Privacy Theatre

The fabulously written post Privacy Theater: Why Social Networks Only Pretend To Protect You on Tech Crunch by Rohit Khare is a must read for those even moderately interested in digital identity.  The post speaks to the fact that despite cleverly written Terms of Service agreements the social networking site still treat the individuals digital identity as if they own it and not the individual.  This is much the same as with individual medical records were the providers (doctors, clinics, hospitals, the government) believe that they not the individual, whose data they have collected, own the information.

“I’d argue that the hapless state of ToS enforcement by the major social network platforms only provides the feeling of improved privacy while doing little or nothing to actually improve privacy: that’s privacy theater.”

The scary thing, as pointed out in this article, is that as an individual you don’t have access to the full set of the information you own but the social networking sites do.  These social networking sites have no qualms providing it for cold hard cash to data aggregation companies.

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The Case for Collaboration and Security

David Coleman of Collaborative Strategies has posed a very relevant item around the need to collaborate on security.  The post is titled “The Challenge of Collaboration AND Security“.

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employees are not children

Employees are not children so don’t treat them like they are and they will be much more productive, and happy.  This is something that has very much been on my mind lately for several reasons that I won’t go into.  The eWeek article below looks at how 37Signals goes about getting things done in what appears to me to be a pretty efficient and people friendly way.  http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/37Signals-Breaks-Free-of-Rigid-Work-Culture-464279/?kc=EWKNLCSM11102009STR1

Why is it that so many companies think they need to be parents to their employees?  Instructing employees on what to do, where to do it and when to do it.  Some even going to the level of creating events to *reward* casual dress days.  If you treat your knowledge workers with respect and trust you don’t need to be parents or the benevolent master.

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pure Orwellian prattle

Do Businesses Hate Their Workers? (Income Disparity Myths Edition) over at Naked Capitalism.  Yves hits the nail squarely on the head with this statement: “Our employees are our greatest asset” is pure Orwellian prattle; most companies treat employees as liabilities, doing everything they can to minimize labor costs, getting rid of workers whenever possible.

Naked Capitalism comes at things from an economic perspective, but there is clearly KM applicability in this article.  If companies truely value their employees they would be more focused on providing mechanisms to leverage the collective knowledge of the organization in a way that benefits not just the organization but the workers.  In this context organizations need to put their money where their mouth is; not just with regards to compensation, but investing in mechanisms that benefit all stakeholders.

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