April 10, 2022
Orb Operators | The Cat Herder, Volume 5, Issue 13
| |
| April 10 · Issue #175 · View online |
|
|
The Orb is back, banks are sanctioned, AirTags are used for sinister purposes, the European Commission appears determined to ignore the CJEU’s judgments on data retention. 😼
|
|
|
Last covered in this newsletter in October 2021, it seems Worldcoin’s operations are not only dystopian but also very illegal on many, many fronts. |
But we do know how onboarding works. To get Worldcoin into the smartphones of new users, the company contracts with local ”orb operators” to manage signups for their countries or regions. Operators apply for the job and are interviewed and approved by the Worldcoin team, though Anastasia Golovina, a company spokesperson, emphasized in an email that operators “are independent contractors, not Worldcoin employees.” As such, they work without contracts or guarantee of payment, instead receiving commission for each person’s biometric data that they collect. However, Golovina added, they must “comply with local laws and regulations, including local labor laws.”
|
Deception, exploited workers, and free cash: How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users | MIT Technology Review
The startup promises a fairly-distributed, cryptocurrency-based universal basic income. So far all it’s done is build a biometric database from the bodies of the poor.
|
The documents indicate that the true value of Worldcoin’s continent-spanning field test lies in its distinctive Orbs. Rather than just facilitating the company’s utopian promises, the Orb appears to be at the core of Worldcoin’s ambitions to dominate the emerging business of anonymous digital authentication: in other words, proving that an online avatar is a real person without revealing who they are. “Ensuring a person is human, unique, and alive is an unsolved problem,” reads an internal Worldcoin deck marked as confidential, which was viewed by BuzzFeed News. Worldcoin says that once its systems are perfected, it will anonymize and delete users’ biometric data, thereby guaranteeing their privacy. But the company still has not committed to a timeline, even though it has captured and stored almost a half million iris scans to train its algorithms.
|
This Startup Promised People Free Crypto If They Scanned Their Eyeballs. Now People Feel They've Been Scammed.
The Sam Altman–founded company Worldcoin says it aims to alleviate global poverty, but so far it has angered the very people it claims to be helping.
|
|
|
Of the 150 total police reports mentioning AirTags, in 50 cases women called the police because they started getting notifications that their whereabouts were being tracked by an AirTag they didn’t own. Of those, 25 could identify a man in their lives—ex-partners, husbands, bosses—who they strongly suspected planted the AirTags on their cars in order to follow and harass them. Those women reported that current and former intimate partners—the most likely people to harm women overall—are using AirTags to stalk and harass them. In one report, a woman called the police because a man who had been harassing her had escalated his behavior, and she said he’d placed an AirTag in her car. The woman said the same man threatened to make her life hell, the report said.
|
Police Records Show Women Are Being Stalked With Apple AirTags Across the Country
Motherboard obtained reports of stalking, harassment, and abuse using AirTags, targeting victims of intimate partner violence.
|
|
|
In the UK the police appear to have a novel idea: put everyone on a watchlist.
|
Police have been warned against using live facial recognition technology to identify potential witnesses and not just suspects. Fraser Sampson, the biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner, has described the idea as a “somewhat sinister development”. It “treats everyone like walk-on extras on a police film set rather than as individual citizens free to travel, meet and talk,” he warned. The commissioner was responding to guidance from the College of Policing which suggested victims of crimes and potential witnesses could be placed on police watchlists.
|
Police warned against 'sinister' use of facial recognition to find potential witnesses and not just suspects | Science & Tech News | Sky News
“How commonplace will it become to be stopped in our cities, transport hubs, outside arenas or school grounds and be required to prove our identity?”
|
|
|
The DPC fined Bank of Ireland €483,000, issued it with a reprimand and ordered it to bring its processing into compliance for infringements of Articles 32, 33 and 34 of the GDPR. Summary [ PDF] | Full Decision [ PDF] |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
“Other lenders will doubtless have similar issues. It would behove them to take stock now, review their processes, and ensure that loan information provided to the CCR accurately matches the actual terms of loan agreements and to take prompt action to ensure that errors, and the root causes of those errors, are addressed. As individuals, we have the right to access data relating to us that is held by organisations such as banks or the Central Credit Register. We have the right to have errors in that data corrected, but above all, organisations that process data relating to us owe us a duty to ensure that they have appropriate organisational controls in place to ensure the accuracy and integrity of that data, particularly where it is being shared with or disclosed to other parties.” From ‘Why data quality matters’ by Daragh O Brien for The Irish Examiner.
-
“A secret EU Commission non-paper dated 10 June 2021 suggests to Member State governments a variety of options to making data retention mandatory throughout the EU once again. Several of these proposals are excessive and non-compliant, the legal opinion explains. The proposals for “geographical targeting … may lead to imposing unjustified legal obligations on providers to retain traffic and location data in very broad and indefinite geographic areas”. From ‘Comeback of data retention? Former EU judge dismisses Commission’s plans’ by Patrick Breyer.
-
"The clash between the primacy of U.S. surveillance laws and robust EU privacy rights remains the fundamental schism — so it’s difficult to see how any new deal will be able to stand against fresh legal challenges unless it commits to putting hard limits on U.S. mass surveillance programs. The replacement deal will also need to create a proper avenue for EU individuals to seek and obtain redress if they believe U.S. intelligence agencies have unlawfully targeted them. And that also looks difficult.” From ‘EU-US trans-Atlantic data transfers ‘deal in principle’ faces tough legal review’ by Natasha Lomas for Techcrunch.
—
|
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
Privacy Kit, Made with 💚 in Dublin, Ireland
|
|
|
The Orb is back, banks are sanctioned, AirTags are used for sinister purposes, the European Commission appears determined to ignore the CJEU’s judgments on data retention.
😼
Last covered in this newsletter in October 2021, it seems Worldcoin’s operations are not only dystopian but also very illegal on many, many fronts.
The startup promises a fairly-distributed, cryptocurrency-based universal basic income. So far all it’s done is build a biometric database from the bodies of the poor.
The Sam Altman–founded company Worldcoin says it aims to alleviate global poverty, but so far it has angered the very people it claims to be helping.
Motherboard obtained reports of stalking, harassment, and abuse using AirTags, targeting victims of intimate partner violence.
In the UK the police appear to have a novel idea: put everyone on a watchlist.
“How commonplace will it become to be stopped in our cities, transport hubs, outside arenas or school grounds and be required to prove our identity?”
The DPC fined Bank of Ireland €483,000, issued it with a reprimand and ordered it to bring its processing into compliance for infringements of Articles 32, 33 and 34 of the GDPR. Summary [PDF] | Full Decision [PDF]
—
The Swedish Data Protection Authority (IMY) fined Klarna Bank ~€724,000 for violating “Articles 5 (1) (a), 5.2, 12.1, 13.1 c, e-f and 13.2 a-b, f and 14.2 g in the General Data Protection Regulation. IMY does not consider these to be minor infringements.”
—
The Belgian Data Protection Authority fined Zaventum and Charleroi airports €200,000 and €100,000 respectively for imposing temperature checks on passengers at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
—
The EDPB adopted a statement on the announcement of the agreement in principle on trans-Atlantic transfers.
-
“Other lenders will doubtless have similar issues. It would behove them to take stock now, review their processes, and ensure that loan information provided to the CCR accurately matches the actual terms of loan agreements and to take prompt action to ensure that errors, and the root causes of those errors, are addressed. As individuals, we have the right to access data relating to us that is held by organisations such as banks or the Central Credit Register. We have the right to have errors in that data corrected, but above all, organisations that process data relating to us owe us a duty to ensure that they have appropriate organisational controls in place to ensure the accuracy and integrity of that data, particularly where it is being shared with or disclosed to other parties.” From ‘Why data quality matters’ by Daragh O Brien for The Irish Examiner.
-
“A secret EU Commission non-paper dated 10 June 2021 suggests to Member State governments a variety of options to making data retention mandatory throughout the EU once again. Several of these proposals are excessive and non-compliant, the legal opinion explains. The proposals for “geographical targeting … may lead to imposing unjustified legal obligations on providers to retain traffic and location data in very broad and indefinite geographic areas”. From ‘Comeback of data retention? Former EU judge dismisses Commission’s plans’ by Patrick Breyer.
-
"The clash between the primacy of U.S. surveillance laws and robust EU privacy rights remains the fundamental schism — so it’s difficult to see how any new deal will be able to stand against fresh legal challenges unless it commits to putting hard limits on U.S. mass surveillance programs. The replacement deal will also need to create a proper avenue for EU individuals to seek and obtain redress if they believe U.S. intelligence agencies have unlawfully targeted them. And that also looks difficult.” From ‘EU-US trans-Atlantic data transfers ‘deal in principle’ faces tough legal review’ by Natasha Lomas for Techcrunch.
—
Endnotes & Credits
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.
