Interesting People mailing list archives
more on response from Google to yet another twist
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 14:23:26 -0500
I was hoping to provoke such a response djf Begin forwarded message: From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <joehall () gmail com> Date: January 10, 2006 2:04:35 PM EST To: dave () farber netCc: danah boyd <dmb () sims berkeley edu>, Peter Lyman <plyman () sims berkeley edu>
Subject: Re: [IP] response from Google to yet another twist Reply-To: joehall () pobox com (Danah, has AOIR lists taken up any discussion of this Google experiment? Quick background: Users of Google that use firewall notification programs (like the Little Snitch) are noticing packets going to an experiment on PlanetLab that is measuring latency in an experiment.) On 1/10/06, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
Sounds reasonable. Any other comments??
Dave, the fact that they are doing this and that there seems to be no informed consent of subjects, as required by most institutional review boards before doing experiments with humans, is troubling. Granted, there's not deep information collection (that we know of) where, for example, Google search history is linked to latency measurements. However, storing IP addresses, times and such could be used (or subpoenaed) for other purposes and having 1) informed consent about how it will be used and 2) the opportunity to opt out of participating in the experiment is very important. Computer scientists are increasingly having to deal with concerns with treatment of and notice to human subjects as their experiments concern humans and personal data. best, Joe
Dave Subject: Re: [PL #12596] external publicity for google_highground Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 23:12:07 -0500 From: David Presotto via RT <support () planet-lab org> Reply-To: support () planet-lab org To: smuir () cs princeton edu Email Recipients (see http://www.planet-lab.org/Support) Owner: Nobody Requestor: smuir () cs princeton edu Ticket Ccs: dave () farber net, google_highground@slices.planet- lab.org ================================================== Hi Dave, Long time no see. The hits are a result of an experiment set up by a summer intern, Michal Szymaniak. We're trying to latency map the internet using a 6 dimensional model he set up for his PhD thesis. The idea is to use some number of reference points (planet lab nodes, google datacenters, etc) and measure latencies from google customers to them. We then use those latencies to try to place the nodes in the 6D space. Once we've mapped enough /24s, we can guess the latency from any IP to any other IP with a 10 to 15% error. More importantly for us, we can cluster the IPs around our datacenters so we can always point users at the closest datacenter. (For that we have to also map all users to the DNS resolvers they use since the only steering mechanism we have is via DNS, but that's another experiment...) The way we're getting users to touch the different reference points is using the header in firefox: Link: url options If you use the option 'prefetch', firefox does an access of the link referenced in background. In our case the thing accessed is a page that just says something like 'thank you for participating in the google latency experiment'. We record what IP accessed and the latency time (taken from SYN-ACK to ACK time). Since we already know the IP our customers use to access us, that doesn't give us much more identity info. It does let us locate them in space a bit better than we currently know from services like Quova though. The results will be part of Michal's thesis. Right now we're not using it ourselves, though we may put up an interface for anyone to use that lets them type in two IPs and get an estimated latency. I'm considering turning off the planetlab part if he now has enough data. We're happy to use just Google datacenters as reference points for ourselves. What do you think? Are we doing something bad? On Jan 9, 2006, at 6:43 PM, Steve Muir wrote:Dear Google folks, a Google user who's noticed the connections to PlanetLab nodes being made has posted the message below to Dave Farber's IP list, which has a pretty broad readership. please can one of you respond to Dave Farber with an explanation of what's going on. i know you've told us before but i'll let you give them the official version. thanks, steve On Mon, 9 Jan 2006, Steve Muir via RT wrote:Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 20:42:27 -0500 From: David Farber <dave () farber net> To: ip () v2 listbox com Subject: [IP] more on ****yet***** Another new Google twist.. Begin forwarded message: From: Rodney Joffe <rjoffe () centergate com> Date: January 9, 2006 6:11:13 PM EST To: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>, Dave Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: Re: [IP] more on Another new Google twist.. Hi Lauren, On Jan 9, 2006, at 1:36 PM, David Farber wrote:Begin forwarded message: From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com> Date: January 9, 2006 2:41:01 PM EST To: dave () farber net Cc: capek () ieee net Subject: Re: [IP] Another new Google twist.. This is not entirely a straightforward situation. First, such history displays are almost certainly based on cookies, so persons who do not allow Google cookies are unlikely to see such output. (Note however that this is a separate issue from Google's internal logs of user search activity presumably tied to IP addresses.)But wait, there's more. I have also been noticing seemingly random but frequent attempts to trigger firefox connections to various planetlabs machines (http://www.planet-lab.org/) as a result of Google searches. I think it is admirable that Google is supportingthe research world but were it not for my "littleSnitch" application, I would have had no idea. Nor do I know what Google is triggering, orwhat data is being forwarded to the planetlabs network, or why - I haven't bothered to stop it thus far. Have you noticed this? "Googling" for this brings up general hints showing Google's involvement, but I can't find any official note in Google's help pages or FAQ. Machines include: Server: planet3.seattle.intel-research.net (12.17.136.138) Server: planetlab2.ls.fi.upm.es (138.100.12.149) Server: planetlab2.eecs.umich.edu (141.213.4.202) Server: planetlab1.pop-rs.rnp.br (200.132.0.69) Server: planetlab1.pop-rs.rnp.br (200.132.0.70) ---------------------------------------------- Rodney Joffe CenterGate Research Group, LLC. http://www.centergate.com "Technology so advanced, even we don't understand it!"(R) _______________________________________________ PlanetLab Support Mail Reflector support () planet-lab org https://lists.planet-lab.org/mailman/listinfo/support-community_______________________________________________ PlanetLab Support Mail Reflector support () planet-lab org https://lists.planet-lab.org/mailman/listinfo/support-community ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as joehall () pobox com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ipArchives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- people/
-- Joseph Lorenzo Hall PhD Student UC Berkeley, School of Information (SIMS) <http://josephhall.org/> blog: <http://josephhall.org/nqb2/> This email is written in [markdown] - an easily-readable and parseable text format. [markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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