Recent stories in the New York Times make it clear that Attorney General Eric Holder should be “sharpening his saw” (as Abraham Lincoln said).
BP deliberately chose to use a high-risk sealing method in the days before the blast, and ignored warnings that things were going deeply awry, the paper reports.
Computer guru Tim O’Reilly makes a half-hearted attempt to justify (or at least explain) Facebook’s latest privacy grab. But I find the San Francisco Chronicle’s Bill of Rights for social media users (which O’Reilly quotes at length) much more compelling:
Users have the right to:
1. Honesty: Tell the truth. Don’t make our information public against our will and call it “giving users more control.” Call things what they are.
2. Accountability: Keep your word. Honor the deals you make and the expectations they create. If a network asks users to log in, users expect that it’s private. Don’t get us to populate your network based on one expectation of privacy, and then change the rules once we’ve connected with 600 friends.
3. Control: Let us decide what to do with our data. Get our permission before you make any changes that make our information less private. We should not have data cross-transmitted to other services without our knowledge. We should always be asked to opt in before a change, rather than being told we have the right to opt out after a change is unilaterally imposed.
4. Transparency: We deserve to know what information is being disclosed and to whom. When there has been a glitch or a leak that involves our information, make sure we know about it.
5. Freedom of movement: If we want to leave your network, let us. If we want to take our data with us, let us do that, too. This will encourage competition through innovation and service, instead of hostage-taking. If we want to delete our data, let us. It’s our data.
6. Simple settings: If we want to change something, let us. Use intuitive, standard language. Put settings in logical places. Give us a “maximize privacy settings” button, a and a “delete my account” button.
7. Be treated as a community, not a data set: We join communities because we like them, not “like” them. Advertise to your community if you want. But don’t sell our data out from under us.
[This last sentence is O’Reilly’s and not the Chronicle’s] Everyone is right to hold Facebook’s feet to the fire as long as they fail to meet those guidelines.
Yes, the Chronicle Bill of Rights seems like common sense ethics to me. The problem is that I am not convinced Facebook’s latest privacy grab is even close to meeting these guidelines. Zuckerberg and others can continue to push the frontiers, but they should do it in ways that respect their members.
Personally, I go into the online world with the expectation that there is no privacy. And therefore the specific changes don’t bother me over-much. But as someone who writes about ethics, I have a problem with obtaining consent for one restricted set of behaviors and then wildly expanding it while requiring opt-out (and difficult opt-out at that) rather than opt-in. It’s nothing more than an electronic form of bait-and-switch–something I find unethical and in fact argue against in my latest book on business ethics, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson).
Yet in the video included in the blog, O’Reilly makes a compelling case that Facebook’s privacy failures and the resultant pushback are essential to pushing the frontier, and that a lot of the innovations that seemed to threaten privacy were actually welcomed once people got used to them. O’Reilly says he’s more worried about Apple than Facebook. I, however, worry more about Google (which he also mentions in the video), which owns an extreme amount of personal data and has a very cavalier attitude toward copyrighted material
It’s really hard to imagine that anyone could take seriously the nonsense—make that the total falsehoods—spewed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. It would make for good humor, except that people believe these shameless harlots who have dedicated their lives to the service of corporate greed and gratuitous attacks on progressives (or even liberals).
Limbaugh has crammed his foot even farther down his mouth than usual a few times lately. Two examples: He blamed environmentalists for the tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and he blamed the United Mine Workers of America for failing to head off the 29-fatality disaster at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia.
Let’s look at the Massey case. Talk about blaming the victim: Early in his career as CEO of Massey, Don Blankenship broke the back of the UMWA by refusing to honor the industry agreement and demanding that the union bargain individually with Massey’s 14 subsidiaries. This was 1984, during the notoriously anti-union presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Thus, Upper Big Branch, like many Massey mines, is non-union. The union has tried to organize there repeatedly. And the government has repeatedly cited the mine for safety violations, closing it 61 times in the 15 months preceding the explosion.
Now, the really interesting part: According to “How King Coal Killed the Union Man,” by Lauri Lebo, published in the May 15 issue of the Washington Spectator union mines are far, far safer than nonunion You need to be a subscriber to read the article, so let me summarize some of the findings:
How does Limbaugh sleep at night? He is a propagandist, not a journalist
It’s rare to have Democrats and Republicans in Congress agreeing on much of anything these days—but both parties were strong in their condemnation of Goldman Sachs and its apparent willingness to give advice to its investors that directly contradicted its own predictions, to bet on those predictions, and perhaps cause the economic collapse of 2008. From McCaskill (D-MO) to Ensign (R-NV), Senators called Goldman Sachs some pretty nasty names.
And the casino analogies are appropriate, except that in a casino, as Senator Ensign pointed out, the rules don’t change during the round of play. Goldman kept changing the rules. It was very profitable for them, but a disaster for the economy.
And yet, this whole coterie of Goldman Sachs executives went on and on about their lack of regret (never mind remorse). It’ll be a long time before I trust them to give ME any investment advice!
One thing I don’t see anyone else picking up on is the possible implication of Former Goldman CEO/former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Here’s an excerpt from the link above (it goes backward, from bottom to top):
12:56: McCaskill: Tourre, do you typically let people like Paulson pick the assets that go into a security they’re betting against?
Tourre: In every synthetic buyer situation, the buyer has to be involved. There are always suggestions from the interested party.
12:53: McCaskill: What’s clear here (from all these emails) is that there wasn’t a great deal of confidence in this “Timberwolf” but the sales people were being pushed to move it.
12:51: McCaskill is reading from emails…
12:42: What’s Paulson doing in the room with the guy picking the assets? Was IKB there? Weren’t they going to be a better to?
Tourre: At what time?
McCaskill: At the time Paulson and ACA met.
Tourre: No, we didn’t know they would be a part of the deal then.
McCaskill: Well, why wouldn’t you tell IKB that Paulson, who they were betting against, was in the room when the deal was being created? That just seems weird to me.
12:42: What about ABACUS?
Tourre: Goldman and Paulson selected ACA.
I don’t think we’ve heard the whole story yet. It promised to be verrrrry interesting.
Rule Number One of my approach to marketing is to treat the customer right. As I say in my books, it’s far cheaper to bring back an existing customer than to have to go out and recruit a new one. And even in the following case, where there is no likelihood of a repeat purchase, it still would have made more sense to honor the request. A business owner never knows when a customer will tell a very large circle of people about either a good or a bad experience. And in this particular case, I’m prepared to escalate and the merchant may find itself with neither the money nor the merchandise, just for being stupid about customer service.
For right now, I won’t name the company; we’ll see what kind of response I get. But here’s a letter I wrote that I should never have had to write:
On January 12, 2010, we purchased two bags at your Lincoln Mall store in Miami Beach, a few minutes before closing time. We came into the store because my wife needed a replacement for her everyday purse. She found one that was a little larger and considerably heavier than her current purse, and I found a fanny pack, which I’d been looking for. It wasn’t ideal but she thought she could make it work. However, walking the few blocks back to where we were staying, it became obvious that the weight would be a problem. We actually took turns carrying it, and she decided we’d bring it back the next day.
The purse never left the [name of store] plastic bag. It was exactly as it had been when we took it out of the store. But when we returned the next evening, the store refused to refund her purchase (we’re keeping the fanny pack). They pointed to the sales receipt, which stated that all returns would be for exchanges, not refunds.
However, this information is not posted anywhere in the store. There is no way to know about the policy until after you’ve made the purchase and the store considers you bound by it.
As it happens, I’ve written several books on marketing, and while not a lawyer, I have at least a basic understanding of consumer law. One of the requirements of a valid contract is that it’s entered into voluntarily by all parties. In this case, the terms of the contract were essentially changed by one party after purchase. The standard for American retail is to take back unused, salable merchandise within a reasonable time after purchase, and where the conditions are different, they need to be visibly posted so the customer is aware. Handing someone a sales receipt with different conditions is not something likely to hold up to scrutiny.
However, the store did not accept this argument and refused to issue a refund; we spoke to four different people. We did look around to see if here was anything else we needed, but we had come to the store specifically to buy the purse, and couldn’t find anything else even remotely suitable.
I am writing to you because I’d rather we work this out as reasonable people. We were only visiting Miami Beach and have left the area, so we can no longer bring the item back in person. However, we would be glad to return the bag if you refund our purchase price ($29.95 plus $2.10 sales tax, total $32.05) and issue a prepaid call tag from UPS or any other carrier. We will not pay to ship it back, since it was not our fault that the store refused to take it back when we went in person.
I’m sure we’d both rather avoid a credit card chargeback, and therefore, a refund is the better path.
Thank you,
Shel Horowitz
I’ll let you know what happens.
My friend Denise O’Berry is running a contest for the best advice to new entrepreneurs. I don’t have much use for the prize (a year of blog hosting at Network Solutions–I’m happy hosting my own blog), but it felt like a fun and seasonal thing to do. Here’s what I posted:
1. Be as helpful and friendly to others as possible, and be well-networked (both online and off)–cultivate relationships from an attitude of how you can be of service, and people will help you. Introduce people who need to know each other.
2. Do outstanding work. Stuff that people will want to brag about. Turn it in on time or early, and on or under budget–and then suggest the next thing they need and you can help with that maybe they haven’t thought of on their own.
3. Stay true to both your ethics and your values. Do not cross the line to take on projects you shouldn’t. Keep honesty, integrity, and quality front and center.
4. Keep expenses down while starting out. And keep good records.
5. Make sure people understand what you do and how you can help–but do it without being salesy. Show that you know your stuff by answering questions, writing articles (and later, books), speaking,etc.–not by going on and on about how great you are.
Here’s a depressing article that says today’s teens think they have to lie and cheat their way to success.
Sorry—I’m not buying it! Call me naive, but I’m the parent of both a teenage boy and a bit-past-teenaged girl. Among their friends, I see a delightfully high awareness about the importance of an ethical, socially conscious lifestyle, and about the importance of leaving the world better than they found it. And I think that kids raised in the era brought about by the transparency inherent in social media will be more likely, not less, to follow an ethical path.
The study is from a respected ethics organization, the Josephson Ethics Institute. While I’ve long known their work, and respect it, I can only hope they’re wrong this time. Faith in human goodness is part of what keeps me going.
While visiting Minneapolis, I took in the opening day of the new Ben Franklin exhibit at the Minnesota History Center in downtown Saint Paul. I’ve long ben a Franklin fan. To me, his far-reaching curiosity, big-picture viewpoint, multiple interests, creativity, willingness to question authority and even make fun of it, media and persuasion skills, dedication to the public good, and rise from poverty to a comfortable (even hedonistic) lifestyle are all traits that today’s entrepreneurs can learn from.
No one can question that he made many important contributions in science (adding vastly to our knowledge of electricity, inventing a safer and more fuel-efficient wood stove), diplomacy/statesmanship (bringing France in as a powerful and game-changing ally against the British during the Revolution, oldest member of the Constitutional Convention), literature and communication (best-selling author/journalist/printer/publisher who was successful enough to retire from printing at 42, and propagandist for causes and philosophies he believed in), entrepreneurship (training and funding printers for a multistate network to print and distribute his works, anticipating the Internet by about 200 years and the modern franchise system by at least a century), as well as civic good (co-founding a public library, public hospital, fire department, fire insurance company, postal system, philosophical society).
But what struck me were some of the contradictions—there are many others, but these two in particular need a second look:
Slavery
Franklin became convinced late in life that slavery was evil, and served as president of an anti-slavery society. Yet he not only owned slaves for over 40 years, but often published ads from slave-hunters in his periodicals, and refused to put his name on much of his earliest anti-slavery writing.
Integrity
Franklin is well-known for his moralizing, his aphorisms, and his commitment to honesty and integrity. Yet he broke his apprenticeship to his brother, ran away to Philadelphia before it was completed, and started as a printer without the papers necessary to show he qualified as a journeyman.
While none of us are perfect, it does seem that these areas of Franklin’s life, among others, need careful examination, with more detail than was provided by this traveling exhibit (which seemed to be aimed largely at children).
What motivated you to organize this conference?
You could say this was an alignment of some stars that had been orbiting for quite awhile. First, social responsibility (or sustainability, corporate citizenship and green) is a topic I’m very interested in, going back to when I was Manager of Environmental & Safety Communication at John Deere about 10 years ago. Next, I credit Rick Sauter, Communitelligence Vice President, who had initiated talks with Cisco about partnering on a conference. When the topic of social responsibility came up, there was an mutual a ha moment. Six months of planning later, we’re on the eve of New Models of Social Responsibility: A Virtual Global Summit with Cisco as our technology partner.
What do you hope people will come away with?
This may sound idealistic, but I would like this summit toRead more »
Guest post by Elizabeth Johnson
I was very proud of the notebook computer I had purchased a year ago; in my mind, I felt I had secured a good deal and that it was value for money. The only flaw (if you could call it that) was that it came with the Norton Antivirus security solution. Now I know that there are many people who prefer Norton as their antivirus solution, but it is just too complicated and bloated for my liking. I feel that it slows down my system and enters every nook and corner and leaves bits of it behind even after you’ve uninstalled it.
But hey, no harm done – it was a free subscription for a year (included in the price of the notebook), so I could enjoy the benefits for 12 months after which I was free to choose my own security package. Or so I thought, but Norton decided otherwise. Once I had it uninstalled and a new antivirus solution installed in its place, I found that I could no longer use Firefox to browse the web. I didn’t think too much of it – maybe there was some bug that Mozilla hadn’t yet addressed. So I switched over to Internet Explorer. But in a few days, IE too began giving me problems.
My system would read the network, it could even connect to Yahoo Messenger, but it just would not open any page in Firefox, IE or any other browser. I was at my wits’ end, until a friend who is also a software expert tried reinstalling Norton again. And voila, what do you know, the pages open as if by magic. So I was forced to renew my Norton license, or should I say my computer was held to ransom by Norton?
No, I don’t like the way things are, but I have to swallow my anger and lump it, because I cannot afford to buy a new OS or a new laptop just because my antivirus provider follows completely unethical business practices. This is typically what is known as anti-competitive behavior – you force your product onto the customer who literally has no choice in deciding for themselves. Companies have been criticized for engaging customers in opt-out marketing tactics where they are signed up for some service or product and must opt out of it explicitly if they do not want it. Very often, the customer does not know of this service until the hefty bill arrives at the end of the month.
But this behavior beats even opt-out strategies, because it has forced me to stay with Norton, something I find an extremely unpleasant experience. I know that I could get someone who is skilled in cleaning the registry to rid my system of these files, but with time being a major constraint, I decided to just let it go, but not without a letter to their customer service department complaining of their anti-competitive strategy. Is this the only way Norton can hold on to its customers?
This guest article was written by Elizabeth Johnson, who regularly writes on the topic of construction management degrees . She welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: elizabeth.johnson1 (at) rediffmail.com