iPhone, but who's watching?

Location tracking revelations about Apple's iPhone are worrying. Below is an article I wrote for The Guardian a couple of weeks ago to explore the controversy . . .

Arriving at a new town hundreds of miles from home, how do you find a decent restaurant? Perhaps the mobile app TopTable and its reader reviews of nearby places to eat? Or you’re at a football match and you can’t wait to tell everyone who should be dropped and who saved the day. Try the mobile app Screach. It gives all the game’s spectators the chance to vote on the man of the match.

These are just two of a growing number location based services (LBS) – systems that use your location to send you information or let you take part in nearby activities. Others apps will tell you who’s available to date nearby or the nearest cashpoint. You can get discounts by “checking into” a store on your phone, as a loyalty scheme, and soon you may be able to get cheaper car insurance if you agree to your car being tracked to prove your driving skills and low mileage. Experts predict that by 2014 LBS will be so complete that it will be possible to locate you every second of every day, but they are developing so fast that regulation is uncertain.

“There is a general feeling that current regulation has not been looked at in terms of the mobile internet,” says Patrick Clark, a partner specialising in technology and communications at Taylor Wessing. The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations (PEC) from back in 2003 are still the main governing provisions. “It is not definite that these catch the new app platforms, which are often not provided by the telecoms company, but by third parties who may not even be in the UK or the EU. The regulations may need to be looked at again.”

As well as helping the mobile user, location based services often make money by helping businesses to direct marketing to people at the time and place where it is likely to be most effective. Not the worst thing in the world, perhaps. But what if you do not want to reveal your location? What if the information is misused? Isn’t this leading us down the road to big brother?

A key issue is consent. People must opt in to their location being used, but when does someone agree to the use of this information, which would be covered as potentially sensitive personal information under the 1998 Data Protection Act? “The regulations require people to consent to the use of the information,” Clark says. “But this should be informed consent. The user must have had opportunity to read and understand what it means. But if I agree to an app provider using my location to give me directions, does this mean I consent to it using my location to send me adverts from nearby businesses?”

The way people use the mobile internet is not the same as the way people use the internet at home. At home can one is presented with the full forms and terms and conditions. On a mobile this is much more difficult to provide, which leads to concerns that people are not giving informed consent. They may want to know the nearest restaurants, but do they really consider the possibilities that this information may fall into the hands of the police, who may have rights to it to investigate a crime, or an adversary, who may get a court order for the information as part of a legal action. What happens if a person gives a lover, child or friend a new mobile phone, but doesn’t reveal that it has tracking enabled?

Philip James, senior associate in the media brands and technology team at Lewis Silkin, says: “Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a requirement to show an icon to indicate that a location service is in operation.” The issue of consent may also depend on the level of detail and the precise nature of the network. The PEC regulations define “location data” as indicating the geographical position of “a user of a public electronic communications service, including data relating to the latitude, longitude or altitude . . . the direction of travel . . . or the time the location information was recorded.

“If you have wifi on the phone and that is the means by which, for example, the shop you have walked into is processing location data then there is a query about whether the regulations apply. You may be considered not to be on a public network." And as for the longitude and latitude? “What level of detail requires regulation? Street, town, city, country? Information about which country you are in may not be seen as sensitive personal information for data protection, but it may be very important for other reasons, such as proving your domicile.”

From a practical point of view, pioneers of LBS argue that there is a shared interest between the consumer and the provider. The consumer does not get bombarded with irrelevant material, including marketing, and the provider does not waste time on people who are nowhere near relevant businesses.

Paul Rawlings, founder of Screach provider Screenreach, says: “What matters is how the company handles the data. We are living in a social world. People are sharing their thoughts on Twitter and sharing our location is a natural progression. We give the user a compelling reason to engage. This creates loyalty. They don’t feel that they have been advertised to.”

It is perhaps this perceived symmetry of interest that is fueling LBS. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) it is evolving from being driven mainly by standalone services such as Google Maps to becoming an integral part of other mobile services such as social networking, including Four Square and Twitter. Jon Mew, IAB director of mobile and operations says: “Done responsibly, location based marketing provides an extra service to consumers. We have probably only scratched the surface of this so far, but things will only work if consumers accept them and they know there are laws and regulations to protect them.” The message, then? Read the small print.

It may pay to get readers to prove their commitment

‘There is a grave risk of cutting yourself off from the mass audience if you are a mass media product’, warns Charlie Beckett, Director of Polis, in the department of media and communications at the London School of Economics. It is one of the main paywall worries, but I also think there may be something more subtle going on with reader psyche that may benefit paid-for products.

Discussing a Clay Shirky idea of a 'newsletter' model for paywall publications, George Brock, Professor and Head of Journalism at City University London, alludes to reader perceptions on his blog when he says: 'One of the problems for the printed press is the fall in the value that people think newspapers have.'

Everyone is familiar with the marketing ploy of getting people to pay more for a product to suggest superiority, which in turn attracts more users. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books, used all over the place, from the private gym and supermarket to the arts organisation and football club.

Philosopher Julian Baggini (co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Philosopher Magazine), quoted by the BBC in 2007 says it's all about commitment.

'When we pay for something we are showing commitment in a very practical way. We put something of ourselves - in this case money - into whatever it is we want. And by paying for it, we are proving to ourselves that we value it.'

Quite so. How many newspaper readers are used to spending extra on branded products simply because they are branded rather than because there is any evidence that they are better? That’s not to say that anyone can get away with selling anything that’s substandard. That never works for long, but, of course, if more people do start paying to read online, media organisations will have more money to invest and they are likely to get better.

Baggini adds: 'People thought because a particular event was free, it wasn't worth putting themselves out for. The thinking is that having a high financial value creates the perception that something has real value.'

It applies to all forms of culture, Baggini says: 'We'd like to think that a piece of music has value in itself, that we like it because of what it is. But in reality economic factors do influence how we perceive things. The danger is that having not put the commitment in, you run the risk that you don't get as much out.'

In other words, if people pay for the print or website versions of their newspapers, they are more likely to value them and remain loyal readers. Even though there may be some initial caution, in the long run the audience base will be much more solid.

And what about The Philosopher Magazine website? Presumably it's all securely behind a paywall. Well, actually, no it isn't. A case of 'do as I say, not as I do', perhaps, but Baggini's point must still be worth bearing in mind.

The choice for journalism (and other forms of culture) may be: have a paywall and risk losing readers who do not want to pay, or give content away for free and risk losing readers who see this as a sign that your content is worthless. I know which risk I'd rather take . . .

Could London’s East End be the centre of a media resurgence?

David Cameron, in the Evening Standard this week promised that, ‘something exciting is happening in east London — so exciting, in fact, that it means we could create another Silicon Valley. This isn't far fetched — all the elements are here too.' Later in his article he said: ‘Google and Facebook are all creating either research labs or innovation spaces in east London.’ Exciting times.

Meanwhile, also this week, novelist and journalist Clare Sambrook, has strong links with the East End through her work, won the Paul Foot Award for Campaigning Journalism for her work on ending child detention for asylum seekers. Announcing the winner, and quoted in journalism.co.uk, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop said: 'Investigative journalism is very much alive.' He backed this up in conversation with Steve Hewlett on BBC Radio 4’s Media Show.

As if this were not enough heady journalistic news for the area, there was more success for two other East Enders. The Times, covered by Roy Greenslade in The Guardian, claimed 105,000 online 'sales'. James Murdoch, chief of News Corporation, owner of the Times, was pleased: ‘We are very excited by the progress that we have made in a very short space of time. In the few months since we launched these new products, the total paid circulation of The Times has grown.’ The Sunday Times was also a runner up in the Paul Foot prize for reports, by Jonathan Calvert and Clare Newell, on MPs and peers seeking cash for influence.

With all this positive news for one of the poorest areas of London and for one of the poorest, but arguably most important, areas of the media - investigative journalism - it is a shame that Sambrook found her campaigning work had been 'financially catastrophic’, as reported in journalism.co.uk.

It’s also a shame for the Times online that estimates suggest that the Times and Sunday Times would gross about £5.5m a year, about the same that 12,000 print customers buying the paper every day would bring in for News Corp .

Then there’s the little matter of News Corporation seeking approval from the European Commission to buy the 61% of Sky's parent company, BSkyB, that it does not yet own. This would make News Corporation the biggest media company in the UK. Dan Sabbagh, in The Guardian, points out that it ‘would be able to tie the Times digital editions with Sky subscriptions in a way competing newspaper groups could not match’.

It’s been a good week for media in London's East End, but it could be better.

Literature and politics

There was an excellent piece by Ferdinand Mount in yesterday's Guardian newspaper. He discusses how literature and politics can work together. Running through a list of the usual suspects, from Henry James, HG Wells, Bertolt Brecht and Edith Wharton to Alice Munro, Jane Smiley, Anne Tyler and Annie Proulx, he makes the point that in literature 'politics works when it is lost in art'.

I agree with Mount, but would add that political debates are poorer if they are limited to Politics with a capital P. In other words, politicians tend to be more humane and more efficient when they engage in the world outside of the so-called corridors of power, when they engage in the minutiae of the lives of their constituents. This is one reason why after a long time in power many politicians lose touch with the needs of the people. And that's no good for anyone, a point emphasised by Catherine (in Terence Rattigan's Winslow Boy, just revived in a powerful, timely production starring Timothy West and directed by Stephen Unwin). It deals with fact-based case of a teenager, Ronnie Winslow, wrongly accused of stealing a postal order: 'If ever the time comes that the House of Commons has so much on its mind that it can't find time to discuss a Ronnie Winslow and his bally postal order, this country will be a far poorer place than it is now.'

The reverse is also true. There is no such thing as a divide between the political and the non political. Everything has a political dimension, art is not better merely because it tries to bang on about a political point, but any form of art shifts the feelings of the reader, viewer or listener and affects, sometimes in a minute way (the bad band heard at the local club) and sometimes in a huge way (Picassso's Guernica, Ibsen's Doll's House), her or his interaction with the world.

Why a window? 3

When people are angry and afraid, the window on the world is cracked, oblique, distorted. Instead of taking out their anger on the principal guilty parties, people attack the weak, the unfamiliar. This reaction has benefited the far right minority-bashing parties throughout much of Europe and in the UK. Few people voting for the BNP or its like ever stop to wonder how these dishonest, often criminal, egomaniac, rat brains would solve today's issues. The BNP voter's view on the world is cracked. (Thus the cracked window picture for today's blog).

The supporter of fascist, authoritarian rule attempts to retreat from the multi-coloured cacophony of life by biting into the fantasy of total strength, absolute right and nostalgia for an illusory sweet-tasting, pure past. It is about ways of seeing. For this reason, I'm always suspicious of anyone who is too sure of her or his authority or organisation, particularly anyone who wants to directly or indirectly exclude others. Are they being seduced by the same siren song as the fascist?

I prefer John Locke's more humanistic approach (Treatise on Government), although it is true to say that one's approach to life, government and everything else will often vary depending on time and events:

People are in 'a state . . . of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection'.

We are all entitled to the same rights. We all respond in our own ways to experiences and we are all capable of offering something unique and perhaps invaluable, as Locke wrote (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding):

'I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore cannot but confess here again, that external and internal sensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this DARK ROOM.'

It is impossible to imagine the BNP's Nick Griffin or the Dutch Freedom Party's Geert Wilders having this sort of view of humanity. What about Gordon Brown or Barack Obama?

Why a window? 2

From ban-the-bomb marches on Trafalgar Square through to well-behaved and sedate meetings in university seminar rooms, I always feel that behind any organisation someone is building an empire. That doesn't mean I do not see the need for organisations, from political parties that want to improve the world (at least in part to prevent Duffy's or Orwell's nightmares), to universities, orchestras, publishers and film companies that help us understand our world and make it seem better. There is truth in Thomas Hobbes' view of a world without a strong state (Leviathan):

'No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.'

But your views on how to exercise this strength will depend on where you stand. Are you in or out? There's the dilemma: if you join the organisation, you risk being homogenised into a non-descript functionary and, worse still, you risk lending your weight to a battering ram of the human soul; if you stay on the outside your risk being ignored and, worse still, you leave the way clear for malevolence.

It is a beautifully horrific dilemma. Crowds, groups, the mass can be dangerous, unpredictable, seductive. And blind organisation can lead one to ignore the most obvious truth, as Orwell emphasises in A Hanging, describing a man about to be executed:

'His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned - reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, feeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less.'

When today every pillar of society appears to be crumbling, from paedophile Catholic priests (and in case you are interested, I'm a non-believer) to dodgy politicians and greedy bankers, it's easy to see why people grab for the nearest strong hand, but often the wrong people are unlucky enough to feel the full power of this tough stance.

Why a window? 1

In some way or other we are all outside the window looking in. If we are honest, we all have periods when we feel ignored, like bystanders, looking through a window into a room where the real actors are getting on with the day's work. For some, this is fine, but for others, particularly at the moment, when the world appears to be falling apart and people feel afraid, being outside can be dangerous, as Carol Ann Duffy (Education for Leisure, from the 1980s) made clear:

'Today I am going to kill something. Anything.

I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God.'

Don't misunderstand, it's not a question of being apathetic. I'm passionate enough about life to get involved in politics, music, literature. Being outside one can often see things that would be ignored from inside the group. Crowds or organised activities so often steamroller the individual. When anyone talks of organising other people there's always a sickening smell of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four warning about obsessive, central organisation gone mad:

'If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face.' Okay, today the picture becomes a reality TV show and the boot becomes a Jimmy Choo shoe, but the point remains the same.