ralphje.net Blog

Since my last blog post, I got distracted and lost interest in my privacy research. Not because my research is boring or unnecessary; I believe privacy is one of our most important rights. It is the right to be left alone, and I really like that idea. No, it’s because the companies I’ve made a subject access request with, were very reluctant in providing any details. And the details I did receive, were far below my expectations.

I have learned that students from the Kerckhoffs Institute have done a similar research (for the Privacy Seminar course) in cooperation with Bits of Freedom with similar results. They concluded that of the 30 contacted organizations, 60-70% did not respond to the request, and if a company did respond, it was incorrect or curtly. For instance,  Trans Link Systems (the organization behind the Dutch transport card) incorrectly stated that they didn’t keep track of any personal information. It’s interesting to see that I’ve received a letter from TLS containing detailed personal and travel information, but more about that later in this post.

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Seven weeks ago, I started my privacy research. I sent a letter to 33 organizations asking what the know about me. Legally, they had four weeks to respond, so it’s about time to make a first progress report.

590 grams

It’s striking to see how long it takes for some organizations to send a response, and if they finally send something, it is mostly only nonsense, referring to some privacy statement or suggesting that I travel to Amsterdam to identify myself. Obviously, it’s great to see that they take privacy seriously, although I sensed that they just didn’t want to take the time to respond to me seriously.

In total, I’ve received 590 grams of responses, had two privacy-related real-life conversations, received 9 emails and had 2 phone calls concerning my privacy.

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Today, I posted 33 letters to several Dutch organizations, all with the same request: ‘What do you know about me?’ I’m really interested in what is known about me in the corporate world, even without being a high-profile person.

The idea to do this came to my mind while attending several law related courses as part of my minor Law. There’s a Dutch law (called the ‘Wet Bescherming Persoonsgegevens‘ which is based on the EU directive 95/46/EG, so there’s a similar law in all other EU countries) that allows every natural person to ask any organization which personal data is being processed by that organization and why this is done.

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It’s quite notable that, since October 10, 2010 (10-10-10) the highest hill of the Netherlands has changed. And, if you don’t know what happened on that day, you could imagine that some people (students probably) must have built another hill next to the Vaalserberg (the highest point until the 10th), but just a bit higher. Or, someone must have thought it was fun to get his shovel and begun digging the Vaalserberg down.

None of this is true, however. At the 10th, the Netherlands Antilles were dissolved and Saba became a special municipality of the Netherlands. Mount Scenery, a potentially active volcano and with an elevation of 877 meters, became the highest point of the Netherlands that day.

This is all quite interesting, but, like a good introduction to a story should, it has just a small relation to this post. About a year ago, I posted how I had become ‘capable, awesome and profound‘ at October 13, 2009 1:02 am. Me and my fellow board members became ‘highest hill’ of study association Inter-Actief for the next year.

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Last week, we’ve managed to put Inter-Actief on the map with the symposium ecomputing. With over 170 visitors, 23 lecturers and 16 sessions, the event was a great success and one of the biggest symposiums of the study association. In this context, ‘we’ is the symposium committee of Inter-Actief, namely Jarmo van Lenthe, Niek Tax, Rick van Galen and Renske Vermolen, presided by the undersigned.

The event went like clockwork and stress wasn’t required at all. Everything was fixed before the event, although we didn’t do much the days before either. There are some points for improvement, but overall it was great to organize something like this.

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It has been a long time since I wrote my last post at this weblog. Since my last post, much happened, as you might have noticed if you are following my Twitter account. If you want to know what happend in the last five months, just read my Twitter timeline !

I would like to mention though that I’m part of the candidate board of study association Inter-Actief. This means that I’ll be (most likely) part of the (full time) board as responsible for the education of our members. Until then, I’ll be busy with the symposium ecomputing. If you’re interested, please subscribe to our newsletter!

Furthermore, Antagonist was celebrating its fifth anniversary last week. What’s keeping us busy lately, is brainstorming about the future of the company. Do we want a new website? Should we launch new products? The main problem is not harming our current identity.

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Ten weeks ago, this quartile seemed to be very easy, at least easier then my first quartile this year. Just two exams and one project to complete. Only one of the three subjects was seemed hard, namely ADC (Algorithms, Data structures and Complexity). The others subjects were Operating Systems and Software Engineering Models. The latter didn’t have an exam, there was only a project.

As the quartile got on, this proportion seemed correct. Operating Systems did have hard lab work, but was, with the help of the teaching assistants, not impossible. ADC turned out to be hard, but not much time was required to keep up with the subject matter. SEM only had a lab in the first four weeks, so I had plenty of time to do…. well, nothing interesting.

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In my recent post, I pointed out why and how I wanted to get my right with KPN’s commercials at Dutch television stating that their DVB-T implementation in the form of Digitenne is an improvement of your signal quality. I also stated that KPN is, with thanks to me, not allowed to broadcast this claim anymore.

However, KPN doesn’t seem to agree with me and the decision of the Reclame Code Commissie and requested further appeal at the Board of Appeal of the RCC. As KPN points out, their claim of “Improved sound and picture” isn’t absolute. Claiming they have the ‘best’ quality, is an absolute claim. However, ‘improving’ isn’t absolute and only true in some specific context.
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Recently, I’ve bought a NetGear WNDR3300 router, which supports N-draft. Ffor a more convenient management of this router, I decided to put DD-WRT firmware on it. For some reason, however, my router doesn’t want to broadcast N-draft with this firmware. As information is limited, here’s how you can revert your installation of DD-WRT:

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This year’s October, my study assocation organized a symposium about Media and ICT. One of the readings was one of KPN, talking about the complexity of implementing the DVB-H specification into it’s network.

In fact, this was just some marketing speech for KPN and the speaker lost his face when he said “Nederland 2 isn’t broadcasted since the NPO doesn’t provide us the signal” and someone responded “I’m from the NPO and I know that KPN didn’t want us to provide that signal.”

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