I love Path’s homepage:
But that doesn’t make me less concerned about their lack of respect for user privacy.
David Jacobs, a fellow with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, noted that, once again, an Internet company showed a lack of understanding about the consequences of taking data.
Lawyers I spoke with said that my address book — which contains my reporting sources at companies and in government — is protected under the First Amendment. On Path’s servers, it is frightfully open for anyone to see and use, because the company did not encrypt the data.
Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher at Cisco, says start-ups often do not build apps with security in mind: “Attackers are like electricity; they like to follow the track of least resistance.” …
It seems the management philosophy of “ask for forgiveness, not permission” is becoming the “industry best practice.” And based on the response to Mr. Morin, tech executives are even lauded for it.
Greg Palmer 