GDP-hair | The Cat Herder, Volume 1, Issue 15
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Welcome to Issue 15. We do wish we didn’t have to keep writing about Facebook but Facebook keeps doing what Facebook does best: displaying scant regard for human rights, ethical norms and the consequences of its own actions.
Please remember to keep your eyes closed at all times when in a public place where you’re likely to be photographed by a camera which has been concealed in a streetlight by a government agency, lest you reveal the identities of others.
😼
Woman tells @rteliveline her hairdresser wouldn’t tell her what colour dye they use in her hair due to GDPR.
— Colette Browne (@colettebrowne) November 7, 2018
That’s not data protection, it’s commercial protection!
What invasive things is the rest of the world up to this week?
Streetlights.
“I can tell you this—things are always being watched.”
Gait.
China is home to the world’s largest network of CCTV cameras — more than 170 million — and its police have adopted Google Glass-like “smart specs” to seek out suspects in crowds, but now its surveillance efforts have hit a new level with technology that can apparently identify individuals based on their body shape and the way they walk.
Reflections in your eyes.
Criminal investigations often use photographic evidence to identify suspects. Here we combined robust face perception and high-resolution photography to mine face photographs for hidden information. By zooming in on high-resolution face photographs, we were able to recover images of unseen bystanders from reflections in the subjects’ eyes.
This is all fine.
We mentioned last week that there was an important election happening in the United States. In a warm tribute to Jo Moore Facebook decided the evening before polling day would be an appropriate time to release an independent report into the role the platform had played in genocide in Myanmar.
Facebook says it is tackling problems highlighted in an independent report on its role in ethnic violence.
Truly courageous of Facebook to release its "independent" look into its role in abetting sectarian violence in Myanmar right before a massive election that's going to dominate the news cycle. https://t.co/tKFRd4yGwc
— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@RMac18) November 6, 2018
Silicon Republic published an interview with Helen Dixon during the week. Or Ireland’s Top Data Cop, as certain American publications like to call her.
Irish Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon is taking the long view on how best to navigate and protect privacy in an increasingly post-truth world.
The ICO published a report on their investigation into the use of personal data for political ̶s̶k̶u̶l̶l̶d̶u̶g̶g̶e̶r̶y̶ purposes. There’s a lot of it. 700 terabytes of it.
The UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.
They also fined a few of the Bad Boys of Brexit.
Exclusive: An investigation by the UK’s data watchdog found that Leave.EU staff had access to the personal information of customers of Banks’ insurance firm, Eldon.
The HSE’s Electronic Health Record plans are still being quietly worked on. Meanwhile in Australia the head of privacy on an almost identical project has quit “out of frustration that privacy and security concerns her team had raised with senior management were often ignored.” Anyone familiar with Irish public sector projects involving large amounts of personal data will recognise this institutional response to criticism.
My Health Record’s privacy chief quits amid claims privacy concerns have not been taken seriously enough.
Is there a new DPC website yet? No
When is it due? Soon
When did the GDPR become enforceable? May 25th 2018
What date is it today? November 11th 2018
If you’re thinking of looking for love online maybe don’t look at ‘The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love’, a collaboration between Joanna Moll and Tactical Tech which investigates the business of trading and selling dating profiles. They bought one million profiles for €136.
“These companies are like invisible strangers, peering over your shoulder taking notes about what you do online and offline.” Privacy International’s Data Exploitation Programme Lead Frederike Kaltheuner has a look at whether online tracking companies comply with any of the principles of data protection (tl;dr: they don’t) in ‘I asked an online tracking company for all of my data and here’s what I found’.
‘A Theory of Creepy: Technology, Privacy, and Shifting Social Norms’ by Omer Tene and Jules Polonetsky.
The aforementioned ICO report, ‘Investigation into the use of data analytics in political campaigns’ (direct PDF link).
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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.
Barring a disaster this newsletter will be in your inbox again next weekend. See you then.
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