August 9, 2020
"Caveat donor" | The Cat Herder, Volume 3, Issue 30
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| August 9 · Issue #94 · View online |
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The listening devices are still listening. A racist algorithm gets its comeuppance. The questions about the artist formerly known as Genomics Medicine Ireland won’t go away. 😼
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Presumably someone, somewhere, is soothed - rather than entirely freaked out - by this weird Google promo - “Answers before you ask”. https://t.co/xZkvDF37mq
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A Google spokesperson told Protocol that the feature was accidentally enabled for some users through a recent software update and has since been rolled back. But in light of Monday’s news that Google invested $450 million — acquiring a 6.6% stake — in home security provider ADT, it may be a sign of things to come for Google, as it hints at the company’s secret home security superpower: millions of smart speakers already in people’s homes.
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Google's secret home security superpower: Your smart speaker with its always-on mics - Protocol
Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands. Using them for home security could supercharge Google’s $450 million ADT deal.
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Google and other tech based players in the home security market lack the benefits of a well-established installation and dealer network, and this play indicates Google sees a strategic benefit in growing its base of installers and dealers.
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Google Invests in ADT, ADT Stock Soars
Google has announced a $450 million investment in the Florida-based security giant ADT, for a “long-term partnership” in smart home security.
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In the first case it is already happening here, in plain sight
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Blackstone Reaches $4.7 Billion Deal to Buy Ancestry.com - Bloomberg
Blackstone Group Inc. acquired a majority stake in Ancestry.com Inc., the business known for family history research and DNA testing.
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There is a market for human genetic data and this deal pegs the price at ~$1,500 per genome ( valuation calculation from John Greally on Twitter). A private company which was once named Genomics Medicine Ireland is still around, still seeking to acquire the genetic information of 400,000 or more Irish people by any means possible. That’s genomic data, the most personal data imaginable, with a rough value of $600 million. Why has the Irish government handed over the ability to acquire and profit from this genomic information to a private company? Caveat donor, as John says in his tweet.
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(It’s nine months to the day since the Data Protection Commission confirmed it had “commenced a “widespread compliance and supervision” examination of how the company, Genomics Medicine Ireland, processes genetic data it has gathered from Irish people.” We have yet to see an update on this.) |
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A good news story about a racist algorithm
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Today’s win represents the UK’s first successful court challenge to an algorithmic decision system. We had asked the Court to declare the streaming algorithm unlawful, and to order a halt to its use to assess visa applications, pending a review. The Home Office’s decision effectively concedes the claim.
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We won! Home Office to stop using racist visa algorithm | Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
The Home Office will scrap the racist algorithm it uses to sift visa applications, after we and tech justice organisation Foxglove launched legal action.
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I’m worried that what’s under way is a move to give private companies more power to decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t, and use algorithms as science-speak to bamboozle us into blaming ill-health on people without power, rather than those with it. The government claims AI will help with the holy grail of healthcare: prevention. But we already know the factors which govern how likely you are to contract COVID-19: the behaviours of your landlord, your boss or your care home owner. Are Faculty and Palantir really being employed to reveal this basic truth? Or to obscure it?
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We mustn’t let Silicon Valley thinking infect our NHS | openDemocracy
Secretive COVID contracts show how big data firms are taking over our healthcare. What are they – and the British government – hoping to get out of it?
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“On April 5 you were observed by social welfare inspectors operating as a taxi for hire in Dublin city centre or County,” the letter read, adding “it would now appear you currently have an income from employment and are not entitled to be receiving a Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment and this payment has now been discontinued”.
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How the Sideshow Bob Rake Department acquired this information is a mystery.
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Taxi driver's PUP case shows Department 'making up rules as they go along'
The taxi driver had been receiving the PUP, closed his claim as he was under the impression he was no longer eligible for the payment.
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The CNIL fined online retailer Spartoo €250,000 for violation of the data minimisation and storage limitation principles in Article 5.1, inadequate provision of information to data subjects as required by Article 13 and a failure to adequately secure personal data as required by Article 32.
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“These decisions occurred amid widespread international protests over systemic racism, sparked by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. But the groundwork had been laid four years earlier, when Joy Buolamwini, then a 25-year-old graduate student at MIT’s Media Lab, began looking into the racial, skin type, and gender disparities embedded in commercially available facial recognition technologies. Her research culminated in two groundbreaking, peer-reviewed studies, published in 2018 and 2019, that revealed how systems from Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and others were unable to classify darker female faces as accurately as those of white men—effectively shattering the myth of machine neutrality.” Fast Company has a great interview with Joy Buolamwini, ‘Meet the computer scientist and activist who got Big Tech to stand down’.
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“As schools find their budgets pinched by falling enrollment and added Covid-related costs, more are likely to consider some kind of automated grading. One can only hope they will learn from the International Baccalaureate’s example. The education system is supposed to expand opportunity, not sort people based on a flawed concept of their potential”. Cathy O'Neil on the problems with the International Baccalaureate’s grading algorithm, some of which are problems the Department of Education here in Ireland is likely to run into very soon.
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“Surveillance scoring is the product of two trends. First is the rampant (and mostly unregulated) collection of every intimate detail about our lives, amassed by the nanosecond from smartphones to cars, toasters to toys. This fire hose of data — most of which we surrender voluntarily — includes our demographics, income, facial characteristics, the sound of our voice, our precise location, shopping history, medical conditions, genetic information, what we search for on the Internet, the websites we visit, when we read an email, what apps we use and how long we use them, and how often we sleep, exercise and the like. The second trend driving these scores is the arrival of technologies able to instantaneously crunch this data: exponentially more powerful computers and high-speed communications systems such as 5G, which lead to the scoring algorithms that use artificial intelligence to rate all of us in some way.” Harvey Rosenfeld and Laura Antonini in The Washington Post, ‘Data isn’t just being collected from your phone. It’s being used to score you.’
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Privacy Kit, Made with 💚 in Dublin, Ireland
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The listening devices are still listening. A racist algorithm gets its comeuppance. The questions about the artist formerly known as Genomics Medicine Ireland won’t go away.
😼
Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands. Using them for home security could supercharge Google’s $450 million ADT deal.
Google has announced a $450 million investment in the Florida-based security giant ADT, for a “long-term partnership” in smart home security.
Blackstone Group Inc. acquired a majority stake in Ancestry.com Inc., the business known for family history research and DNA testing.
There is a market for human genetic data and this deal pegs the price at ~$1,500 per genome (valuation calculation from John Greally on Twitter). A private company which was once named Genomics Medicine Ireland is still around, still seeking to acquire the genetic information of 400,000 or more Irish people by any means possible. That’s genomic data, the most personal data imaginable, with a rough value of $600 million. Why has the Irish government handed over the ability to acquire and profit from this genomic information to a private company?
Caveat donor, as John says in his tweet.
(It’s nine months to the day since the Data Protection Commission confirmed it had “commenced a “widespread compliance and supervision” examination of how the company, Genomics Medicine Ireland, processes genetic data it has gathered from Irish people.” We have yet to see an update on this.)
—
A good news story about a racist algorithm
The Home Office will scrap the racist algorithm it uses to sift visa applications, after we and tech justice organisation Foxglove launched legal action.
—
Secretive COVID contracts show how big data firms are taking over our healthcare. What are they – and the British government – hoping to get out of it?
How the Sideshow Bob Rake Department acquired this information is a mystery.
The taxi driver had been receiving the PUP, closed his claim as he was under the impression he was no longer eligible for the payment.
The CNIL fined online retailer Spartoo €250,000 for violation of the data minimisation and storage limitation principles in Article 5.1, inadequate provision of information to data subjects as required by Article 13 and a failure to adequately secure personal data as required by Article 32.
Announcement: Original, in French | English, via Google Translate
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The Dutch DPA issued a fine of €830,000 to the Dutch National Credit Register for charging a fee for data subject access requests. The fine is being appealed.
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“These decisions occurred amid widespread international protests over systemic racism, sparked by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. But the groundwork had been laid four years earlier, when Joy Buolamwini, then a 25-year-old graduate student at MIT’s Media Lab, began looking into the racial, skin type, and gender disparities embedded in commercially available facial recognition technologies. Her research culminated in two groundbreaking, peer-reviewed studies, published in 2018 and 2019, that revealed how systems from Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and others were unable to classify darker female faces as accurately as those of white men—effectively shattering the myth of machine neutrality.” Fast Company has a great interview with Joy Buolamwini, ‘Meet the computer scientist and activist who got Big Tech to stand down’.
-
“As schools find their budgets pinched by falling enrollment and added Covid-related costs, more are likely to consider some kind of automated grading. One can only hope they will learn from the International Baccalaureate’s example. The education system is supposed to expand opportunity, not sort people based on a flawed concept of their potential”. Cathy O'Neil on the problems with the International Baccalaureate’s grading algorithm, some of which are problems the Department of Education here in Ireland is likely to run into very soon.
-
“Surveillance scoring is the product of two trends. First is the rampant (and mostly unregulated) collection of every intimate detail about our lives, amassed by the nanosecond from smartphones to cars, toasters to toys. This fire hose of data — most of which we surrender voluntarily — includes our demographics, income, facial characteristics, the sound of our voice, our precise location, shopping history, medical conditions, genetic information, what we search for on the Internet, the websites we visit, when we read an email, what apps we use and how long we use them, and how often we sleep, exercise and the like. The second trend driving these scores is the arrival of technologies able to instantaneously crunch this data: exponentially more powerful computers and high-speed communications systems such as 5G, which lead to the scoring algorithms that use artificial intelligence to rate all of us in some way.” Harvey Rosenfeld and Laura Antonini in The Washington Post, ‘Data isn’t just being collected from your phone. It’s being used to score you.’
Endnotes & Credits
Find us on the web at myprivacykit.com and on Twitter at @PrivacyKit. Of course we’re not on Facebook or LinkedIn.
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