EU-DIGEST: Privacy

Showing posts with label Privacy. Show all posts

8/3/20

USA: Tech CEOs Invoke the American Dream to Obscure the Nightmare They Created

Getting Rich On Your Personal Data

During the recent congressional antitrust hearing, the CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Google, and , and Facebook used their opening statements to try and paint themselves—and their companies—as uniquely American success stories with humble origins, heart-warming anecdotes, and impactful lessons for the American people.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ statement wasted no time retelling his origin story: born to a single mother and adopted by a Cuban immigrant, Bezos was inspired in part by summers at his grandfather’s ranch (and a small $245,000 investment from his parents) to become a garage inventor and eventually create Amazon in 1994. Now, Amazon has 1.7 million small and medium-sized businesses selling on his platform, and has created 2.2 million jobs around the world, but Bezos was quick to remind Congress that Amazon accounts for "less than 1 percent of the $25 trillion global retail market" and "less than 4 percent of the retail in the U.S."

Bezos wasn’t alone in portraying his company as representing some aspect of what one might call the American dream, or America itself. Google CEO Sundar Pichai framed the hearing as being about “opportunity” and said that, growing up in India, he didn’t have much access to a computer until he came to America to study. Although Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t invoke the humble dorm room origin mythos that has given his company so much cover in the past, he said that “the tech industry is an American success story.” Apple CEO Tim Cook described his company as a “uniquely American company.”

While these CEOs talked a lot about America and its possibilities, and how their companies and even personal histories embody it, it is undeniable that their actions are undermining what they claim to celebrate.

For years, Amazon’s abusive work policies have made each warehouse into a “colony from hell,” as one employee put it, rife with injuries and mental breakdowns. The pandemic has made this point virtually indisputable given the many outbreaks of Covid-19 in warehouses, retaliation against workers who raised safety concerns, and labor actions by Amazon workers fed up with working conditions.

Just last week, America’s largest unions petitioned the FTC to investigate Amazon’s exploitation of the Covid-19 pandemic over concerns that it was suppressing wages, exploiting data on sellers to undermine their products, and leveraging its dominance in cloud computing to make competitors reliant on Amazon’s offerings.

The company also operates as part of the backbone of ICE’s deportation machine, offered a racially-biased facial recognition software to police departments nationwide, and transmits fear and racist paranoia to suburbs through its Ring surveillance program and its partnerships with over 600 police departments (as of December 2019). These are all functions of its incredible market power, even if they didn’t come up as topics in the antitrust hearing, and they all have the potential to destroy someone’s own shot at opportunity in America and elsewhere.

A quick glance reveals the same is true for the other companies. Apple and Google are both being sued for using Congolese child miners to secure cobalt and other minerals at minimal cost, resulting in the maiming and death of several children. Apple is also a key player in reducing opportunities for individuals and small businesses in America to repair their devices, leading to calls for right to repair legislation.

Facebook has spent years apologizing and promising to do better after facilitating a genocide in Myanmar, cratering the news industry, harming the mental health of users and content moderators, compromising elections, attempting to remake the global monetary system with it as a key player, spreading hate speech and propaganda, and more.

These companies, and the tech industry at large, are all complicit in racist police violence that has existed long before their arrival but become supercharged in underappreciated ways with their help. It is hard to imagine any company could do any of these actions unless it enjoyed market dominance in multiple industries and leveraged that into control over how each of us went about our daily lives (how we watched videos, conducted searches, carried out commerce, consumed the news, engaged in communication, etc.) —which makes it hard to understand why we should let these companies have that much power in the first place.

These CEOs insist we play on their terms—terms that are incredibly profitable for them—and return to market logic—to the American Dream and its promise of cheap goods, services, and material abudunance. But that promise has been dead for years, a fact that the pandemic has made self-evident. That the technology sector seems to be a bright spot of the American (and global) economy doesn’t actually suggest that they are success stories as much as it reveals that the rest of the world has lost.

Sure, the price we’ve paid for allowing these corporate tech giants to get so large includes real damage to our economy and democracy, but they’ve also suffocated our political imagination and left us arguing on their terms about how much exploitation and how much surveillance is necessary for the ideal levels of economic growth.

Read more at:
Tech CEOs Invoke the American Dream to Obscure the Nightmare They Created

7/25/20

On-line Privacy: 3 Ways to Take Back Your Online Privacy from Big Corporations

To us, the Internet is a place of entertainment, work, and wonder. To companies and major corporations, the Internet represents more—it represents ways to make money. Through data collection and advertising, traces of corporations can be found anywhere on the Internet.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not the biggest fan of corporations stealing my data and using it to profit. If you’re the same way, then continue reading, as I’ll be listing ways you can protect your data and keep corporations off your back. Well, as off your back that’s currently possible.

Read more at:
3 Ways to Take Back Your Online Privacy from Big Corporations

6/20/19

Facebook: usage dropped after privacy scandals, data suggests

Facebook usage falling after privacy scandals, data suggests

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12/4/18

Social Media: Marc Benioff on privacy, regulation, and tech's ethical dilemma

Benioff certainly makes a good point. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other high tech social media services need to be regulated in America, the same way as cigarettes are, because they are addictive, specially on the minds of young people.

Read more and watch video: Marc Benioff on privacy, regulation, and tech's ethical dilemma | Smart Change: Personal Finance | madison.com

10/3/17

EU-US Data transfers: Ireland asks Europe's top court to rule on EU-U.S. data transfers - by Conor Humphries

Ireland A Proud Member Of The EU

Ireland’s High Court on Tuesday said it would ask the EU’s top court to decide whether to ban the way in which Internet firms such as Facebook (FB.O) transfer users’ data to the United States in a case with major implications for companies.

The case is the latest to question whether methods used by large tech firms such as Google (GOOGL.O) and Apple (AAPL.O) to transfer data outside the 28-nation European Union give EU consumers sufficient protection from U.S. surveillance.

Data privacy is under the spotlight after revelations in 2013 by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden of mass U.S. surveillance caused political outrage in Europe.

Irish High Court Judge Caroline Costello said she had decided to ask the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling in the case.

“European Union law guarantees a high level of protection to EU citizens ... they are entitled to an equivalent high level of protection when their data is transferred outside of the European Economic Area,” she said.

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s office initially became involved after Austrian law student and privacy activist Max Schrems made a complaint in Dublin about Facebook’s handling of his data in the United States.

The judge said the Irish Data Protection Commissioner “has raised well-founded concerns that there is an absence of an effective remedy in U.S. law compatible with the requirements of Article 47 of the Charter (of Fundamental Rights).”

She said that a newly created U.S. ombuds person dealing with Europeans’ complaints about U.S. surveillance did not eliminate those concerns.

Costello also said she was not delivering any value judgment on the data protection laws in the EU or United States.

Note EU-Digest: Facebook and other US social media companies don't seem to take EU Privacy laws serious. Facebook was recently fined by Spain for €1.2m for breaking privacy laws. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other US web companies have been told tthat the weak US privacy Laws are not applicable in the EU, and a;so ordered to crack down on hate speech and speech inciting violence and terrorism — but this time, the EU is taking things a step further. The European Commission has issued guidelines for web companies to follow, and it’s warning the companies that, if they don’t comply, this could lead to some huge fines.

Read more: Ireland asks Europe's top court to rule on EU-U.S. data transfers

3/7/17

Privacy Issues: CIA hacks TVs, phones all over the world, Wikileaks claims

The CIA has become the preeminent hacking operation, sneaking into high-tech phones and televisions to spy on people worldwide, according to an explosive WikiLeaks publication of purported internal CIA documents on Tuesday.

To hide its operations, the CIA routinely adopted hacking techniques that enabled them to appear as if they were hackers in Russia, WikiLeaks said.

WikiLeaks also claimed that nearly all of the CIA's arsenal of privacy-crushing cyberweapons have been stolen, and the tools are potentially in the hands of criminals and foreign spies.

WikiLeaks claimed the stolen tools ended up in the hands of "former U.S. government hackers and contractors... one of whom" leaked documents to WikiLeaks.

U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu of California called for an immediate congressional investigation.

"I am deeply disturbed by the allegation that the CIA lost its arsenal of hacking tools. The ramifications could be devastating," he said in a statement. ""We need to know if the CIA lost control of its hacking tools, who may have those tools, and how do we now protect the privacy of Americans."

"The potential privacy concerns are mind-boggling," he said.

WikiLeaks said it published the documents to show the potentially hazardous ramifications of the CIA's covert hacking program -- and the massive theft of those tools.

"There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber 'weapons,'" said WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange in a statement.

WikiLeaks, an outfit that believes in transparency, backed up the claims by publishing a massive trove of what it says are secret CIA documents. It calls the collection "Year Zero," and it consists of 8,761 documents and files.

The CIA, citing standing policy, declined to say whether the published documents are genuine.

"We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents," said CIA spokeswoman Heather Fritz Horniak.

Read more: CIA hacks TVs, phones all over the world, Wikileaks claims - Mar. 7, 2017

1/23/16

US Voter Privacy - "Big Brother": Thanks to big data, US parties know all about voters

If you're an American voter and have provided personal information to a company, chances are data groups have shared it with political parties to help them target potential supporters.

One of the main players is NGP VAN, which manages the Democratic National Committee's database.

Its name recently surfaced in connection with a data breach blamed on a technical glitch that enabled the campaign of presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders to access voter data belonging to rival Hillary Clinton.

The incident raises questions about the reach of the database.

"Everyone" is in there, Kevin Thurman, who served as Clinton's deputy Internet director during her last campaign in 2008, said with a laugh.

"Every voter in America, since 2004, dead or alive."

NGP VAN estimates the number at about 195 million people, far more than the 146 million currently registered as voters. Voter registration is not mandatory in the United States.

Read more: Big BrotherFlash - Thanks to big data, US parties know all about voters - France 24

9/11/15

Privacy: Of Course the Government Wants to Read Your Texts - by Megan McArdle

Imagine, if you will, a law that said all doors had to be left unlocked so that the police could get in whenever they needed to. Or at the very least, a law mandating that the government have a master key.

That's essentially what some in the government want for your technology. As companies like Apple and Google have embraced stronger encryption, they're making it harder for the government to do the kind of easy instant collection that companies were forced into as the government chased terrorists after 9/11.

And how could you oppose that government access? After all, the government keeps us safe from criminals. Do you really want to make it easier for criminals to evade the law?

The analogy with your home doors suggests the flaw in this thinking: The U.S. government is not the only entity capable of using a master key. Criminals can use them too. If you create an easy way to bypass security, criminals -- or other governments -- are going to start looking for ways to reproduce the keys.

Or consider another case cited by the Times, in which the government is trying to get Microsoft to give up messages stored on a server in Ireland. With today's global networks, it's frustrating how easily criminals can move things out of reach of the law. On the other hand, do we want the law to have farther reach? It might be kind of frightening if other governments, with weaker civil liberties protections, could get access to any of our messages, just by getting an order from their local court.

It's not that the government is wrong about the frustrations. Law enforcement has always had to deal with the problem of criminals who flee the jurisdiction. Over time, things like extradition agreements have reduced that problem to a largely manageable level. But physically removing themselves from the area is very costly for the criminal, who loses the ability to travel freely, to see family and friends, to access assets left behind in the United States.

Moving your messages to a foreign server, on the other hand, requires little in the way of strenuous effort. As the cost of moving evidence beyond an investigator's reach goes down, the cost of an investigation goes up -- even if the foreign courts are cooperative, and they often are, you still have to file a case under different laws that may not map particularly well onto yours.

Read more: Of Course the Government Wants to Read Your Texts - Bloomberg View

3/4/15

Internet - Privacy advocates take Big Data to task

When it comes to the Internet, if you're not paying for a product, you probably are the product.

As data collection has become the currency of the digital economy, consumers are the ones generating the value. But many people are often oblivious to the access they grant some companies when they blindly accept their terms and conditions.

Privacy advocates at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona have been taking big Internet firms to task this week for what they regard as gross privacy violations and the exploitation of users' tendency to click "accept" without first reading a contract.

Experts say companies often hide seemingly nefarious permissions in the fine print, from reading text messages to modifying contacts and automatically turning off wireless devices' airplane mode.

"Make no mistake, there are no free apps," Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer at Finnish anti-virus company F-Secure, said during a panel discussion on Monday. "All of these free offerings are monetizing themselves one way or another."

Read more: Privacy advocates take Big Data to task | Business | DW.DE | 04.03.2015

2/10/15

Privacy: Is Your TV Spying On You?- by Dave Lewis

If you have a Samsung SmartTV the answer is, well, it very well could be. The news broke this week that Samsung has a TV that can listen in to your conversations, record them and then upload the information to servers under their control. Then your data could be then farmed out to third party companies. I’m guessing that these third parties are advertising and marketing outfits but, that isn’t clearly articulated.

This gets even stranger when you consider that Samsung SmartTV’s can also do facial recognition. “You can use facial recognition instead of, or as a supplementary security measure in addition to, manually inputting your password.”

OK, so these TVs can listen to me, record my conversations and then associate these conversations with the very person in the discussion?

Nothing creepy about that at all.

Sound far fetched? I don’t believe that it is to be honest. The Internet of Things is weaving tis way into every aspect of our lives. With the rush to get products to market as fast as is possible things like security and privacy can often be sacrificed.

Read moreL Is Your TV Spying On You?

6/1/14

Technology: What does the new EU Parliament mean for tech? - by Jennifer Baker

As the tally for the European Parliament election draws to a close, dozens of candidates pledging to support data privacy and net neutrality initiatives appear to have been elected.

Voting for representatives to the 766-member European Parliament took place from Thursday to Sunday, in conjunction with local and national elections across the 28-nation European Union. For the first time, digital issues were at the forefront of candidates’ election campaigns.

More than 400 candidates to the Parliament pledged to defend net neutrality and data privacy, signing a 10-point digital rights charter called WePromiseEU. Votes were still being counted Monday, but by late afternoon, 55 candidates for Pariament who had signed WePromiseEU were confirmed as elected.

“It’s great to see that so many candidates and citizens consider their digital civil rights worth defending, and were ready to commit to the principles of the charter,” said Joe McNamee, director of digital rights group EDRi. “It is now up to us all to make sure that the elected members of European Parliament (MEPs) stand behind their promise and spread these values among their colleagues,” he continued.

The WePromiseEU pledge includes a commitment to fight against the idea of service providers being held accountable for monitoring illegal downloads, and against blanket, unchecked surveillance measures. It also includes a pledge to try to ensure that European surveillance technology is not sold to despotic regimes.

“I think more of the newly elected members will be switched on technology issues and I am happy that there are efforts being made to curb the export of surveillance tech so I will continue with that,” said Maritje Schaake, re-elected MEP for The Netherlands associated with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE).

Schaake is calling for a new digital committee to be set up in the European Parliament. The system of drawing up EU legislation requires that different committees in the Parliament scrutinize proposed laws. Currently although there are committees on trade, justice and home affairs, there is none devoted entirely to technology.

Read more: What does the new EU Parliament mean for tech? | PCWorld

1/10/14

François Hollande's Affair: Scandal Reveals a Changing France - by Simon Shuster

President Francois Hollande and Julie Gayet

The esteem reserved for the right to privacy in France is perhaps best expressed by an old French proverb: “In order to live happily, live hidden.” For generations, this was more than a cheeky excuse for the French to keep their dirty secrets. It was more like a national philosophy, part of a culture that elevated infidelity to an element of style. But in the Internet age, that philosophy has begun to seem a bit naïve, as national traditions of tact and good taste tend to get steamrolled these days by the universal laws of curiosity. France is no longer an exception.

On Friday, French President Francois Hollande learned that the hard way after a gossip magazine published evidence of his affair with a movie actress named Julie Gayet. The report went viral with all the merciless speed of the Web, making Hollande’s chest-thumping demands for privacy seem about as quaint as a Parisian organ grinder with a monkey on his shoulder.

Technically, though, French law was on his side. Legal restrictions on snooping in France are some of the harshest in the world, imposing major fines and even a possible jail term on newspaper editors who expose the private lives of citizens. As the scandal spread, Hollande invoked those laws on Friday by threatening to sue the French magazine Closer for invading his privacy. “A terrible mistake,” says Yair Cohen, a lawyer whose London-based firm, Cohen Davis Solicitors, specializes in stopping the viral spread of defamatory information.

Read more: François Hollande's Affair: Scandal Reveals a Changing France | TIME.com

4/5/13

Facebook wants to turn your Android handset into a “Facebook phone" - by Alexandra Chang

Mark Zuckerberg wants to turn your Android phone into a simple sharing device. And by that, he means he wants to turn it into a Facebook phone.

Facebook just announced Facebook Home, which all but turns any Android handset into a “Facebook phone” by putting the social giant right there on the home screen and all of its products at the forefront of the UI. It isn’t a phone made by Facebook. It’s something better than that, and in some ways, more important: a deeply integrated application with its hooks set tightly into the Android platform. Think of it as an apperating system.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hinting at following this path for years, even as he fought back incessant Facebook phone rumors. A phone is “so clearly the wrong strategy for us,” he said last year. And he’s right. Facebook can’t take on Apple and Samsung, or even Microsoft and BlackBerry. Making hardware is a lot of work, and that kind of work doesn’t make sense for Facebook right now. Instead, the social network is ensuring it can be as front-and-center as possible on all the most popular platforms today.

“Today we’re finally going to talk about that Facebook phone. Or more accurately we’re going to talk about how you can turn your Android phone into a great social, simple device,” Zuckerberg said at the launch event in Menlo Park. He went on to describe how people most often use Facebook on their mobile devices and explain why Facebook chose to build an Android experience, rather than a phone. “A great phone might sell 10 or 20 million units at best. Our community as more than 1 billion people in it. Even if we did a good job selling a phone, we would only be serving 1 to 2 percent of our community and we want to do more than that.”

Note EU-Digest: this is all nice and dandy, but like it already is the case with Microsoft, the consumer, unfortunately, is now at a point where he or she is "force-fed" operating systems and apps on computers, tablets and smart-phones they buy .

As a result the consumer in reality has less and less flexibility today when it comes to their personal choices and preferences in regards to the apps and operating systems which are already a part of the products they buy.

Read more: Facebook Home: Zuck’s Android Takeover | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

4/3/13

Internet - passwords: Cracking up: why 'password1' won't keep you safe online from cyber criminals and hackers

If you think a jumble of letters and numbers can keep you safe online, think again. The password as protector against internet intrusion is all but dead, fatally crippled by human fallibility and the forces of crime, malice and mischief arraigned against it.

Since Bill Gates warned in 2004 that passwords were nearing the limits of their utility, the idea that even ''strong'' passwords can ward off cyber marauders has been exposed as delusion. Millions of customers of big web brands such as Sony PlayStation, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Gawker, Evernote and eHarmony have had their login details stolen or posted online.

''We have pretty well established that passwords don't really work,'' says Graham Ingram, who manages the University of Queensland's Australian Computer Emergency Response Team. ''The problem is we don't have a viable alternative. You are not protected and frankly you can't protect yourself.'' Hack methods have become so sophisticated that ''for most people it is a matter of time before they get done''.

Free online software tools that use algorithmic search programs to automate password cracking are so accessible, effective and quick that ''any idiot can do it'', wrote Wired senior writer and hack attack victim Mat Honan.

Using the same password for several accounts is the biggest mistake but most people make it, Mr Dyson says. In time passwords will become just one of several account locks. Increasingly, organisations such as eBay and Amazon and banks require two-step verification, where you enter a code sent to your mobile or a pre-issued security token to complete the login.

Read more: Cracking up: why 'password1' won't keep you safe online from cyber criminals and hackers

3/27/13

Technology: Google Glass: No longer just the stuff of science fiction - by Don Pittis

"CopSpace sheds some light on matters of course... There's the green tree of signs sprouting over the doorway of number thirty-nine, each tag naming the legal tenants" - Charles Stross in the Halting State.

Stross the writer is a supernerd, sort of an updated version of the similarly polymathic Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon). Although he can write accessible romantic prose (such as his Merchant Prince series), Stross is most spectacular in his dense, technologically aware science fiction, like Halting State. Anyone who wants a realistic portrayal of the near tech future should read it.

That sounds a bit like someone describing how you might use Google Glass. A real-world image of an apartment building entrance, with an overlay of virtual information about the people who live there.

Today, Matt Galloway, the host of the local CBC Radio morning show in Toronto, was enthusing about Google Glass. Produced by the world's largest search company, it’s a computer device that you wear on your face like glasses, and it’s now selling for $1,500 by lottery only. Even while lusting after them, Galloway wondered aloud about what possible use Google Glass could have.

Stross, who has a degree in computer science (and one in pharmaceutical science – did I say polymathic?), used to write about Linux for a tech magazine. But he has the imagination to take us a few steps forward into a world where the virtual and the real have merged.

"When I sat down to write Halting State (circa 2005-2006), I decided to do some clean sheet extrapolation to figure out from existing industry road maps what sort of level of technology would be available by 2017 when the novel is set," said Stross in an email today.

He says this is the world where Google Glass is leading us.

In the world of Halting State, data storage is in practical terms infinite. Data is stored geographically, according to its location in the real world. Think of a Google map, where photographs of nearby locations are available by clicking on boxes that appear as an overlay on the map.

This is a real world science called Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and it is increasingly how information is stored today. The idea is that if the city wants to know how recently the water pipes on your street were updated, for instance, they look at a map-based computer system that may also show natural gas pipes, sewage pipes and electrical conduits on your street and maybe even the billing information for your house.

“CopSpace,” as it’s called in Stross’s book, “is basically a distributed geographical information system mapped onto a police intelligence database, using the glasses to provide a heads up view of local crime-related features," Stross explains.

Note EU-Digest: Ad agencies are "literally begging to get a pair." Google got so many submissions for the Glass Explorer program, in which early adopters could pay $1,500 for the chance to test out a pair, that it ended the submission period last Friday, earlier than expected.

Obviously Google Glass as it becomes more sophisticated - and it will - could be quite helpful for criminal investigations - the danger however is that it will also impact on personal freedom and privacy, which as we all know is something many corporations do not take very seriously.

Read more: Google Glass: No longer just the stuff of science fiction - Business - CBC News

11/16/12

Social Media and Your Privacy—Top 10 Things You Need to Know

While the Web makes communications fast, easy, accessible and fun, Arcadia wants you to remember one thing before you jump in: "Swim at your own risk. No lifeguard on duty." Click on the link below about the Top 10 Things You Need to Know.

Read more: Arcadia University - Social Media and Your Privacy—Top 10 Things You Need to Know

4/29/12

Internet and Privacy: U.S. turns spy agency on itself, critics of cyber bill say - by Tabassum Zakaria

(cartoon by Mark Parisi)

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a cyber security bill on Thursday that would allow the government and companies to share information about hacking, but which has raised privacy concerns and a veto threat from the White House.

The House approved the bill 248-168, prompting the top Republican and Democrat on the intelligence committee who sponsored it to issue a joint statement lauding the bipartisan approval.

The legislation allows federal agencies such as the National Security Agency, an intelligence agency that eavesdrops overseas and protects classified U.S. government computer networks, to share secret cyber threat information with American companies to help the private sector protect its networks.
Critics had raised privacy concerns that the sharing in return of “threat information” from private network operators to the government was so broad as to allow the NSA to effectively collect data on American communications, which is generally prohibited by law.

For more: U.S. turns spy agency on itself, critics of cyber bill say - The Globe and Mail

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