"80% of them stopped all background tracking by apps" | The Cat Herder, Volume 3, Issue 2

Last week it was facial recognition and this week it's also facial recognition. There's so much facia   January 26 · Issue #67 · View online Last week it was facial recognition and this week it’s also facial recognition. There’s so much facial recognition in the world and also in the media that Bruce Schneier wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times highlighting this, and pointing out that facial recognition is far from the only thing we should be worried about. 😼 BleepingComputer @BleepinComputer German car rental company Buchbinder exposed the personal info of over 3.1 million customers including federal ministry employees and diplomats, all of it stored within a 10 terabytes MSSQL backup database left unsecured on the Internet - by @serghei https://t.co/WdmHGx0PNO 8:02 PM - 23 Jan 2020 It could, it really could. Last weekend The Sunday Times revealed that betting companies “have been given access to an educational database containing names, ages and addresses of 28 million children and students”. More: ‘Betting companies given access to UK gov’t information on millions of children’, ZDNet “Personal data shall be … collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes” – Article 5.2(b), GDPR — Joe knows. Cynthia Kroet @cynthiakroet “If any police force tells me they are GDPR compliant, I don’t believe them,” says Joe Cannataci, UN special rapporteur on the right to privacy. He argues they don’t have the manpower to check if their legacy databases are in line with EU rules. #CPDP2020 2:05 PM - 23 Jan 2020 98% false positives While Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai backed calls for a temporary ban on facial recognition and the German government appeared to reverse plans to introduce the technology in airports and train stations, Brexit Britain went all in. Met Police to deploy facial recognition cameras - BBC News www.bbc.com – Share Police say the short-term deployments will check watchlists of suspects wanted for serious crimes. The ICO issued a statement. The system the Met is deploying has been tested over the last couple of years. The results were not good, according to reporting by The Independent in May 2018. The Metropolitan Police’s system has produced 104 alerts of which only two were later confirmed to be positive matches, a freedom of information request showed. In its response the force said it did not consider the inaccurate matches “false positives” because alerts were checked a second time after they occurred. The Brexiting United Kingdom will be seeking an adequacy decision from the European Commission for transfers of personal data. This won’t help. The ICO published its Code of Practice to protect children’s privacy online, or the Age Appropriate Design Code, to give it its full title. — The Greek DPA fined a company €15,000 for operating a CCTV system illegally and issued an order that the company comply with a complainant’s subject access right request. — The Italian DPA “imposed two fines on Eni Gas and Luce (Egl), totalling EUR 11.5 million, concerning respectively illicit processing of personal data in the context of promotional activities and the activation of unsolicited contracts.” “Focusing on one particular identification method misconstrues the nature of the surveillance society we’re in the process of building. Ubiquitous mass surveillance is increasingly the norm. In countries like China, a surveillance infrastructure is being built by the government for social control. In countries like the United States, it’s being built by corporations in order to influence our buying behavior, and is incidentally used by the government.” Bruce Schneier in The New York Times. “To better understand the current landscape of digital technologies that watch or track people in some form or another, and how their deployment affects both people and the places they inhabit, we might start to think about surveillance technology not only in terms of what it does, but who it is used by and, importantly, who it is used on or against.” In Urban Omnibus Chris Gilliard explores “how technologies that track create different spatial experiences for users on opposite ends of the tool — and for different races and classes at the receiving end of the surveilling gaze.” “If the police routinely use facial recognition to monitor and exclude people from public space, that space takes on the character of private space, where our presence is conditional on the good will and competence of an authority rather than broadly ours by right. Unlike beat policing, or calling the police reactively when a crime is committed, facial recognition technology has the capability to scale up cheaply such that it can be applied not just in one place or a few places at a time, but effectively everywhere all the time.” Adrian Short on how ‘Police facial recognition privatises public space’. It seems that, despite industry assertions, most people don’t like being tracked by a writhing mass of advertisers, intermediaries and brokers. “According to data from location-verification firm Location Sciences seen by DigiDay, approximately seven in ten iPhone users analyzed by the company downloaded iOS 13 in its first six weeks of availability. Of those users who installed the update, around 80% of them stopped all background tracking by apps.” Malcolm Owen for Apple Insider. —— Endnotes & Credits The elegant Latin bon mot “Futuendi Gratia” is courtesy of Effin’ Birds. As always, a huge thank you to Regina Doherty for giving the world the phrase “mandatory but not compulsory”. The image used in the header is by Krystian Tambur on Unsplash. Any quotes from the Oireachtas we use are sourced from KildareStreet.com. They’re good people providing a great service. If you can afford to then donate to keep the site running. Digital Rights Ireland have a storied history of successfully fighting for individuals’ data privacy rights. You should support them if you can. Find us on the web at myprivacykit.com and on Twitter at @PrivacyKit. Of course we’re not on Facebook or LinkedIn. If you know someone who might enjoy this newsletter do please forward it on to them. Did you enjoy this issue? In order to unsubscribe, click here. If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe here. Powered by Revue Privacy Kit, Made with 💚 in Dublin, Ireland

Last week it was facial recognition and this week it’s also facial recognition. There’s so much facial recognition in the world and also in the media that Bruce Schneier wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times highlighting this, and pointing out that facial recognition is far from the only thing we should be worried about.

😼

Last weekend The Sunday Times revealed that betting companies “have been given access to an educational database containing names, ages and addresses of 28 million children and students”.

More: ‘Betting companies given access to UK gov’t information on millions of children’, ZDNet

—

Joe knows.

While Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai backed calls for a temporary ban on facial recognition and the German government appeared to reverse plans to introduce the technology in airports and train stations, Brexit Britain went all in.

Police say the short-term deployments will check watchlists of suspects wanted for serious crimes.

The ICO issued a statement.

The system the Met is deploying has been tested over the last couple of years. The results were not good, according to reporting by The Independent in May 2018.

The Brexiting United Kingdom will be seeking an adequacy decision from the European Commission for transfers of personal data. This won’t help.

The ICO published its Code of Practice to protect children’s privacy online, or the Age Appropriate Design Code, to give it its full title.

—

The Greek DPA fined a company €15,000 for operating a CCTV system illegally and issued an order that the company comply with a complainant’s subject access right request.

—

The Italian DPA “imposed two fines on Eni Gas and Luce (Egl), totalling EUR 11.5 million, concerning respectively illicit processing of personal data in the context of promotional activities and the activation of unsolicited contracts.”

• “Focusing on one particular identification method misconstrues the nature of the surveillance society we’re in the process of building. Ubiquitous mass surveillance is increasingly the norm. In countries like China, a surveillance infrastructure is being built by the government for social control. In countries like the United States, it’s being built by corporations in order to influence our buying behavior, and is incidentally used by the government.” Bruce Schneier in The New York Times.
• “To better understand the current landscape of digital technologies that watch or track people in some form or another, and how their deployment affects both people and the places they inhabit, we might start to think about surveillance technology not only in terms of what it does, but who it is used by and, importantly, who it is used on or against.” In Urban Omnibus Chris Gilliard explores “how technologies that track create different spatial experiences for users on opposite ends of the tool — and for different races and classes at the receiving end of the surveilling gaze.”
• “If the police routinely use facial recognition to monitor and exclude people from public space, that space takes on the character of private space, where our presence is conditional on the good will and competence of an authority rather than broadly ours by right. Unlike beat policing, or calling the police reactively when a crime is committed, facial recognition technology has the capability to scale up cheaply such that it can be applied not just in one place or a few places at a time, but effectively everywhere all the time.” Adrian Short on how ‘Police facial recognition privatises public space’.
• It seems that, despite industry assertions, most people don’t like being tracked by a writhing mass of advertisers, intermediaries and brokers. “According to data from location-verification firm Location Sciences seen by DigiDay, approximately seven in ten iPhone users analyzed by the company downloaded iOS 13 in its first six weeks of availability. Of those users who installed the update, around 80% of them stopped all background tracking by apps.” Malcolm Owen for Apple Insider.

——

Endnotes & Credits

• The elegant Latin bon mot “Futuendi Gratia” is courtesy of Effin’ Birds.
• As always, a huge thank you to Regina Doherty for giving the world the phrase “mandatory but not compulsory”.
• The image used in the header is by Krystian Tambur on Unsplash.
• Any quotes from the Oireachtas we use are sourced from KildareStreet.com. They’re good people providing a great service. If you can afford to then donate to keep the site running.
• Digital Rights Ireland have a storied history of successfully fighting for individuals’ data privacy rights. You should support them if you can.

Find us on the web at myprivacykit.com and on Twitter at @PrivacyKit. Of course we’re not on Facebook or LinkedIn.

If you know someone who might enjoy this newsletter do please forward it on to them.