Re: [Person Finder] Bahrain Missing People Finder

[Prem Ramaswami]

Hi Mahmood-

Thanks for your email.

At this time we've decided against launching an instance of Person Finder for Bahrain again due to sensitivities with the local government and how the data can be misused.  Since the code has been open sourced, there is an opportunity for others to launch an instance on this own, but at this time, Google has chosen against launching an instance.

We will update this thread if that decision changes.

Thanks,

Prem

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Mahmood Majeed <mahmood....@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear All,

As you are aware about the situation in Bahrain in the last few days, we have a number of missing people in here most of them are kids, so we are asking you if you could provide a website for this issue or guide us on how create one on a domain.

Please forward this to the right people if it's not.

Kind Regards,

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=======================
Prem Ramaswami
Product Manager - Google
http://www.google.co.in/internetbus
=======================

[Alice Bonhomme-Biais]

Hi Mahmood,

There's a bug in the admin page that doesn't allow you to create the first instance from there. Below are the steps to follow to create an instance:

• You'll want to modify the code in http://code.google.com/p/googlepersonfinder/source/browse/tools/setup.py to create and configure your subdomain.  You'll likely want to remove or comment out the other test subdomains that are created in that file. I recommend to create a test instance first.
• Then you can connect to your instance using the remote_api:
  tools/console missingbh.appspot.com
  And run
  >>> setup_datastore()
  similar to setting up a devel instance.
• Then, assuming you created a submdomain named 'test' in setup.py, you would be able to visit the admin page at http://test.missingbh.appspot.com/admin
• In this page, you can specify various parameters to your instance. For the access control, you can select "require an authorization key" which prevents people from downloading all raw data (unless they aks you for a key)
• Note that you will also need to request and enter your own keys for Recaptcha, Maps API and  the Google translate API. For this
• Retrieve a key through: http://code.google.com/apis/loader/signup.html. It will be used for Maps API and translate API
• Add the Maps API key to your application using:
• tools/console missingbh.appspot.com
• >>> Secret.create('maps_api_key', 'YOURKEY').put()
• Add the Translate API key by updating language_api_param in "tools/setup.py" file 
• Retrieve a Recaptcha Key: https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin/create
• Add the Recaptcha private and public keys by updating captcha_params in "tools/setup.py" file.

Good luck, do not hesitate to reply to this group if you have any technical issues.

Alice.

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 6:00 AM, Mahmood Majeed <mahmood....@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Prem,

I have downloaded the source and deployed it to Google App Engine on
http://missingbh.appspot.com but the problem now is on how to create
an instance ? I have tried going to the admin page but it says: "No
subdomain specified" if you please could guide me on this issue.

Kind Regards,
Mahmood

On Feb 18, 3:44 am, Prem Ramaswami <pr...@google.com> wrote:
> Hi Mahmood-
>
> Thanks for your email.
>
> At this time we've decided against launching an instance of Person Finder for
> Bahrain again due to sensitivities with the local government and how the
> data can be misused.  Since the code has been open sourced, there is an
> opportunity for others to launch an instance on this own, but at this time,
> Google has chosen against launching an instance.
>
> We will update this thread if that decision changes.
>
> Thanks,
> Prem
>
> On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Mahmood Majeed

> <mahmood.majee...@gmail.com>wrote:

--
Alice Bonhomme-Biais <ali...@google.com>
Google Software Engineer NYC

[Tim Schwartz]

Hi Mahmood,

I was wondering if you have considered all of the implications of launching a missing persons website for Bahrain. It could be possible, that if this site is launched and people start to list and track people on this site that other people (including the government of Bahrain) could see and use the website to track individuals that are trying to help missing people.

May I ask how you envision a Google missing persons website helping the missing people or helping their families? Are you in Bahrain as we speak?

I think it is worth having this discussion as a community so that we can try to understand all of the benefits and possible effects of our actions.

For full disclosure, I do not work for Google or any other humanitarian organization, I am simply a coder in California that tries to help with disaster related technical support.

Sincerely,
Tim Schwartz

[john saylor]

hi

i'm glad to be discussing this openly.

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Tim Schwartz <tim.c.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It could be possible, that if this
> site is launched and people start to list and track people on this site that
> other people (including the government of Bahrain) could see and use the
> website to track individuals that are trying to help missing people.

this argument is brought up frequenly, but i am never convinced by it.
i would assume the government already has a tracking computer system
for criminals. human rights activists are often on these lists
already. and any photos or videos of anti-government demonstrations
can be examined by governments to find out who is demonstrating
against them [to say nothing of cell phone records]. so how does
person finder make this situation any worse?

the problem i see is that governments who are illegally holding people
will have those illegally held people on the lists. the governments
don't like it- but i am not convinced that the population of these
regions is in any more danger due to a missing person report than they
already are.

i'm happy to listen to arguments to the contrary.

further complicating things is the fact that the us government
supports the government of bahrain- and they probably don't want any
big us corporations putting some of their resources to assist the
protesters [like person finder would do].

> May I ask how you envision a Google missing persons website helping the
> missing people or helping their families?

can you read your own sentence? don't you think the missing persons
website would help people find each other? isn't that the point?

--
\js : "verbing weirds language." -calvin  [http://or8.net/~johns/]

[Ka-Ping Yee]

Hello Mahmood and others,

Here is one way to create a new subdomain without using tools/console.

1. In the file app/admin.py, just below "ignore_deactivation = True", insert the line: Subdomain(key_name='test').put()

2. Deploy the code as usual using "appcfg.py update -A your_app_id app".

3. Go to http://test.your_app_id.appspot.com/.  Reload until the error goes away.  Next to "Select a subdomain" choose "Create new..." and proceed to create a subdomain.

—Ping

Google Crisis Response

[Tim Schwartz]

Mahmood,

Thanks for the clarifications. Its great to see your using facebook, but I agree it would be better to have a dedicated system like Google Person Finder.

Cheers,
Tim

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Mahmood Majeed <mahmood....@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Schwartz,

We are currently doing this on facebook and other pages by posting photos of the missing and found people, but it would be better if there is a dedicated page where all of this information is in one place.

And yes I'm in Bahrain, and I'm a Bahraini citizen.

Regards,

Mahmood

--

Mahmood Majeed

Mobile: +973 39966353

US Phone #: +1 (405) 396-6353

E-Mail: mahmood....@gmail.com

[Tim Schwartz]

Hey John,

Thanks for responding. I'm just trying to start the discussion so I'm glad we're engaged.

> It could be possible, that if this
> site is launched and people start to list and track people on this site that
> other people (including the government of Bahrain) could see and use the
> website to track individuals that are trying to help missing people.

this argument is brought up frequenly, but i am never convinced by it.
i would assume the government already has a tracking computer system
for criminals. human rights activists are often on these lists
already. and any photos or videos of anti-government demonstrations
can be examined by governments to find out who is demonstrating
against them [to say nothing of cell phone records]. so how does
person finder make this situation any worse?

I'm not positive it makes it anything worse either, but in a conflict situation a large entity could not take a side, does that mean that a community entity built up of pieces of larger entities should take a side. I agree that we are here to support, but to what extent do we do it as a community or as individuals.

the problem i see is that governments who are illegally holding people
will have those illegally held people on the lists. the governments
don't like it- but i am not convinced that the population of these
regions is in any more danger due to a missing person report than they
already are.

i'm happy to listen to arguments to the contrary.

further complicating things is the fact that the us government
supports the government of bahrain- and they probably don't want any
big us corporations putting some of their resources to assist the
protesters [like person finder would do].

So I guess this is a conflict of interest. We have members of our community that are from Government and large corporations, so how can we help when it might not be in the best interest of all of the members of a community? 

> May I ask how you envision a Google missing persons website helping the
> missing people or helping their families?

can you read your own sentence? don't you think the missing persons
website would help people find each other? isn't that the point?

Sorry my sentence might have come off as mean-spirited. What I am interested in is, would people on the ground in Bahrain have access to this website if it was created and do a majority of people there have internet. I think this was answered by Mahmood, I didn't realize they were already using facebook for this type of initiative.

Cheers,
Tim

[john saylor]

hi

thx for your thoughtful reply. i don't want to monopolize the
discussion by any means. but i'd like to follow up on one of your
points.

i wrote:
>> further complicating things is the fact that the us government
>> supports the government of bahrain- and they probably don't want any
>> big us corporations putting some of their resources to assist the
>> protesters [like person finder would do].

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Tim Schwartz <tim.c.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So I guess this is a conflict of interest. We have members of our community
> that are from Government and large corporations, so how can we help when it
> might not be in the best interest of all of the members of a community?

i agree that the issue is a problem.

one of the things that drew me to the project is the thought of
helping people; which is probably a generic enough goal that most of
us could agree with it as a valid one. it becomes an issue when a
government or a corporation has reasons for not helping certain
populations that might benefit from a person finder instance. i might
agree or disagree with those reasons, but those are the 'facts on the
ground.' and that corporation or government has far greater resources
than i could ever hope to control.

one way to go forward is that people like mahmood will just have to
act on their own.