A year ago, I articulated the Protocol for Online Abuse Reporting (PONAR): a framework of icons, forms, and processes which could be deployed to help mitigate the effects of injurious speech online.
Accountability
PONAR: Icons
by Jon Garfunkel on May 11, 2008. Internet Accountability[Note: this was originally on the cover page of this series; it was split off to add new information.]
Oppressiveness by Software
by Jon Garfunkel on March 21, 2008. Internet AccountabilityThe engineer looks at the law and asks, why is it so sloppy? Take the DMCA-CDA disparity, or the fact that anonynous political robocalls are legal in many states while anonymous political commercials are not. The software engineer wonders why this all can’t be straightened out.
Rudolf Elmer Launches SwissWhistleblower.com website
by Jon Garfunkel on March 13, 2008. Commerce AccountabilityRudolf Elmer, the key source in the Wikileaks/BJB story, has created a website Swiss Whistleblower. Some of the information he’d been posting at Wikileaks will now be posted to the new website.
Breaking news from Wikileaks you might have missed!
by Jon Garfunkel on March 11, 2008. Web AccountabilityYesterday I received an 750-word from the Wikileaks email address (@sunshinepress.org) in response to my critical article about the service. I’d love to reprint it, but the author had the temerity to preface it with the request “off the record.” There are journalists who support the notion that a unilateral request of “off the record” need not be honore
Truth or Swear: the Notary Internet
by Jon Garfunkel on March 7, 2008. Internet AccountabilityTwo updates in the jurisprudence of free speech online this week help shed light on one of our favorite pastimes, the search for truth. The lawsuit against Wikileaks (that “entity of unknown form” according to the district court) was dropped.
Now Using OpenID
by Jon Garfunkel on February 7, 2008. Drupal AccountabilityI’ve implemented OpenID on this site. My friend Kaliya Hamlin (Identity Woman) has been helping this effort for a number of years, and when she passed along the news that Yahoo had joined the effort, I decided to get with the program.
How an FCC regulation allows anonymous political robocalls
by Jon Garfunkel on February 5, 2008. Politics Accountability United StatesCommunications law in the United States is a little peculiar at times. If I buy time on for an advertisement on television or radio to reach thousands of people over the public airwaves, I have to abide by one set of rules. If. If I use an auto-dialer to reach thousands of people in their homes over the telephone (“robocalls”), I abide by a different set of rules.
The CDA-DMCA Disparity
by Jon Garfunkel on December 10, 2007. Web AccountabilityIf you’re in the web publishing practice, you ought to know about this essential paradox: the disparity between the safe harbor exemptions governing copyright infringement (“DMCA”) and defamation/exposure (“CDA 230”).
How long does bigotry stay hosted on YouTube?
by Jon Garfunkel on August 28, 2007. Internet AccountabilityThat somebody in America can publish antisemitic literature to encourage hatred and bigotry is regrettable, but it is protected by the First Amendment. That said, YouTube is a private service, and their community guidelines prohibit hate speech.
Well, some user JewsWorldPower signed up three months ago, and this person does things like posting copyrighted video from the Colbert Report with antisemitic text in the description alongside. Surely Stephen Colbert has even less interest in being associated with antisemitism than he does in having his video pirated.
PONAR: Call for Participation
by Jon Garfunkel on June 25, 2007. Internet Accountability InternationalThis document lists the various groups I am inviting for assistance on the PONAR (Protocol for Online Abuse Reporting) project. As I get endorsements and sponsors I will update this document.
Ordinary folks who are the aggrieved parties
I was directly motivated to start this effort based on conversations over the years with people who have been the victims of online abuse and harassment. I have expressed some of the early formative ideas of PONAR to members of victim's aid group are taking their considerations quite seriously.
PONAR: Architecture
by Jon Garfunkel on June 24, 2007. Internet AccountabilityPONAR: Design
by Jon Garfunkel on June 24, 2007. Internet AccountabilityLet's review the steps to take if one is the subject of online harassment. How to Respond to Online Harassment is provided by Working to Halt Online Abuse (WHOA) an organization mentioned in the previous section. There are number of helpful steps; we'd just like to review how these would be followed with or without a lawyer– as well as through PONAR.
PONAR: Abuse Cases
by Jon Garfunkel on June 24, 2007. Internet AccountabilityIn my research at Civilities, I've come across several cases — three in the last many months– which inform the development of PONAR (Protocol for Online Abuse Reporting). Each involved an aggrieved party (in some cases, still mostly anonymous) who was harassed by anonymous aggravators online. In all cases I have been able to contact at least one of the parties, in order to understand the case better.
PONAR: Introduction
by Jon Garfunkel on June 24, 2007. Internet AccountabilityMachines and humans see the Internet differently. At the machine level, two systems which are communicating are able to do so reciprocally. One system can send a message to the other with the expectation that it can get a response. At the human level, however, this does not hold: one person can send a person a message without any return address. This basic asymmetry has been at the heart of most of the abuse on Internet.
PONAR: Complaint Form
by Jon Garfunkel on June 23, 2007. Internet AccountabilityThis is the first draft of a submission form for PONAR (Protocol for Online Abuse Reporting). The form is the heart of the request; this can drive the design for an XML schema, database schema, and system architecture.
The objective of this form is to be more formal than an email, while being more convenient (i.e., less expensive) than filing a lawsuit. There is already a variety of online legal form services. I do hope to work with legal experts in order to improve its clarity. By example, here is the Craigslist abuse reporting form.
Courting Wikipedia, Citing Wikipedia
by Jon Garfunkel on May 30, 2006. Internet AccountabilitySuppose you’re a state judge, like Conrad Rushing of the Santa Clara-based 6th Appellate Court of California. Where do you go if you need to cleave the difference between words like “blog” and “webzine”? You could seek the opinions of any number of experts from law school-affiliated “Centers of Internet and Society” in Palo Alto or in Cambridge. Or you could have asked my opinion. But perhaps citing me directly would not have been very impressive in the footnotes. So instead, the Appellate Court cited Wikipedia, where my words were published, semi-anonymously. (Until now.)
Constructive Activism, Part II: Freedom of Association
by Jon Garfunkel on May 23, 2006. Internet AccountabilityNow that I was committing money to buy a Google AdWord for Alaa, my cause was his. I realized I ought to spend a little more time to learn about him.
The thought crossed my mind that he might have different politics than I, and that somebody might pick on me later for this. Whatever were his thoughts on Israel, I wondered. I searched his website, and found some topical entries– but couldn’t find any actually written by him, only by the folks he was drawing in. I figured if I ought to draw the line somewhere: I couldn’t support anybody who advocated aggression against U.S. or Israeli interests. Anything else he had to say– well, it was up to him, I was defending his right to say it.
Evidence Domain: How do you preserve data evidence before it disappears?
by Jon Garfunkel on May 12, 2006. Internet AccountabilityOne of the more damning things about evidence is that there are usually parties who want it removed, such as by the accused.
Patriot Tact — A Better Way to Prevent Crime in Libraries
by Jon Garfunkel on February 7, 2006. Media Accountability Greater Boston[This is a letter sent to the Boston Globe in response to the horrid Op-Ed contribution “When Librarians protect terrorists” by Richard L. Cravatts on February 6th, 2006. I called the paper to see what follow-up they planned on this, but learned nothing. This is obviously much too long to be a letter, now. I’ve added some links here for your viewing pleasure.]
Scales Of Discourse: Anonymity vs. Credibility
by Jon Garfunkel on October 12, 2005. Internet AccountabilityThat the Supreme Court of Delaware affirmed the right of anonymous free speech shouldn’t be news. That they affirmed the precedent that there is a tradeoff between anonymity and credibility– this should be news to people quick to celebrate this decision.
Fool Disclosure: Time to be absolutely clear
by Jon Garfunkel on April 1, 2005. Internet AccountabilityMedia Legitimacy: The Core Responsibility of the Media
by Jon Garfunkel on March 10, 2005. Media AccountabilityLegitimacy: How responsible are you to your readers?
by Jon Garfunkel on March 10, 2005. Media AccountabilityDissecting the Most Important Podcast Interview to Date
by Jon Garfunkel on January 16, 2005. Internet Accountability
Town Democrats demand answers from top campaign advisors!
by Jon Garfunkel on December 16, 2004. Election 2004 Accountability BrooklineA culture of torture… or of suppression?
by Jon Garfunkel on May 6, 2004. Politics AccountabilityStump the President: Submit questions on the Question Scoreboard
by Jon Garfunkel on April 14, 2004. Election 2004 AccountabilityThis perhaps drew winces in every living room in America. But it did inspire me to consider how a structured forum for questions & answers can offset some of the better-known deficiencies of press conferences. I wrote it up in a proposal called the Question Scoreboard. This page is a sampling board for questions for the President and the 2004 campaign.
The Question Scoreboard
by Jon Garfunkel on April 14, 2004. Media Accountability–President Bush’s immediate response to a question about what his biggest mistake was after 9/11, and what he learned from it.
Putting aside the question of where the Bush’s quote ranks with other incredulous answers in uttered in Presidential news conferences (cf. Eisenhower on whether he could give an example of a major idea of Vice President Nixon’s that had been adopted in his administration: “If you can give me a week, I might think of one.”), as well as how grace under pressure is perceived as a reliable indicator of leadership (Eric Rauchway considers these in Altercation today), not too mention, after three years, is this guy still embarassingly underprepared for the most important job on Earth? let’s actually consider the point.
What to do with your hack attack server logs
by Jon Garfunkel on April 4, 2004. Internet AccountabilityEssentially, my access logs fill up with lines like “SEARCH /x90x02xb1…” (for 32,000 characters), and my Apache configuration has proved very stubborn in filtering them out automatically. So it’s a bit annoying. Plus I don’t like 32KB getting sent to my server unsolicited, in much the way that spam is.

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