tv The Stream Al Jazeera August 9, 2014 5:30pm-6:01pm EDT
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israel continues its air strikes in gaza plus a special report on the danger caused by unexploded missiles and shells left over from the fighting. what the surge of undo you think children crossing the border means for the country's education system. all of that straight ahead on "al jazeera america." >> walking down a street in chicago may now have amount more meaning as city officials plan to attach dozens of sensors collecting data on everything from air quality to pedestrian movement. is big brother in the windy city? plus, what happens to our digital eighty identities and online data long after we die? and who has rights to it? later, struggle ling mom and pop shops and unproven retail concepts may be infused with life as locals turn to crowd
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funded real estate investments. ♪ digital producer and co-host, waj is here. it's interesting when we talk about information and information is knowledge but how much information is too much and how much is det ing way to up in our personal business? >> for research, i play video games. >> tell your wife? >> tell my wife and all of my co-workers, a game called watchdog. as a protagonist, you are in a city of chicago, hyper connected city collects data and you have to hack into the city to do good against the evil doers who might use this information against the citizens. we asked our community, you know, is all of this data collection good or bad?
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daniel is optimistic and says the use to meta data to approach education, crime and civic improvements helps communities and people. but the concern here is privacy. >> we are going to talk about it. the city of chicago may soon be able to sense what's happening in some of its businessiest areas. a new initiative will attach as many as 50 sensors to downtown light polls to aggregate city data, from environmental to city conditions. the long-term goal is to place sensors to track things like pedestrian movements. researchers say it will improve city planning and while it will be available to the public via an open data website, some are concerned about the scope of the collection and broader implications when it comes to privacy. joining us on sky out of chicago illinois is charlie katliff working on the chicago sensor project. also from chicago, john tolva, former chief technology officer for the city. he is currently president of the
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engineering firm positive energy practice which promotes environmentally responsible design. here in washington, d.c., justin brooklyn, director of consumer privacy, thanks to all of you for joining us. charlie, about 50 sensors going up by the end of the year. i mentioned a couple of things, but what data are you most excited about collecting? what will these sensors do that hasn't been done before? >> well, one thing that's different about this project is it's really a platform for sensing and other sorts of services that you might want to try out in a major city at urban scales. the data we are collecting is environmental. i would characterize it not as the city watching people but an opportunity for the people to watch the city. what these will do is publish data in realtime about air quality, light, noise, and things like that. >> so what is it to gain from this data that people who live and work in these areas don't already know? >> well, as we get more
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sophisticated sensors, for example, sensors that will be able to detect policiens or mold or other kinds of things, we will be able to provide for people the right applications in order to navigate through the city. you might want to navigate along a path that has less old or lescottonwood policien or you might, in the evening, you might want to navigate yourself through a path that has the most pedest treeians present. >> justing, one of the concerns people have with this project because some is connected to cell phone could be done in a way that's pretty privacy-preserved. there is not a lot of information about exactly how it will work, right? thre there are sensors, microphones, cell phone personal device has a lot of unique identifiers tide to me. is the city of chicago going to collect this information?
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what i've heard online is they're trying odesign it in the right way. citizens trying to assess, are they keeping logs where i go? for people to figure out what's going on or what they plan to do. >> lisa, this is a new technology, open data, can be accessed by everyone. there is a question by 18th-capital. where will all this data be stored? who will have access to the data and what other data do centers have ability to capture. john this is a question for you. >> sure. the data being captured is from the sensor array that charlie has put together. data, data ise sensory array. phones are not the sensors here i think the key here is that the process of collection is transparent. >> that's that you know that something is happening around you. this is probably signage, for instance, at the base of the pedestal where these are. but, also, you know, the city has a number of years now behind it of, you know, building up a
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lot of trust with the public, publishing open data. you know, there are millions of rows of open data on the portal type of people have come to depend upon that, where the buses are, where the trains are, where the taxis are. really, the only difference here is that data is not collected by the machines. it's collected by sensors out in the environment. we hope that the effects for citizens are just as nice as the train trackers and the bus trackers and those sorts of things. >> charlie, what if the government changes its mind about how it wants to use these sensors? who is monitoring what they are doing or not doing with this data? >> well, this is one of the things as john mentioned in terms of transparency. all of the sensors that were in the array today, any new sensors that will go in, all of the software that's there, any new software that will go in is going to be reviewed a technical review team that looks at security and privacy and it's an external team to the project. >> team will advice the
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executive governanceance body which includes people from the city, scientists swoles representatives from the community and they will ultimately decide what's acceptable to do in these sensors and what they prefer not be done. >> so, john, you know, obviously this type of data could be worth millions of dollars. there are people that are concerned that some of the industry groups or businesses that the city hasperd with like motorola and sys could could find great value in this data. what prevents the city from with holding some of this data and then selling it to the highest bidder? >> well, for one, it's not the city of chicagots data. what the city of chicago is doing is permitting it's infrastructure, in this case, light poles and, you know, sort of traffic signals to have others apply to put technology on it. in this case, the university of chicago. so, you know, the city doesn't have it to begin with.
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this is taxpayer data so to speak. it's citizen data. it's generated by people using the city, not by, you know, some sort of secondary party. so they don't have -- it's actually not in the city ability to do that. this particular project is an academic project that intends to make it public. >> john, earlier, you mentioned that the chicago residents have trust. isha disagrees don't have personal experience but i know the trust factor is gone with citizens of chicago and the mayor and justin, to quote peter parker who quoted uncle been who quoted voltare saying with great power comes great responsibility. what would you like to see, as lisa mentioned that the government and the city do not abuse this powerful technology and keep it maintained for good? >> better clarity and bright line rule for what you are not allowed to collect. i went to the data.chicago.gov
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website today. there is a lot of cool information there. i looked at the privacy policy to try to figure out what the limits are. there is no information in there whatsoever. the only thing i saw for sure was they don't use cookies. that was a lie. they did drop cookies on my computer when i went there. a project like this, obviously collecting sensitive information from my phone. my phone sends out a signal saying i am looking for a wi-fi hot spot. i am not trying to tell the city of chicago. i am trying to find a hot spot. if you are generating logs of all of the places they go, that is incredibly sensitive information. this project really needs to careful delineate the things they are not going to let people do and the information they are not going to collect. >> charlie, why don't you respond to justin's concerns and then, after that, because we are running out of time, tell me what you hope to gain from these sensors five years down the road? >> i guess i could respond to justin saying all of the things that you are describing are the things that we intend to do and i would agree that our web
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friends could be a little more detailed about that. it also is important to point out we have started this discussion before any of these things have gone up on polls. we won't put them on polls until all of this information is available. i mean not just the policies but the software and hardware specifications of what's in that box. so the transparency, we are working on getting that there. and by the time these things are deployed, that transparency will be there. >> charlie, five years down the road? >> five years down the road, as we get better sensors, the next wave of sensors we want to go for is really focused on air quality, things like sulfur objectionized, carbon monoxide. the things that epa, for example, measure in terms of air quality, those are some of the first targets we want to go after in terms of more information. as i mentioned before, in the next few years, we will see sensors that can pick up things like policien or mold that
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people actually would want to know if the policien count is high in this particular part of the city to avoid that part of the city. >> all right. thanks to our guest, charlie catlin, justin brookman. nice having you guys here when we come back, these days, there are more ways than one to leave a lasting legacy after we die. he specially online. how do we bury our online presence when we go? what happens to all of that data? who should have rights to it? later, would you spend as little as $100 to own a piece of your town? the surge in crowd funded real estate investing and what it means for local communities. ♪ >> on techknow, new hope for a cure >> he has a rare severe form epilepsy >> a miraculous medical marijuana breakthrough... >> it's something we can all relate to, a sick child getting better >> a week went by, still no seizures... then we know we were on to something... >> tech know, every saturday go where science meets humanity.
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>> families torn apart... >> anytime they see a social worker, the immediate response is.... they're here to take my kid >> stuck in the system... >> they didn't protect my children, they traumatized them >> can native cultures survive? >> this is about as adversarial as it gets fault lines al jazeera america's hard hitting... >> they're locking the door... >> ground breaking... >> we have to get out of here... truth seeking... award winning investigative documentary series the fight for native families only on al jazeera america >> hi, my name is natalie, i'm hi. my name is natlie salve. i am from chicago, illinois and i am in the stream. >> the uniform law commission is drafting legislation that would give family members the right to
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access the deceased loved one's social media sparking the question: who should have the right to our digital lives after we died. out of chicago is ben roseski for the university law firm and carl zabo for net choice and one of the things he focuses on is prooichs issues. thanks for being here, gentlemen. ben, the ulc is proposing laws to governor a person's online data after people when they die. it goes to probate court. and to administrator the estate of the deceased and they distribute that property in the way the deceased person wishes. much of our property is now online. our photos, instead of in albums we store them on the internet.
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the same thing as our documents, they're not in file cabinets, they are online or on a server somewhere. what the law does is gives the ability, to the account holder to you and i who have these online accounts to say in our will or our trust or our estate plan where we want this information to go after we're gone. >> so carl under this proposed >>. >> carl, under this proposed legislation, if a person doesn't make a choice about how their digital material is to be used or not used after they die, it defaults to everything being available and going to next of kin. do you have reservations about that? >> it's a great question. and, of course, i do. one of the problems is that most americans actually die without a will. more than half of americans today don't have a will. so the idea of designating where our stuff goes in a will doesn't really work. so the idea that
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the state will come in and say, well, all of your e-mails, all of your communications, all of your twitter posts, all of your facebook messages are just exposed when you die, i think that strikes a tough chord with those of us who consider the privacy of our users to be a top priority. what i would rather is rather than the state setting the default privacy standard to zero to allow the users and the custodians and the services they interact with to kind of take hold and get the first crack a what the u's privacy shutted beo make life easier for a couple of trusts and estates attorneys. >> we ask what are the pros and cons? most of our community like ben says i never considered that. this is a brave new world for them? >> exactly. >> web page fx, a great info
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graphic talks about the digital demise. 38,000 facebook yearsers who owns it? can others claim my user name? what happens when a friend or family members passes? this is the google page, the inactive account manager. if someone passes away, this is facebook. how do i report a deceased person or an account that needs to be memorialized? how do i remove the snkt even twitter has something, contacting twitter. >> all of this is so confusing. >> it's confusing for us because we never think about it. it has made me think about my digital mortality, check this out. u.s.a..gov. it encourages us to write a social media will. take these steps to help you right a social media will. i have not even written my non-digital will. the question goes to you, tupak has been releasing albums almost for the past 20 years. two years ago, he ends up at a holo graham.
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his digital presence have taken it to the extreme level of what he can do with a digital life. is the only way forward for the average citizen to write a social media will to control your digital footprint. >> your recommended option. tupak had written a will, perhaps he would have said he didn't want that to occur with his assets after he was gone. but i would like to distinguish something karl said, there is a difference can between granting access to a trusted fiduciary and making private information public. for long before the digital age, people died with embarrassing information and just because a fiduciary may have access to that information, it doesn't mean that information then gets revealed to either the public or to family members. the trusted fiduciary is somebody who can delete that information when appropriate, close those accounts and the issue is really not whether your information remains private after you are gone but who decides whether your information remains private.
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as it stands right now, the internet companies, facebook, yahoo, google, they decide through their terms of service agreement who has access to that information and whether it remains public or private. >> karl, how is this different than, you know, letters under the bed or a journal or a locked file cabinet full of documents that family would have access to once a person dies? >> so that's a great question. a lot of the trust estate attorneys i discussed this with analogize getting access to all of my e-mails as like the letters in my closet but e-mails are very different. consider the fact that rather than keeping a box full of my letters in my closet, i handed them to my friend, david and i said, david, when i die, i want you to delete all of those letters. i want you to burn them. well, the trust and the estate state attorney can go through my dresser and look for the letters but he can't kick in the door of david's house and go through david's house. >> that's what the trust and
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estate bar is trying to do here today. i want to go back to an interesting point raised a couple of minutes okay. it's important to note that the iphone is seven years old. google is not en old enough to vote. when we were creating these innovative services, we weren't really thinking about users end of life. but we are now. and we are creating new tools and new in0 vations to give users specific control over what happens to their accounts when they die. the reference was made tonight inactivity. yahoo is dabbling with some inactive account manager technology in japan right now. so the industry is evolving very quickly and i would rather see the industry give users the control rather than having the state determine what happens to my e-mails and my content when i die. >> speaking of the state, ben, i am curious, ulc is going state by state rather than seeking uniform federal legislation on this issue.
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why is that? >> the ulc works with issues that are governed at state law and trusts, and when you die, it's a matter of the state. it's necessary to work with the states. this is one area where the law should be uniform from state to state becausedictal assets cross state lines so easily. >> is it possible because you are talking about companies like yahoo and google? is it possible to create something like this at a federal level to keep everything the same across the board? >> conceivably. it might be possibly. i don't see anybody, including the internet companies, themselves, lobbying congress for that to happen at this point. so we are going to work with the existing law that we have in the states for now. carl mentioned google's inactive account manager. i commend google for providing that to their consumers. in the law, uefa da is enacted, it will defer to those choices like sooling's inactive account manager. as far as i know, they are the
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only company right now that has done at that and the only reason that companies are moving in that direction is because of legislation like the uniform digital assets act that is going to override some of the terms of service agreements that maybe they would prefer people didn't know about. >> we have mohammed here he goes privacy should be constituted by the individual whether dead or alive. carl, let's do a middle ground here we need est 125i9 planning. this is a brave new world. how can we balance it with privacy thoughts? quickly? >> great question. there is a way to move forward. first, we need to respect the privacy interests of the user. industry is giving users more control. second, if we are going to move forward, unfortunately, the bill that came out of the uniform law commission isn't the way to do it. i would defer and recommend people look to the existing law in rhode island that's been around since 2011. one of the issues that has yet to be discussed is the issue of federal preemption. there is a federal privacy law that preempts all states. >> all right. >> unfortunately, the uniform
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law commission hasn't yet addressed it. >> much to still consider on this issue. i'm sorry, gentlemen. we are out of time. i want to thank you both for insight. ben and carl. still ahead how average local did across america are taking control of their city's development using crowd funded micro investments. who is benefitting? see you in two minutes.
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america mobile app, available for your apple and android mobile device. download it now welcome back. you can invest as little as $100 in real estate and own a piece of your town. this little piece but a piece nonetheless. crowd funding apps are popping up. the investments are invigorating local communities. joining us onset is dan miller, the kobe founder of fund rise. >> that's one of the companies to be funding for real estate projects and one of his investors, michael lubins on skype from washington, d.c. thank you for being here. dan, i love the concept of giving everyone an opportunity
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to invest in real estate. if somebody is investing 50 or $100, how does that translate into something of real value? >> sure. it's all built on lines. go to the website and transact directly. when someone is investing at the $100 level, it's about engagement and people not only making return but part of something that's happening around them. we have investors as high a 50 or 100,000. there is real scale value. >> why did you invest? >> well, i had originally saw it as a way of being involved with a restaurant from a chef that i really like. as i lend more about it, it was really a way to be invested in my community where i live. >> so, by being invested, you are supporting the community. are you expecting to make money off of this. >> yes. >> or does it not really matter. >> for me, it's not really about making money, you know, making money obviously would be great. but it's really just a way to be
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involved and to, to own part of my community and feel like i have a sense of ownership in the community that i have lived in for a long time and plan on continue to live in. >> kind of an interesting statement that he just made. is that something you expected from the outset with your business plan that people were essentially going to be making donations to nair their community rather than expecting a return? >> we thought it would be a blend. right now, people have investments that are pure stockmarket investments, nothing tangible that you can connect to or nonprofit where there is a separate world, no return. but the world is not that black and white. allowing people to invest directly in things they like the architecture or make money but michael is saying he's connected to that neighborhood. >> that's where he wants to invest, help the businesses that are opening. >> let me make you look good with this info graphic. funneled rise, 350,000 raised from the crowd, 8% projected return, $100 minimum. 378 individual investors and the average age is 37.
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>> we asked our community, what would you invest in for your local neighborhood? >> the neighborhood i grew up in, i would invest in schools, water taps, basketball and college scholar thip for kids. aaron said i would reopen the recently closed general store. we are a small town without somewhere to shop locally. life is difficult. mikae micah, are you concerned that it might be used and abused by some of the elites that daniel was mentioning who would not care about, say, the xhoo unty empowerment but just care about the return on investment? >> no. i think that's one of the really great things about fund rise is that with their, to invest in these buildings, you had to live in the d.c. area. you know, you couldn't come in and just invest a mask such and expect to make a lot of money. i have met a lot of investors and there is a lot of i wouldn't say donation but a lot of people that really just want to be involved in the community, you know. everywhere there is a chance for
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people to, you know, take advantage of it in a negative fashion. i think that with fund rising, there is a bigger focus on community. >> dan, not a lot of time left but give me an example of a project that wouldn't exist if not for fund rise >> this project, a local chef well known in d.c., a young she have without much credit. a business wouldn't normally lend to. we are seeing these smaller projects to help support the real estate and help get these local businesses open. this will be one of the best countri countries. i think it will be exceptional and something that's difficult but for local investments. >> thank you to dan miller and michael lubens and to our guests on today's show. until next take waj and i will see you on aljazeera.com/ayamstream.
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>> this this is "al jazeera america." i am richelle carey. u.s. air strikes target islamic state fighters in iraq. president obama said there will be no quick fix in that country. >> there is going to have to be an iraqi solution that america and other countries and allies support. >> israeli airstrikes on gaza push the death t
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