Never Say Never | The Cat Herder, Volume 2, Issue 17
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The big platforms continue to get religion on privacy. The big platforms continue to confuse information security with privacy. To Google and Facebook privacy now appears to mean you sharing all your personal data with them while they promise to (probably) not let anyone else look at it. But they’re going to keep collecting more and more of it. For your benefit, naturally.
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Ooops. Google may have been talking a good game on privacy this past week but it’s clear that ‘collect it all and figure out what to do with it later’ remains their instinct.
‘Google Face Match brings privacy debate into the home’, Financial Times, 7th May 2019
It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this plays out:
— CarolineJMolloy (@carolinejmolloy) May 7, 2019
“You haven’t done your daily mile. Your ill health is your own fault. We’re scrapping your free NHS treatment”
“You’ve walked 200m. You’re obviously fit for work. We’re cutting your benefits”https://t.co/1xTJBjqBjy
‘Call for poor and disabled to be given NHS fitness trackers’, Guardian, 5th May 2019
Just gonna lay these out here alongside each other.
July 2018, Ireland.
‘‘Augmented identity’ firm gets €9m contract for public services cards’, Irish Times, 5th July 2019
May 2019, Kenya.
‘Kenya’s Controversial Biometric Project Is Shrouded in Secrecy’, Coda, 3rd May 2019
‘Danish Bus Company Ordered To Amend IT Systems To Allow For Right To Rectification’, JDSupra, 7th May 2019
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The Spanish Data Protection Authority AEPD issued a technical note [PDF, Spanish] which states that Google’s Android OS shares data with Facebook even when data collection for ad purposes is switched off.
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‘Turkish watchdog fines Facebook over data breach’, Daily Sabah, 10th May 2019
Wait, there’s more! Amazon not only records and stores the audio from its home surveillance devices, it also keeps transcripts.
You can delete voice recordings so Amazon can’t listen to your conversations with Alexa anymore, but text records are a different story.
In addition to “all data leaks eventually”, this is pithy advice worth remembering.
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This is why we have purpose limitation.
Ever trains its facial recognition system with user photos and then offers to sell that technology to private companies, law enforcement and the military through Ever AI.
- “Today, however, that culture of dynamism is at risk. The surveillance business model has eroded user trust to such a point that it is impeding our ability to innovate.” As debate over a possible federal privacy law for the United States continues, Maciej Ceglowski appeared before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Development. His opening statement is here [PDF].
- “the general public is only just unraveling the myriad ways that devices like the Echo are recording our lives without our permission or sharing our personal data with strangers. The most recent controversy over Alexa merely scratches the surface of how a world full of always-on microphones is an utter privacy nightmare.” Adam Clark Estes has a look at (some of) ‘The Terrible Truth About Alexa’.
- ‘We Need To Talk, AI’ is a comic essay on artificial intelligence by Julia Schneider and Lena Kadriye Ziyal and it is excellent.
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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 we’ll be in your inbox again next weekend.
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