harmful to people. I am concerned about the rights and freedoms of nyms both because people have personal life issues they want to be free to create accounts to express/deal with AND because they have political beliefs they want to share.

Imagine if the people who were standing up and organizing for gay rights in the 60's and 70's had digital tools to do so and imagine all the major places were public discourse about this happened were in online social spaces where "real names" were required and imagine that all of their families and employers would therefore know about their status as a GAY (LTBTQ) PERSON. Do you think we would have had the gay rights movement? Do you think it would have been possible? Do you think that enough people would have stood up knowing they would be laid off, fired, black balled, told their kids couldn't play with neighbor kids.

Many groups who are systemically and socially oppressed (yes in our modern liberal democracy there is lots of oppression going on) fear to speak up TODAY about the issues going on in the system that affect them. Many people have ideas that would transform the social order but challenge power will fear speaking up about these new ideas if all speech in online public fora must be linked to real names seen by their real employers who could really fire/let them go.

Unless we embed the freedom to have pseudonymous speech in major online social spaces where serious public/political dialogue occurs then we risk not having a free society any more. Free meaning the freedom to challenge injustice the freedom to seek greater accountability by those in power (government and corporate), to open up the systems that run our society.

Over the course of yesterday I continued to think more about the deeper nature of the issues going on and the fundamental nature of the power we have to name ourselves and what it means to have this freedom. I remembered the series Roots and suggested that young Googlers rent it from/watch it on netflix and then have dialogues about privileged and oppression.

For those of you who didn't watch it in the 70's (I was born in the 70's do didn't watch it then either), it is the story of a Alex Haley's black family descended from a man who was stolen from his village in Africa and brought to America as a slave. He is very clear on his identity, who he is, he is a Mandinka warrior and his name is Kunta Kinte,. One of the first things his white slave owner Master Reynolds does is rename him Toby. He refuses to accept this new name, this identity that they have said he must take on...he does accept the name but only after great human suffering inflicted by his master to get him to comply with his wishes.

This is the sort version:

"Bonus suppression" Google runs YouTube and they took the clip of the movie scene down for "inappropriate nudity or sexual" - it has neither, it just made a dramatic point and made them look bad. In the clip Kunta Kinte is facing the camera with part of his chest showing being whipped from behind by a white man who is working for the slaveowner until he breaks. After repeating his name is Kunta Kinte when asked what his name is, he finally says... it is Toby.

For slightly more context for the scene this is 8 min.

I highly recommend watching the WHOLE movie if you haven't seen it.

Just to be really clear for those of you who might not be tracking the point I am making. I and the other people in Google+ who choose to have handles/nyms that are persistent and that we are known by but are being rejected by Google+ are Kunta Kinte and the Google+ name police is the slave owner whipping him until he submits to calling himself Toby.

Metaphorically this IS what is going on. "Yes" I and other people who use handles and use nyms have a choice "not to use the service" - we are technically "not slaves" like Toby is. However we have already been using Google e-mail and other services for years with the names we chose - in changing the rules on the Google plantation they have undermined the social contract that it had with existing users. Google is a major forum for expression of ideas and is THE dominant search engine (one could argue monopolistic search engine). It will be using people's +1's to determine search results and these will shape public discourse.

Many different people are now fearful of speaking up in Google+ about these issues (even if the are not affected) because they fear the will be affected (having their access to their accounts turned off). Just look at what has happened Google+ turned off Violet Blue's profile knowing full well it was her real name and people rightly so imagine this is because she was speaking out for those who were suspended and could not speak.

Back to what Tim said above - he says that "the market will decide" these things. The core issues here are freedom of speech and power within the social sphere not about "the market". It is about what is right and just in a society. The market decided that it was ok to do slavery for hundreds of years, the market decided that it was ok to discriminate systematically against black people with Jim Crow laws and the market decided it was ok to discriminate against women in professional fields like law and medicine until things changed in the 60's.

Continuing the quotes from Tim "lets the arguments be from efficacy not from self righteousness"

Let me ask you this Tim: Was Kunta Kinte being self righteous to insist on his own choice of his own name?

Update:

Tim thinks that I am being self-righteous for even asking this question. He agrees with me that Kunta Kinte is not self righteous to stand up for his name but adds that that I am self-righteous to ask this question which in this post was explicitly drawing the analogy between Kunta Kinte's struggle for his right to assert his own identity and mine along with others with handles and Nyms in relationship to Google+. The fact that he is judging us as being "self-righteous" kinda proves my point that we are challenging the the power and authority of the system and being judged negatively by the powers that be for for doing so.

Tim thinks that this issue is just a matter for the market to decide. Sadly he doesn't see it as the silencing of voices and the inability for those who are not as privileged as he is to speak with their own voice on the Google platform the dominant search utility for the web.

In the morning there was a whole much longer set of twitter responses kicked of by Kevin Marks and going back and forth with Tim O'Reilly and others.

Update: inspired in part by this post an amazing post "about tone" as a silencing/ignoring tactics when difficult, uncomfortable challenges are raised in situations of privilege was written by Shiela Marie.

17 Nov 2011 11:09pm GMT