Your digital shadow

I’ve been taking a break from blogging- holiday as well as presenting at/attending AusCERT.

One of the interesting things over this period was the Radio New Zealand broadcast of The Digital Shadow (audio, approx. 28 minutes). It looked at the digital tracks that people leave behind in their everyday lives.

The broadcast starts with an interesting observation, “For the first time the amount of digital information generated about us is exceeding the information created by us.” And, there’s a lot of it- digital information about you but not by you. This is our digital shadow.

An interesting nugget in the broadcast is that Wellington City Council has only 3 CCTVs at present. I thought they’d have many more as CCTVs seem to be the weapon of choice for city authorities around the world. Not so surprisingly, the 3 CCTV cameras in Wellington are in a continuous recording loop but are only actively monitored during major events.

The broadcast also features Dick Hardt and Eve Maler discussing the collection of personal information while people are online.

Right at the end- the last 6 minutes- is the reason why I dug out the recording in the first place. As I mentioned previously, for the Government track at the Identity Conference in Wellington, we had four students start off by debating the relative importance of digital and physical identity in the future. The idea was to hear first-hand the views of future users of government online services.

These students were subsequently interviewed by Radio New Zealand and their views are featured in the last part of the broadcast. Fascinating stuff, especially about Facebook and Bebo. Worth a listen.