Parental control mechanisms - Heading off bad press

Marketing
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My opinions may seem blunt. I’m trying to keep from going into a debate. Others may disagree which is okay.

No, the only reliable control a parent has is physically beside/behind their child while they are connected to the SAFE Network or the Internet for that matter. Even then, accidents do happen.

Honestly, the SAFE Network is the wrong tool for this job. To present it as something it’s not, is a bad idea. At worst, it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Having said that, if an APP developer wants to put their neck on the line, and guarantee parents the APP will babysit their child on the SAFE Network… they are welcome to try. Maybe one day it would be possible.

For the immediate future, I think making age appropriate apps and website white-lists provide some reassurances. But it’s wiser to advise parents, “Hey, watch your child. This is not a daycare.”

At the very least, the press cannot claim the SAFE Network promised something it did not deliver.

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Honestly, the SAFE Network is the wrong tool for this job

If SAFE goes to plan, in 10 years the current internet would have been broken down and reassembled onto the SAFEnetwork. This is part of the objectives stated by David Irvine.

In addition, the aim is to have SAFE on every device that has inbuilt storage, contributing to this Cyber brain network.

Childrens exposure to SAFE is inevitable, so let the Builders start thinking about how SAFE can house a space within a space for kids.

The rent seeking elite are not going to let SAFE become popular without a tantrum are they Niall?..but what about the children they will cry

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I’m a parent and faced this though my kids are grown up now. I think we only have to look at the farce of David Cameron’s network filters to see how counter productive this is. IMO a shameful deceipt, both regarding protection (it doesn’t protect in the slightest) and as a means for creating the infrastructure of censorship and control.

As a parent it was my responsibility to guide my children through the world, to show them how to react to material they are exposed to, to warn and guide them of dangers, and give them clear boundaries about what is/is not acceptable for them.

They will explore regardless, and good for them. In my day it was magazine porn. It was there at school. Very hardcore stuff, but when the “animal” stuff started to be accessible, I was mature enough to decide I didn’t even want to look at it. I don’t know how I learned that, but I did. I found my own level with whatever guidance was available. Others will go deeper, some will be corrupted, some will grow and learn. This is the art of being human, and keeping our children “protected” is an impossible task that can create the potential for harm if we believe it is possible, because it leads us to shield them from reality, and leave them unprepared for what is out there. This happens in society too, with sanitised news, less so now than when I was growing up. I don’t feast on the images from Gaza, Syria etc, but I think it is valuable to have access to a picture that is real, and step out of the illusory world I thought I was growing up in. How little of the horror of Vietnam I was aware of until decades later. Today it is “precision” bombing etc.

All this is about an illusion of protection through censorship. As children grow, we need to help them learn to be their own content filters. Some of that might be learning how to configure an App, but mostly it is about what terms to put into Google, what to expect back, which links to click and not click (search, email attachments etc etc.) and what to do when one is exposed to something awful. It happens. How does a child (or an adult) know what to do when it does?

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Here’s a timely article on a related note.

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In July 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron announced the major UK internet service providers (ISPs) had agreed to offer “unavoidable choice” parental control filters, which block legal pornography and other adult subjects “by default”.

HEEH! Unavoidable choice… by default. Just like a politician to redefine “compulsion” to “choice”. Got to love the statists.

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In reading this and other threads, I hear a lot of frightened people imagining horror scenarios about “abuses” on MaidSafe, and the “dangers” of a free Internet.

Often what follows is a laundry list of draconian “solutions” to the scenarios they invent - outing people, revoking privileges, banning, blacklisting, making new laws, bringing in the State to police people’s private and perfectly legal conduct and so forth.

Respectfully, I am wondering if these people actually realize what forum they are in… this is the MaidSafe forum.

As I understand it, MaidSafe is designed to be impervious to censorship, content snooping, blockading, server seizures, spying, outing people’s real identities, domain confiscation and so on. These are not features, they are baked into the very architecture itself.

Maybe those who are afraid of what might happen in a free Internet should just stay away from Maidsafe completely. Sometimes, that’s the best answer. You can’t blame the makers of Drain Cleaner if you let your kid get into your cupboards.

Finally, I just want to say, thank goodness for David Irvine, that he isn’t afraid of freedom. Please hold the line on the original mission of MaidSafe David. A lot of people have high hopes for MaidSafe. But if the Internet community supporting MaidSafe even suspects Maidsafe is crippled or back-doored, they’ll drop it in a New York minute, and there’s no coming back from that.

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Hey L,

Speaking for myself, I have a vested interest in seeing this network succeed from day 1.

There are powerful entities out there that would want it to fail and are afraid of genuine freedom and if they are on this forum…feel free to debate them point by point. sweeping statements are hard to take seriously.

Thinking as the enemy, prodding and poking the concepts can only make it stronger…you cannot shy away from the topic of children on this network, because in all likely-hood this will be ‘The Internet’ down the track. Parents will naturally be asking these questions…why not have then clearly explainable beforehand.

There has been no call to water down SAFE by me. The question here is if it is possible for a Builder to offer controls for self limiting on behalf of a young child…nothing to do with altering the protocol, only searching out network capabilities that are not fully described.

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There is nothing that can be done for people who find Freedom frightening. They can never be placated. Because the only thing that will satisfy them is to make Freedom go away. And I feel fairly safe in assuming that is an entirely unacceptable proposition to the MaidSafe community.

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If any of these statements applies to what I wrote about revocable privacy and zero knowledge proofs, I am guessing you misunderstood how that works. I’ll explain it and let you ask me questions directly if you have them.

The goal is to reduce the role of external policing by empowering the users with tools to make themselves safer. The purpose of revocable privacy is to protect the user and give the user a sort of contract where the user specifies the conditions upon which they’d voluntarily want their privacy revoked. The goal of revocable privacy is to increase security for the user and this may mean that in certain scenarios the user would be most safe if their private information is given to specific third parties (not the whole world like you’re thinking although they could specify that if the third parties are the media rather than the police).

If you make investigation impossible and something happens to your best friend then without giving your friend the power to specify who should be empowered to investigate, and under what conditions their own privacy is revoked, then you’re actually disempowering your friend under the guise that somehow it would damage the network if your friend wanted to be investigated under certain conditions. It has no impact on the network because the network exists to promote the security and privacy of your friend and in some cases more private is not more secure (there is a process of selecting who can see what and you need control over who can access and why).

For example if you’re on SAFE Network and you’re not a criminal, a terrorist, a serial killer, but someone on SAFE Network is doing stuff like this and your best friend were kidnapped by them, if your best friend in their privacy smart contract defined it such that if anything happens to them such as this scenario then you would be among the people empowered with a vote to trigger a network wide investigation then this would improve security. The network is composed of human beings and most human beings don’t want to be abused or see their friends abused.

For one the investigation would not remove their anonymity completely. You would not be able to do anything but give an up or down vote in favor of revoking their privacy or not. They would have had to specifically select the clause which allows for their privacy to be revoked and the contract or script would be set up to apply in certain scenarios or conditions. The contract/script would have to say that: if my activity shows signs of an anomaly and my friends vote to investigate believing something might have happened to me then release my private information to this list of selected third parties or to anyone who meets the attributes to decrypt.

Dead mans switch

The concept of the dead mans switch is really what is behind that example of revocable privacy. To not have this capability actually puts every user of the network in greater danger because it empowers bad actors without empowering good actors or neutral parties. Anonymity really isn’t at risk because with or without revocable privacy a user could give their private information to certain people. Revocable privacy allows for the creation of a dead mans switch so that if the user is kidnapped or if their friends are truly worried about them then they can trigger an investigation.

Do you really think SAFE Network is going to protect people from being kidnapped and abused? If you design it without any apps which focus on protecting people then you’ll have to face that bad press that goes along with it. If you design it so that it actually protects data as well as people then you might have some good press because there will be stories about how SAFE Network helped expose corruption or trigger investigations.

In the case of Wikileaks the dead mans switch was the insurance file. In the case of the average user they might want their privacy revoked if they or someone they care about is in danger. If it’s irrevocable then people could be kidnapped, tortured, and the network would enable this without giving the user any possibility of opting out.

The definition of privacy is not a black or white absolute. Privacy is based on access control. To improve this control there has to be scripts/contracts which allow the user to determine who should know what and when. SAFE Network has to allow the user to determine for example how to deal with it if they die and want their famlies or loved ones to know what they died for. If there is no revocable privacy then it’s also impossible for their side of the story to ever be known and their families would never know what happened.

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Security isn’t black and white. Privacy isn’t black and white. There are many scenarios where people will want to or have to investigate.

You’re making it seem like privacy is something which is so secret that the users themselves cannot be given the authority to determine what to do with their own secrets. In my opinion nothing is absolute. The users have to determine who can access their secrets and the conditions (privacy is about control of personal information).

People have to make decisions as to whether or not keeping something secret is going to make their loved ones safer or not. In some cases the answer is yes and in other cases it’s no. For example if a parent has their children kidnapped and then they see pictures and evidence of their kidnapped child on SAFE Network then why shouldn’t parents be able to join forces to investigate what happened?

They all have children. None of them want their children kidnapped and sold. Revocable privacy would enable the network to investigate itself and while this might not be enough to stop these situations from happening it would at least allow the network to programmatically defend the security of the users.

Suppose a bunch of parents set up their privacy settings to be absolute except when a child has been kidnapped? Using a script the parents would have the control to determine how private their use of the network is and under what scenarios they would give privacy up (and to whom and how).

If you take an absolute view that you wont give your privacy up no matter what happens then this is probably not the most popular view in society. If you’re talking about marketing or trying to head off bad press then saying the network empowers bad actors to kidnap children and has no defense mechanisms built in is not going to make SAFE Network popular.

SAFE Network is about security but if you put privacy to such a high regard that it’s more important than physical security then you may be missing the point. It’s not privacy vs security, it’s privacy and security which is the goal. The way to have both is to make privacy a matter of granular access control. You let the user determine in the form of scripts and contracts who and what can access every bit of their information.

This way if you have parents who have children they can determine that if something happens to them or their children then individuals with these attributes can access their private information.

Finally it goes far beyond abuse scenarios. If you wanted to send a file to the network which can only be opened by a doctor which matches the attributes you set then this would be possible as well. You have attribute based encryption because it can allow you to create data which can only be accessed by people or entities who have certain attributes. If we want to for example upload our DNA to be studied by a qualified team of doctors but we don’t know who these doctors are then we would be able to use attribute based encryption. If you say you don’t want your privacy revoked ever or you see it as black and white then you cannot do certain things which would generate good press.

Freedom includes the freedom to selectively share information or revoke privacy just so long as it’s something people opt into. If you don’t want that ability then never opt in but be sure that certain apps and demographics will want it. So it’s important to build those apps early on so that the bad press is balanced by the good press which could come from having these sorts of apps.

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Its a quibble with language but if only it were called anything but “contract.” Contract seems like an invitation to the legal community. Also like gambling or games with opt in. Contract seems like the essence of enclosure when part of the point is building systems that dont depend on humans doing what they promise. Smart agreement or anything where minimal strings or bindings are attached. None if possible. Bets on the future to reduce or socialize risk are going to happen but should be designed out especially with regard to language. Want to free people from having to make promises.

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I couldn’t disagree more with pretty much everything you have to say.

Just one example of where you are totally wrong - People will be free to share their information with whoever they choose anyway on the network, as I said previously, it appears you do not grasp what Maidsafe is all about.

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Fair enough. We should call it a script?

Privacy is something which should be programmable according to conditions set by the user. So you could use conditionals like “if this scenario is true then initiate script x, y, z”. It could be left up to a group of trusted peers that the user selects to determine if the scenario is true or false.

In any case it should always be up to the user to opt into it. The user should determine how they would like to interact with the SAFE Network and that has to be turned into code (because for SAFE Network code is law). Then users who agree to the same rules will use certain apps which abide by these rules.

You don’t understand what I’m saying so of course you don’t agree. I’m saying the users should be given absolute control over how they interact with the network. If you demand the users accept your definition of privacy (which might be extreme or black and white) then you’re telling the vast majority of the human population from the start that they can’t use SAFE Network because their concept of privacy isn’t exactly like yours.

The whole point of contracts/scripts is so you can determine the rules which you’re willing to agree to and the way you’d like to interact with SAFE Network. We don’t all have the same views, opinions, concepts of privacy, needs, values, etc. The way to deal with this is to let the users have the freedom to choose apps which fit their preferred use of the network, let the user have the ability to define the level of and type of privacy they require from the network, and it all should be configurable by the users (not by you or me).

If a user opts into revocable privacy by using an app which requires it or by setting their privacy settings in such a way that it’s enabled then this is the choice of the user and because it’s their data (not ours), they have every right to determine under which conditions to release it and how. This is about giving the user ultimate control over their data even in situations where the user loses consciousness, loses their life, or other circumstances which the user could set as conditions to trigger their privacy to be revoked.

Revocable privacy is not something done by the network. It’s not part of the core protocol of the network. It’s a choice of the user to opt into this setting and then script their privacy themselves giving them absolute control. This could be an app which the user chooses to use to give them increased control over their privacy.

If you disagree then that would mean you’ll never opt into an app which supports revocable privacy features and you’ll never use the feature yourself but there are enough people who would want to revoke their own privacy that I think the feature is important for mass adoption. Very few people in the world with children for example would choose the sort of black and white options that people who don’t have children might choose.

So for example a parent might want their children to have certain information if something happens to them (such as the private key to access what was left to them in a will). If privacy is scriptable then you have all sorts of different possibilities which do not exist if privacy is absolute such as: (no one can access my information if something happens to me vs everyone can access my information if something happens to me).

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100% Privacy should empower.

“script” is perfect. Just ridgid enough. echo of covenant or scripture, but cleaned up by newer scripting language etc.

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I understand what you are saying , but this would have to happen at a builder/app level, not the core protocol, therefore it is not something that the Matdsafe devs should be spending their time on. It is also as far as I know something that Maidsafe the private company would not be interested in developing an app for (certainly not by launch anyway) - so why say things like “I doubt the Maidsafe team is wise enough to do it”? It has nothing to do with them, they are providing the platform so others can build the type of thing you are asking for if they want.
Just as an aside, how useful are current parental controls? I’m a parent too (grown up now) and most people I know of my age (49) are not very tech savvy whatsoever and their kids run rings around them getting around parental controls.

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It’s not that MaidSafe has to build the app (although it might be good if they did). They just have to create an API which allows app builders to build these sorts of apps.

So I’m not implying it should be part of the core protocol but that the API itself has to enable these possibilities. I’m asking for scripting capabilities which allow “smart contracts” similar to what Ethereum will have. I’m seeing wisdom in this flexible approach and believe that if we really are concerned about bad press we have to help generate good press.

I don’t know how we should implement parental controls. I would let script writers figure out how to do that. If the scripting language is python easy or perhaps just a matter of conditionals then there could be templates for all sorts of stuff including parental controls. There will never be a one sized fits all privacy setting so we need a sort of privacy oriented scripting language which apps can use and an API which offers features like time-lock encryption, revocable privacy, etc.

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Ah…right, I’m not a techie and I assumed the api would cater for this functionality. Is it a difficult or time consuming thing to do, bearing in mind the need to launch a beta by end of year? Can the api be changed at a later date to add this functionality or does it necessarily have to be done prior to launch? Cheers

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I’m not an expert on SAFE Network API yet so I cannot say for sure. I would say that if you’re going to do an API it’s very important to get it right and aim for maximum flexibility and simplicity. It has to support a wide array of scripting languages such as Ruby, Python, Javascript or whatever a whole lot of people know.

It has to be simple languages because these are easy for a lot of people to read which is good for security. The core developers have to prepare by providing core functions for the scripting layer. I cannot say any more because I’ll admit I do not know enough about the planned API to comment on what it will be capable of when complete.

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Maybe the solution to heading off bad press is creating some sort of article or video (eventually) showing how the network is created in a way that relies on developers to write applications. Make it clear that this is actually really similar to the current internet’s structure in that regard.

Just show examples of tools that can be built on top of the network to show how an end user can control the content locally. Same way we have local software to block stuff. Maybe someone develops an opt-in rating system ala television, so a special browser blocks everything except things that are rated. The browser obviously wouldn’t be the one chosen by adults, but parents and schools could use this browser.

Kid will always get around things, that’s a game as old as time. It’s more about setting rules for them.

But yeah, just continue to make it clear that the network is meant to act as a backbone, and will have structures on top of it to perform these tasks.

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@russell that is an excellent and highly cost effective solution. As long as the world knows that the intention of developers is to provide an open API and network then most of the bad press can be countered by technologists.

We need videos on what can be built on top of SAFE Network to inspire people.