Privacy and Photos

Hi all,

This is a relevant thread from Sam’s DigitalAid site which I am reposting to the blog for posterity. ~DEEN
—Hello there.

Digital
cameras store, in addition to photographs themselves, some metadata
about the photographs. This metadata is often embedded with the image
itself. This can provide interesting data about a photograph. But it
can also be a privacy issue. Here is a post about this issue: http://netzreport.googlepages.com/hidden_data_in_jpeg_files.html

Question for you:

• Should
  we strip this data? (no guarantees that all the data would get
  stripped, but there is a Drupal contributed module that attempts to
  strip this data; this applies only to those photos uploaded to the
  site, not any pulled in from Flickr or other 3rd parties).
• Should
  we print this data along with the photo? (there’s another Drupal module
  that does this so it shouldn’t have much impact on cost/time)
• Should we do what 99% of the world does, which is neither? (don’t print it, don’t strip it)
• Or should we ask the youth what they want us to do?

Lemme know!
-Sam

4 comments so far

Samantha Moscheck Tue, 1 Jan at 12:26 PM

Hi Lance,
I got your email but not because of the reply – to post to the website
project management site you have to click on the link in this mail and
log in. I think there is a way to retrieve a forgotten password but I
can reset if needed.

I could post it to the blog, but the nice thing about the PM site is that
it keeps our email correspondence about the topic threaded and I get
the emails. Does the blog send emails of all comments? Deen?

I wonder, depending how the blog works, if we might use the PM site for
all this stuff and if somebody might, at some point, create blog posts
either copying or referecing the relevant PM messages.

Trying to keep it simple, but also be sure we all get included on the conversation.

Maybe just because of holiday but I didn’t see any response to my blog post about YouTube versus Blip TV - did folks see that?

Thanks!

Vicky Yuki Wed, 2 Jan at 8:32 AM

Thanks
for the information, Sam. I went to the netzreport site and actually,
there is a link at the bottom for a pdf of various examples where you
can actually see the whole image after it had been cropped.

I believe the site needs to be a safe place for youth to express
themselves and am not sure that they will feel as safe knowing that
images they had manipulated and placed on the site can expose what they
don’t want others to see. I also see this as an educational
opportunity, as I didn’t know that this was an issue with larger
implications.

I would like to hear from the Y folks who work directly with kids and whether they have experienced this as a problem.

Thank you!

Chris Tugwell Wed, 2 Jan at 9:21 AM

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Sam.

Sam,
do you know why most people don’t bother to strip or print the data? Is
it because they are unaware there is metadata stored on the photo?

The link you provided included a couple of real life scenarios where the
embedded metadata created some problems. I would hate to see something
like this happen to any of our users.

What’s the added cost for stripping photos?

Do you have a strong opinion on what we should do?

Samantha Moscheck Wed, 2 Jan at 12:06 PM

I’m sure most people have no idea. I had no idea either, to be honest,
until I stumbled on a Drupal module that attempts to strip some of it
out, and researched the issue a bit.

My personal opinion is that it is a very good thing to educate youth (and parents!) about. And
that actually stripping out the data on the PSO
site would be a good gesture, but not a whole lot more than a gesture
if we presume that youth are out uploading photos other places too.

Plus, I’m wondering about videos – is there any such encoding on videos? Etc. I have no idea.

I think it would be a very interesting project for a student to research
this issue. I bet there are software programs – probably at least one
free program – that you can run photos and videos through to completely
strip all the information before then sending it on to whatever website
or other place you’re sending it. It might be cool to encourage youth
to do that or to at least know how.

In terms of having the PSO site strip the info from JPG
files: There is a module already that makes the attempt to strip most
of the information – it would have to be modified to make it work with
this site, because I’m using a different and better method for image
handling, but i’ll put together a cost estimate. However, I’m
optimistic that we can get it done within our current development
budget.

Naturally it wouldn’t impact video or images from third party sites.

Amazing stuff!

Best,
-Sam

Entry Filed under: PSO website development, legal and privacy

1 comment January 4th, 2008 at 09:52am Deen Freelon Permalink

Videos: YouTube vs. Blip

Given our goals with this site, the civic engagement vision, and the concerns Amber expressed in our last meeting, I am re-thinking the idea of sending youth to YouTube to upload their video.

And we’re all in agreement that providing video streaming on this site, at least initially, may not be desirable because it may make the server requirements too expensive.

I’ve done some research on this topic and wanted to share what I have learned. Let me also say that this need not have an impact on cost for web development so let’s not worry about that for now.

This is an awesome explanation of the issues and options:

Prepping and Posting your Video to the Web
Which of the many video sharing sites should you use? The answer really depends on your goals for the video.
http://www.nefilm.com/news/archives/2007/05/web2.htm

I would like to suggest using Blip.tv for the following reasons:

• They don’t take over ownership of the content. From their Terms of Service page: Blip.tv does not claim ownership of the materials you post, upload, input or submit to the Blip.tv site. Full terms here: http://winelibrarytv.blip.tv/tos/
• They don’t advertise their service, send people to other unrelated videos, etc.
• They’re just not YouTube.
• The quality is better and there are more options; for instance videos aren’t limited to 10 minutes in length
• Kids choose their licensing model when using Blip.tv

Also for the site, regardless of the YouTube / Blip.tv issue, I will be using a module that actually makes it possible to embed video content from any of the following (see below) providers by just posting the URL to the video.

Note that we can disable any of these we wish, and the specifics are a little different for each, so I may later want to disable some of these for greater consistency between the various videos on the site. Or if any of you know any reason to disallow any of these, we can do that too.

• YouTube,
• Google,
• Revver,
• MySpace,
• MetaCafe,
• JumpCut,
• BrightCove,
• SevenLoad,
• iFilm,
• Blip.TV,
• Live Video

Thoughts??

Best,
-Samantha

Entry Filed under: PSO website development

2 comments December 24th, 2007 at 11:30am Sam Permalink

Images of Citizenship and Design Decisions

Differences about citizen identity and the engagement goals directly shape the most basic design decisions. Thus, a model based on organizations sponsoring issue pages and bringing kids to those orgs (a more conventional civic model) – lead us to wanting kids to see the whole “news” site when they log in.

By contrast, a sense that personal networking better reflects kids identity preferences and describes emerging forms of political action leads to thinking that kids should see their profile page first and move from there into the site.

The challenge is to find ways to make moving out into the site – visiting/joining groups etc.– attractive to the kids. If the site is going to do something new, it is in figuring out how to make this movement attractive.

Entry Filed under: PSO website development, conceptions of citizenship

4 comments November 5th, 2007 at 05:53am Lance Bennett Permalink

drupal sites

spent time this weekend exploring different drupal sites. A couple of the sites incorporated great “Take Action” features - votehillary.org and greenspace.org.uk. No sense in reinventing the wheel. Take a look at these to get an idea of what our “Take Action” feature could look like.

Entry Filed under: PSO website development

3 comments October 22nd, 2007 at 09:41am Chris Tugwell Permalink