Not Smart | The Cat Herder, Volume 2, Issue 11
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Yes, there was another Facebook incident during the week so we’ll get it out of the way here. Notable not only for the scale - hundreds of millions of passwords were involved - but also the predictable evasiveness of Facebook’s response. A blog post titled “Keeping passwords secure” was what emerged from Menlo Park after Brian Krebs broke the story. This post detailed how passwords had not been kept secure. No information was provided on why Facebook waited until March to disclose this personal data breach which had been discovered in January.
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There was mention of the interplay between the GDPR and the right to freedom of expression on Friday at the excellent #Infolaw2019 Conference organised by FP Logue Solicitors. The interplay between the GDPR and the seal of confession wasn’t covered.
A school is discontinuing the practice of having students write their sins on artwork for display at Mass amid claims it breaches privacy, GDPR and the seal of confession.
In a similar vein …
https://twitter.com/rubot/status/1108721994047148037It’s time to retire the term “smart city.”
— Matt Cagle (@Matt_Cagle) March 23, 2019
It is not “smart” to fill a community w/sensors aimlessly stockpiling residents’ info into databases that police, or even ICE, may seek to exploit.
Let’s call these proposals what they often are: surveillance. https://t.co/v44E4iqTe6
It’s already happening here, most obviously in Limerick. Despite often being established with civic-minded goals, many if not most of these projects seem to end up defaulting to disproportionate surveillance of citizens and indiscriminate, unsupervised and frequently undisclosed data sharing with a wide range of third parties.
As we’ve seen recently in Limerick (see Reverse GDPR | The Cat Herder, Volume 2, Issue 6), once the technology is available there is a good chance it will be purchased and installed without any consideration being given to whether the deployment is legal.
‘SF considers ‘sweeping smart city’ installation of devices with cameras, microphones’, San Francisco Examiner
‘Thousands of San Diego street lights are equipped with sensors and cameras. Here’s what they record.’, San Diego Union Tribune
‘Inside The Video Surveillance Program IBM Built For Philippine Strongman Rodrigo Duterte’, The Intercept
Related
‘All the Crime, All the Time: How Citizen Works’, New York Times
‘Police in Canada Are Tracking People’s ‘Negative’ Behavior In a ‘Risk’ Database’, Motherboard
‘Facial recognition overkill: How deputies cracked a $12 shoplifting case’, CNET
Karlin Lillington also covered this report for The Irish Times.
The Swedish carmaker says the cameras will detect early signs of intoxication.
No word on where the data from these cameras will go, who will have access to it, what the retention policy will be, which third parties the data will be shared with and so on. It’ll be interesting to see if Volvo publish the DPIA for this. Because they’ll definitely have done a DPIA before announcing this, won’t they?
Since the newsletter probably won’t appear next weekend due to travel commitments here’s a bumper selection of reading.
- Doc Searls has a look at the numbers - and the sources of those numbers - in ‘Is ad blocking past 2 billion worldwide?’
- The current edition of The Economist (March 23rd - 29th) has a few pieces on European regulation of the social surveillance companies. There’s even a mention of Facebook crossing the regulatory streams, a turn of phrase we used back in February.
- The Opinion of Advocate General Szpunar in the Planet49 case.
- Fast Company have a series of pieces on privacy called The Privacy Divide which is worth a look.
- “Facial recognition is not a benign extension of existing surveillance technologies - it’s rocket fuel” says Mark Higgins in The Seattle Times.
- Commissioned by the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK, Ofcom published research into consumers’ attitudes towards and awareness of personal data used in online advertising.
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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.
This newsletter won’t appear next weekend. See you in April.
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