The Cat Herder

Are you going to San Francisco? We're going to San Francisco this week, very briefly. Not literally,   February 3 · Issue #20 · View online Are you going to San Francisco? We’re going to San Francisco this week, very briefly. Not literally, sadly. 😼 It probably will. It usually does. San Francisco is the North American home of both surveillance capitalism and a housing crisis of astronomical proportions. But enough about the similarities between it and Dublin. Last week in San Francisco a City Ordinance was proposed which requires oversight of the use of surveillance technologies by city departments, and also would create a blanket ban that stops those departments from purchasing or using facial recognition technology. The legislation, which would also apply to law enforcement, would represent a new step in the battle over the powerful tool. Meanwhile in the UK the Metropolitan Police fined a man for protesting after he had been stopped by police officers when he attempted to hide his face from the facial recognition system they were testing. You may have noticed Facebook is not especially good at crisis communications. But they still try, bless ‘em. Ol’ Zuckhole wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he merrily opined that people did like his company’s model of ever more granular, invisible an unaccountable surveillance. People like ads, apparently, and if Mark just had even more of their personal data he could show them the ads of their dreams. Guess what? He just mightn’t have been telling the truth. Joseph Turow and Chris Hoofnagle set out why in a piece in the New York Times.  … the data show the opposite is true. With the help of major polling firms, we conducted two large national telephone surveys of Americans in 2012 and 2009. When we asked people whether they wanted websites they visit to show them commercial ads, news or political ads “tailored to your interests,” a substantial majority said no. Around half did say they wanted discounts tailored to their interests. But that too changed after we told them how companies gathered the information that enables tailoring, such as following you on a website. Bottom line: If Facebook’s users in the United States are similar to most Americans (and studies suggest they are), large majorities don’t want personalized ads — and when they learn how companies find out information about them, even greater percentages don’t want them. Opinion | Mark Zuckerberg’s Delusion of Consumer Consent - The New York Times www.nytimes.com – Share He said Facebook users want tailored ads. According to our research, that’s not true. Local colour: Facebook’s man in Dublin repeated this guff in a piece in the Irish Times during the week. “We know that, when people understand how internet advertising works, they’re much more comfortable with it. It’s when people don’t understand that they are most concerned.” We’ll leave it up to you to decide whether you want to believe the two men whose salaries depend on you believing the thing that seems highly unlikely to be true, or the other two. The ICO fined Leave.eu and Eldon Insurance, issued enforcement notices and will be auditing data protection practices at both organisations. The ICO dryly (drolly, even?) observed in their press release that Systems for segregating the personal data of insurance customers’ from that of political subscribers’ were ineffective. This is a very polite way of saying that there were no systems for segregating anything. In an impressive display of moxie, chutzpah, synergy, growth hacking or whatever they’re calling it in business schools these days the insurance company’s customers received political messages from Leave.eu and people who’d signed up to be kept abreast of the latest promises scrawled on the sides of buses were pitched insurance products or something. ICO to audit data protection practices at Leave.EU and Eldon Insurance after fining both companies for unlawful marketing messages | ICO ico.org.uk – Share So, emm, who’s surprised by this? One Of The Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working With The FBI www.buzzfeednews.com – Share The move is sure to raise privacy concerns as law enforcement gains the ability to match DNA from crime scenes to a vast library of possible relatives. In related news there’s still been no adequate explanation of just how the special categories personal data of 1,500 people was transferred without the consent of the data subjects from a hospital in Ireland to the one entity in Ireland that has a commercial target of acquiring the special categories personal data of hundreds of thousands of people. We’ve reached the stage where details remain scant but an investigation has been opened and a review of processes is underway. From what’s been reported so far it appears these 1,500 samples were transferred to what is now the Irish subsidiary of Chinese genomics firm WuXi NextCODE in 2016 for one processing operation and remain in the possession of WuXi NextCODE in 2019. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Digital Rights Ireland have written to Tusla asking for more information about the existence or otherwise of their Data Protection Officer. Tusla: questions to answer about data protection - Digital Rights Ireland www.digitalrights.ie – Share It’s quite some time since the GDPR came into effect. It is both mandatory and compulsory for all public sector bodies to have a Data Protection Officer. That Data Protection Officer must be independent of the data controller. In Volume 1, Issue 5 back at the start of September of last year we mentioned Fergal Collins’ unfortunate choice of words at the launch of the National Childcare Information System. Mr Collins said We keep all data in perpetuity in the system and then obviously we will work on a new policy if we have to remove that data we will take that data off the system. So in addition to the questions about the independence of or indeed, existence of Tusla’s Data Protection Officer the body would also appear to have questions to answer about its adherence to the principle of data minimisation (Article 5.1(e) GDPR) and its commitment to data protection by design and default (Article 25 GDPR). In ‘Data breach insurance: A three-part problem’ Jennifer Baker has a look at whether data controllers can get insurance which covers data breaches. “At the heart of the economic push to up-skill Finnish workers is another push to create a more informed democracy.” Finland is trying to train 1% of the population to understand the basics of artificial intelligence and then build upon that number incrementally. We’re listening to this interview with Shoshana Zuboff while waiting for our copy of ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ to arrive. Zuboff’s new book was recently reviewed by Karlin Lillington in The Irish Times. If Karlin says something is essential reading then it absolutely is. ‘Nuff said. —- 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. 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. Powered by Revue Privacy Kit, Made with 💚 in Dublin, Ireland

Are you going to San Francisco? We’re going to San Francisco this week, very briefly. Not literally, sadly.

😼

San Francisco is the North American home of both surveillance capitalism and a housing crisis of astronomical proportions. But enough about the similarities between it and Dublin. Last week in San Francisco a City Ordinance was proposed which requires oversight of the use of surveillance technologies by city departments, and also would

Meanwhile in the UK the Metropolitan Police fined a man for protesting after he had been stopped by police officers when he attempted to hide his face from the facial recognition system they were testing.

You may have noticed Facebook is not especially good at crisis communications. But they still try, bless ‘em. Ol’ Zuckhole wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he merrily opined that people did like his company’s model of ever more granular, invisible an unaccountable surveillance. People like ads, apparently, and if Mark just had even more of their personal data he could show them the ads of their dreams.

Guess what? He just mightn’t have been telling the truth. Joseph Turow and Chris Hoofnagle set out why in a piece in the New York Times.

He said Facebook users want tailored ads. According to our research, that’s not true.

Local colour: Facebook’s man in Dublin repeated this guff in a piece in the Irish Times during the week.

We’ll leave it up to you to decide whether you want to believe the two men whose salaries depend on you believing the thing that seems highly unlikely to be true, or the other two.

The ICO fined Leave.eu and Eldon Insurance, issued enforcement notices and will be auditing data protection practices at both organisations. The ICO dryly (drolly, even?) observed in their press release that

This is a very polite way of saying that there were no systems for segregating anything.

In an impressive display of moxie, chutzpah, synergy, growth hacking or whatever they’re calling it in business schools these days the insurance company’s customers received political messages from Leave.eu and people who’d signed up to be kept abreast of the latest promises scrawled on the sides of buses were pitched insurance products or something.

So, emm, who’s surprised by this?

The move is sure to raise privacy concerns as law enforcement gains the ability to match DNA from crime scenes to a vast library of possible relatives.

In related news there’s still been no adequate explanation of just how the special categories personal data of 1,500 people was transferred without the consent of the data subjects from a hospital in Ireland to the one entity in Ireland that has a commercial target of acquiring the special categories personal data of hundreds of thousands of people.

We’ve reached the stage where details remain scant but an investigation has been opened and a review of processes is underway.

From what’s been reported so far it appears these 1,500 samples were transferred to what is now the Irish subsidiary of Chinese genomics firm WuXi NextCODE in 2016 for one processing operation and remain in the possession of WuXi NextCODE in 2019. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Digital Rights Ireland have written to Tusla asking for more information about the existence or otherwise of their Data Protection Officer.

It’s quite some time since the GDPR came into effect. It is both mandatory and compulsory for all public sector bodies to have a Data Protection Officer. That Data Protection Officer must be independent of the data controller.

In Volume 1, Issue 5 back at the start of September of last year we mentioned Fergal Collins’ unfortunate choice of words at the launch of the National Childcare Information System. Mr Collins said

So in addition to the questions about the independence of or indeed, existence of Tusla’s Data Protection Officer the body would also appear to have questions to answer about its adherence to the principle of data minimisation (Article 5.1(e) GDPR) and its commitment to data protection by design and default (Article 25 GDPR).

• In ‘Data breach insurance: A three-part problem’ Jennifer Baker has a look at whether data controllers can get insurance which covers data breaches.
• “At the heart of the economic push to up-skill Finnish workers is another push to create a more informed democracy.” Finland is trying to train 1% of the population to understand the basics of artificial intelligence and then build upon that number incrementally.
• We’re listening to this interview with Shoshana Zuboff while waiting for our copy of ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ to arrive.
• Zuboff’s new book was recently reviewed by Karlin Lillington in The Irish Times. If Karlin says something is essential reading then it absolutely is. ‘Nuff said.

—-

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.

If you know someone who might enjoy this newsletter do please forward it on to them.