Fenna Levenbach

5/5 (4)

The founders of AirBnB have been in a nice and educational rollercoaster: starting with an air mattress in the living room to an international platform with accommodation in 34,000 cities in 191 countries.

Their strategy was different from that of other disruptive organizations. Where a company like Uber heartlessly attacked the taxi market from day one, for example totally ignoring the current market and its employees, AirBnB chose a seemingly social way. To the outside world in recent years it seems to be a great success story that sounds like a optimistic entrepreneurs lecture.

But AirBnB is in trouble. The representatives of the State of New York filed a law that threatens the business model of AirBnb in New York. In the end of next week, Governor Cuomo decides whether to sign or veto the law. In 2010, New York passed a law which prohibits leasing apartment complexes in Manhattan for a period shorter than 30 days. But this is the core activity of Airbnb. The law is therefore not met. Therefore they have proposed an even stricter law: who rents his apartment through Airbnb for short term, will be fined with $ 7,500.

The big success of AirBnB, seems to destroy the company and forces AirBnB to make choices. Most important: short-term exponential growth or long-term sustainable existence. Growth is a conscious choice, but city authorities are not entirely happy with that growth. On the one hand they appreciate the new flow of tourists, but on the other hand they are responsible for defending the interests of the city and its inhabitants.

I think it is really important to think about the interests of the citizens, but cities need to give new developments like AirBnB a place in the current policy. For example policy about the affordability of houses, the occurrence of inconvenience and to make sure the business is fair. Because this kind of companies are the future.

The municipality of Amsterdam conceived as examples three very simple rules: 1. Do not exceed sixty days per year; 2. No more than four people at a time; 3. Not in social housing. Is this verifiable and will new regulations focused on disruptive companies safe AirBnB?

Interesting is to look at the website InsideAirBnB.com, which creates maps of the data from AirBnB.
When we take a look of the map of Amsterdam (sorry it’s my hometown and the site doesn’t contain a map of Rotterdam) we see that a solution for this conflict of interests is needed!

http://insideairbnb.com/amsterdam/

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/10/20/new-york-bindt-strijd-aan-met-airbnb-4914291-a1527622https://
www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/08/29/airbnb-moet-zelf-de-regels-handhaven-4048140-a1518490https://
www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/10/20/new-york-vs-airbnb-strijd-om-toekomst-van-verhuursite-4902724-a1527496

5/5 (10)

This year Whatsapp decided to use end-to-end encryption for all whatsapp messages in following of their concurrent Telegram. This to protect the privacy of all users and ensure the users that their private messages keep private.

This week Rob Bertholee, the CEO of the AIVD (Dutch national security agency) spoke out in an interview that the AIVD wants the power to crack the encryption of Whatsapp. According to the AIVD the increasing use of information-encryption leads to problems regarding to the prevention of terrorism. The ideal situation for the AIVD would be to have an oversight of the whole criminal network, provided by their phone network history.

But of course this raises again the security versus privacy discussion. How much privacy is your safety worth? Should the AIVD have insights in everyone’s personal messages to protect the country?

History doesn’t prove that spying is the right solution. Before Whatsapp decided to encrypt their messages, people made use of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) telephones. The government got the rights to crack these and since then they use them as prove in court for criminal cases. This should make the process more easy, but has so far disappointing results. A lot of criminals use aliases to stay anonymous and if they handled secure, the messages weren’t retraceble.

I would like to plead that privacy is not dead (yet) and that analyizing personal messages isn’t the right solution to protect citizens. Privacy is crucial for self-identity and autonomy. (Focault, 1977) (Wolf, R. D., & Heyman, R. ;2015).

“Privacy is the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others” (Westin, 1968).

Also if the AIVD gets access to the messages, it is not sure how they’ll analyze the messages. Which false-positive ratio would be acceptable? And for what extend of time can they store the information? Another raising question is how they can ensure the security. Once there is a crack, the security of the messages is much harder to maintain.

What do you think? Would you let the AIVD read your messages? Does privacy still excist and if so, where do we draw the line?

http://nos.nl/artikel/2132835-aivd-plan-om-versleuteling-whatsapp-te-omzeilen-veel-te-gevaarlijk.html

Wolf, R. D., & Heyman, R. (2015). Privacy and Social Media. The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society.

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage.

Westin, A. F. (1968). Privacy and freedom. Washington and Lee Law Review,25(1), 166.

The end of AirBnB?

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