Gliph Co-Founder Nicholas Asch and Gliph iOS Developer Joakim Fernstad in our freshly laid out booth at Bitcoin 2013. (It featured beanbag chairs and foliage)

The company first got involved when your blogger and co-founder (Rob Banagale) accepted a panelist spot on the Law Enforcement and Financial Privacy track at the conference. At this time our development team was working feverishly on the first release of the Bitcoin integration into Gliph.

Wanting to do something special for the earliest and most core Bitcoin adopters, we created custom Bitcoin branded merchandise for the event. This included hats and hooded sweatshirts embroidered with a great looking Bitcoin logo. We sold these for Bitcoin at our booth.

We did our release on Friday, May 17th, which included a feature article in PandoDaily. That article was written by Erin Griffith and included our news of joining the Boost VC startup accelerator.

We had a few media events scheduled for the conference as well. On Friday morning, Rob did an interview with Adam Levine of the Let’s Talk Bitcoin podcast. The discussion covered a wide range of topics, and if you’re a fan of Gliph you will probably appreciate some of the details shared in the interview.

Rob was on a media blitz of sorts and also had a chance to sit with Scott Morgan of BTC Journal on Saturday morning. A portion of that interview, which covers “The Future of Bitcoin,” includes our take on what Bitcoin needs to do to be successful:

You can view a variety of other media from the conference, including video of many of the panels and speakers on Youtube.

We decided to expand our involvement in the conference when it became clear we would be able to launch the first Bitcoin-ready Gliph feature set on the first day of the conference. We did this in two ways: we secured an exhibitor’s booth and also planned for one of our iOS developers, Joakim, to participate in the Bitcoin hackathon.

Joakim’s project was focused on using low-power bluetooth as a discovery mechanism for people around you who are capable of trading bitcoin. He went up on-stage and demo’d his work on Sunday under the guise of “Gliph Labs.”  It was really cool to see what he was able to get going in such a short period of time. We see some great applications for his hack in Gliph’s future. Sourcecode from this hack is currently available in our Github.

One of the funnier things that happened for our team was the delivery of a nearly naked mannequin to our exhibitors booth. We had rented only the torso to show off the Bitcoin jackets, but were instead treated to a full-sized athletic looking dude wearing only underwear. We hastily got a pair of shorts from our hotel room and got them on before many conference attendees had showed up.

Another interesting thing about the Bitcoin 2013 conference was the Comic Wow! convention going on at the venue at the same time. There were many people dressed up in cosplay costumes, including a full sized, highly detailed Iron Man costume, an Alien costume and many, many more. Seeing them run up next to Bitcoin enthusiasts was pretty funny. @thebitcoinwife got up close to the mannequin before we got the shorts on.

Overall, the team had a great time at the event and we hope to attend next year as well. It was a terrific place to launch the first version of Gliph with Bitcoin!

A variety of companies and publications have released new articles or information to mark the day. Microsoft released results of a new survey of 1,000 US adults that shows privacy is becoming more important to people, yet a sense of powerlessness pervades.

In the key findings of the report, 45% of people feel they have little or no control over personal information gathered by companies about them. Below is a graphic that shows how much control people feel they have over personal information shared online:

The circles on the graph indicate that men feel less in control over privacy than women while young people and those making incomes less than $50k a year have the strongest sense of control.

The Huffington Post has published an article marking the day and efforts to urge the US Congress into passing Electronic Privacy Reform. The Huffington Post article highlights the increasing disparity in privacy afforded to US citizens with regards to physical and virtual communication channels.

For example, email stored on web-based email services but used almost entirely from the home or mobile devices (like Gmail) may be obtained from US citizens without a warrant. Whereas a personal, physical letter sent to a home remain protected.

Individual choices around what personal data to keep private continue to focus on Facebook which encourages the open sharing and access to real personal data.

Facebook’s recent release of Graph Search has again highlighted concerns around the unexpected revelation of personal information. In the piece by The Nation, Ari Melber connects Graph Search to David Pozen’s paper (.pdf) in the Yale Law Journal describing the Mosaic Theory of intelligence gathering, where seemingly insignificant pieces of information can be assembled into a useable piece of intelligence on a person.

Unintentional sharing of personal data continues to be a problem, with the Online Trust Alliance announcement today that 242.6 million personal records were exposed in 2012. In their 2013 report on Data Protection and Data, they find that of 1478 breaches in 2012, over one-quarter were due to “internal incidents,” meaning personal data was revealed by members of the organization entrusted with personal data, rather than criminal mischief of those outside organizations.

Gliph is proud to be on the forefront of providing privacy not only around personal data, but also in building a system for communication and connection that offers real privacy.

In the Gliph company blog, we previously covered the efforts of the NTIA’s Privacy Multistakeholder Meetings that are aimed at realizing the Obama Administration’s Privacy Bill of Rights. We’ve also shared ideas for how startup companies can make privacy a strategic asset.

Some functional highlights from 2012 that added privacy to Gliph included the ability for users to securely delete Gliph messages, the release of Cloaked Email and an app access PIN to prevent casual snooping of Gliph conversations.  We have some terrific additions that add additional opportunities to maintain privacy planned for 2013 and look forward to sharing them with you.

We urge everyone to take a moment today to consider what personal data they have currently available on the interent and thoughtfully consider actions they need to take in 2013 to take control of their privacy online.

John Verdi (@johnverdi) is the Director of Privacy Initiatives at the NTIA and has been blogging about activities at the meetings. In his August 1st, 2012 post, he describes the July multi-stakeholder meeting as a step toward implementing the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

This Bill of Rights is something to keep your eyes on. It was first proposed by the Obama Administration as part of a paper with the lengthy title “Consumer Data Privacy In a Networked World: A Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Innovation in the Global Digital Economy.” Gliph is hosting a copy you can download here [.pdf].

In the introduction, Barack Obama quotes Justice Louis Brandeis’ dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. United States which is Americans’ “right to be let alone.” Though he counters, “…privacy is about much more than just solitude or secrecy.”

The rights advanced in the paper cover the following (bulleted paragraphs are quoted from the paper):

• Individual Control – Consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data companies collect from them and how they use it. 
• Transparency – Consumers have a right to easily understandable and accessible information about privacy and security practices.
• Respect for Context – Consumers have a right to expect that companies will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.
• Security – Consumers have a right to secure and responsible handling of personal data.
• Access and Accuracy – Consumers have a right to access and correct personal data in usable formats, in a manner that is appropriate to the sensitivity of the data and the risk of adverse consequences to consumers if the data is inaccurate.
• Focused Collection – Consumers have a right to reasonable limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain.
• Accountability – Consumers have a right to have personal data handled by companies with appropriate measures in place to assure they adhere to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

The paper was released with the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights in February of 2012, just weeks after the Path Address Book controversy. Meetings have been happening in Washington DC with participation in-person and remotely from ‘stakeholders’ from industry, consumer groups, government academia and the technical community.

The NTIA’s meetings have helped bring attention to previous efforts such as those from the Future of Privacy Forum’s guide to Transparency [.pdf]. They’ve also shed greater light on recent research around consumer privacy, including University of Pennsylvania Professor Joseph (@JoeProf) Turow’s presentation on The Non-Transparency of Key Online Words [.pdf].

In the deck, Turow makes the observation that “Marketers are using words and actions aimed at calming publics over privacy but that actually change the words’ meanings.” Also, that the targeting of online ads could possibly lead to “increasing social tensions and distrust of institutions (including government) around the issue of who is ‘target’ and who ‘waste.'”

The NTIA meetings are being held in public and are the focused effort of the NTIA’s Office of Policy Analysis and Development (OPAD). You can keep up on the schedule, meeting documents and more by watching the privacy tag on the NTIA website.

We care about privacy at Gliph and want to support active discussion of how it affects software development.  If you are a developer, product manager, or interested in where mobile is headed, you may want to make plans to attend by registering for the event.  The national sponsors include TRUSTe, AT&T and Evidon

This event is part of a nation-wide set of hosted privacy events, including an August 30th event on Privacy Tools for Startups in San Francisco.  See more Apps Alliance events on their calendar page.  Below is a complete description of the Seattle event:

We’re providing the beer, pizza, and privacy experts. You provide the conversation.

Developers are in the crosshairs of a nationwide explosion of lawmaking. Legislators and regulators are making decisions about software privacy that will make your work more difficult, and this is your opportunity to make your voice heard. Anyone who writes software — no matter the language or platform — must understand the issues and take the lead in the discussion to ensure privacy protections are effective but do not impede growth in the business of creating software.

That’s why we’re bringing the privacy conversation to developers in cities across the U.S. The series will include conversations guided by discussion leaders to help developers better understand the changing privacy landscape and give them a voice in the dialogue. This isn’t a heavy event, it’s a conversation led by and for developers which is why we’re also providing a fully stocked happy hour. Because we know even the biggest challenges can be solved over a few beers (just not too many).

Follow @AppsAlliance on twitter.

You can download the Gliph iPhone app here.  And the Gliph Android App here.

We went up against eight different companies for the Innovators Spotlight, and while there was some strong competition, none of them quite hit on the specific issues being discussed at the conference:  how do you protect the privacy of user data, how do you offer privacy controls in an enjoyable user experience?  What does the future of digital identity look like?

While winning the award was a great validation of the work we’re doing and we’re excited about the people we met as well.  While a privacy conference isn’t exactly “cool” in mainstream news today, you could tell that this niche space is going to be ballooning.

We’d like to give a special thanks to the conference organizer, Natalie Fonseca.  She did an excellent job putting the event together and we are grateful for the opportunity to have participated.  Natalie, you rock!

Seattle Beta

Seattle Beta is a private event organized by Beta Ltd that combines a lively bar atmosphere at Spitfire Grill with startup demos and an audience-choice award.  Twenty companies demonstrated their products, including Gliph.    We were excited to not only walk away with the People’s Choice Award, but also get noticed by Twilio for our demo of Gliph-to-Gliph calling.  You can view our gallery of photos from the event on our Gliph Facebook page.

MIT Enterprise Forum

The MIT Enterprise Forum is an opportunity to showcase your startup in front of investors, other entrepreneurs and influential folks in the Seattle technology scene.  After passing the screening committee in mid-April, Gliph went on to do a live demo on the 26th.  A full-length copy of the demo was recorded on video and is available below.

We ended up taking second place at MIT Enterprise Forum, and meeting a bunch of interesting folks ta-boot.  We’ll probably have more public events where you can meet up with Gliph.  Please keep an eye on our Twitter feed for the heads-up!