Tag: Privacy

Categories
Links

Jawbone reportedly tried to sell itself

Jawbone reportedly tried to sell itself:

Jawbone’s hunger to sell itself is evidence of how dire the situation has become for one of leading wearable tech companies in the industry. Competitor Fitbit has managed to increase sales of its fitness trackers even with Apple participating. Jawbone, on the other hand, has seen its relevance in the market wither with time, as it’s transitioned from bluetooth audio products to wrist-worn fitness bands. Many other wearable makers, including Misfit and Basis, have sold themselves to large tech or apparel companies, and even giants like Nike have gotten out of the wearable hardware business. Jawbone’s fate may be similar, but it’s running out of time. According to The Information, Jawbone delayed payment to one of its business partners this month.

Jawbone is sitting on a lot of user information. While they sell physical things, I’m mostly interested in knowing the value of all the fitness information that will presumably be sold as part of the business.

Categories
Writing

The Fourth Amendment in the Information Age

Litt’s article focuses on finding new ways of conceptualizing privacy such that the current activities of intelligence agencies and law enforcement organizations are made legal, and thus shift the means by which their activities are legally and constitutionally evaluated. While his proposal to overturn much of the third-party doctrine coheres with the positions of many contemporary scholars his suggested replacement — that we should no longer focus on collecting data, but on use of collected data — would eviscerate basic privacy protections. In particular, I think that it’s important we not just ignore the ‘search’ aspect of fourth amendment law: we need to recalibrate what a search is within the context of today’s reality. And that doesn’t mean just letting the government collect with fewer baseline restrictions but instead modifying what a ‘search’ is itself.

The core aspects of the article that give a flavour of the entire argument are:

I suggest that—at least in the context of government acquisition of digital data—we should think about eliminating the separate inquiry into whether there was a “reasonable expectation of privacy” as a gatekeeper for Fourth Amendment analysis. In an era in which huge amounts of data are flowing across the Internet; in which people expose previously unimagined quantities and kinds of information through social media; in which private companies monetize information derived from search requests and GPS location; and in which our cars, dishwashers, and even light bulbs are connected to the Internet, trying to parse out the information in which we do and do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy strikes me as a difficult and sterile task of line-drawing. Rather, we should simply accept that any acquisition of digital information by the Government implicates Fourth Amendment interests.

After all, the concept of a “reasonable expectation of privacy” as a talisman of Fourth Amendment protection is not found in the text of the Fourth Amendment itself, which says merely that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” It was only in 1967, in Katz, that the Supreme Court defined a search as the invasion of a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Katz revisited Olmstead v. United States after 40 years; the accelerating pace of modern technological change suggests to me that fifty years is not too soon to revisit Katz. My proposal is that the law should focus on determining what is unreasonable rather than on what is a search.

…

What I have suggested, however, is that—at least in the area of government collection of digital data—we eliminate the preliminary analysis of whether someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data and proceed directly to the issue of whether the collection is reasonable; that the privacy side of that analysis should be focused on concrete rather than theoretical invasions of privacy; and that courts in evaluating reasonableness should look at the entirety of the government’s activity, including the “back end” use, retention restrictions, and the degree of transparency, not just the “front end” activity of collection.

Categories
Aside Links

How a file-sharing lawsuit against Rogers threatens your Internet privacy: Geist | Toronto Star

In the next stage of the copyright wars in Canada, Voltage is moving forward with its efforts to use a reverse class-action lawsuit to reveal the identities of thousands of people the company alleges have infringed on Voltage’s copyright. If the company is successful it will open up a new way for companies to access information about subscribers while simultaneously indicating the relative weakness of the privacy protections baked into Canada’s recent copyright legislation.

Categories
Links

Russia passes ‘Big Brother’ anti-terror laws

Russia has passed legislation which functionally adopts many of the worst — and largely discredited — surveillance provisions that Europe adopted in the past and is now abandoning. Specifically, Russian telecoms will be required to retain data traffic information for 6 months, as well as assist government agencies decrypt information. The law will also (further) penalize those who support terrorist activities or engage in other types of social disturbances: the problem is that such accusations are increasingly used to target those disliked by the government as opposed to those whom are actually supporting terrorism or the destruction of Russian society.

It will be particularly interesting to see what, if any, effect the EU has on Russia’s new law. Will the law, which flagrantly violates human rights, inhibit Russia’s ability to trade with EU member nations or will the infringement be ignored? Or will the EU be so consumed by the Brexit that it cannot — or will not — turn its attention to one of its largest trading partners?

Categories
Links

Policy – Privacy Paranoia: Is Your Smartphone Spying On You?

Policy – Privacy Paranoia: Is Your Smartphone Spying On You?:

Privacy alarmism is one act in a bigger spectacle. In alarmists’ minds, something could go terribly wrong, and although it never has nor is it likely to happen, we should change the world and imposed new political and bureaucratic order to prepare for it. Privacy concerns in general are fertile breeders of this pattern, and have already inflicted on us useless and expensive laws like HIPPA and FERPA. Now, privacy alarmism has set its sights on the biggest prize: the shrinking of Big Data.

While I’m glad that the author has apparently never suffered an issue linked to a privacy infringement, the same cannot be said for an enormous percentage of the world’s population. Mass intrusion, with and without consent, into communications privacy is a prominent issue internationally because of how private and public bodies alike exploit information that is collected.

We are functionally experimenting on the entire population when collecting and applying math to enormous datasets: to say that there has been no harm, ever, to date is possible. But doing so functionally depends on ignoring the lived reality of many of the persons impacted by big data and digital technology.

Categories
Aside Links

How Not To Get Hacked When Renting An Airbnb Apartment

How Not To Get Hacked When Renting An Airbnb Apartment:

The problem is that, thanks to the rise of home-sharing services such as Airbnb and HomeAway, thousands of people are letting strangers into their houses and apartments, and, potentially, into their networks and routers.

That’s why, Galloway argues, we need to be careful when connecting to Wi-Fi networks in Airbnbs, and just treat them like we treat airport or Starbucks connections.
“When you’re traveling and you’re on an unfamiliar network, you should behave like it and not behave like when you’re at home,” Galloway says. “You don’t use the Airbnb toothbrush, and you should probably think twice before just jumping on their network and putting your bank credentials in there.”

If you’re a renter, Galloway says the first thing to do to stay safe is using a virtual private network, or VPN, that will encrypt and protect all your connections. (There’s a lot of easy to use options out there, such as Freedome or TunnelBear.) Another, slightly more complex precaution, is to hardcode DNS settings into their devices, switching to Google Public DNS, for example.

I don’t disagree with this advice but admit it’s only something I consider when travelling for work (in part because I do so few ‘risky’ things when vacationing and decision to mostly rely on apps which I hope – though often cannot know – are transmitting credentials over SSL). But more broadly I think that what is being argued for is out of touch with how people are generally taught to understand computing and out of touch with how most Airbnb hosts operate: guests rarely meet their host and it’s unclear how often hosts themselves ever really look in on their properties. So maybe before we insist that people be wary of landlords and Airbnb hosts we should be considering what baseline requirements for offering such services themselves should be.

Categories
Aside Links

On weaponized transparency

On weaponized transparency:

Over the longer term, it’s likely that personal or sensitive data will continue to be hacked and released, and often for political purposes. This in turn raises a set of questions that we should all consider, related to all the traditional questions of openness and accountability. Weaponized transparency of private data of people in democratic institutions by unaccountable entities is destructive to our political norms, and to an open, discursive politics.

Weaponized transparency, especially when it affects the lives of ordinary persons who take an interest in the political process, is dangerous for a range of reasons. And responsible journalists – to say nothing of publishers such as Wikileaks – ought to be condemned when they fail to adequately protect the private interests of such ordinary persons.

Categories
Links

Twitter closes off ability to track and repost politicians’ deleted tweets | Toronto Star

Twitter closes off ability to track and repost politicians’ deleted tweets:

Twitter has shut off the ability of more than two dozen accounts to track and repost tweets deleted by politicians and other officials in 30 countries around the world, including Canada.

…

Christopher Parsons, a fellow at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, said Twitter’s decision shows that the company “is unwilling to have its API routinely used to monitor what people have tried to delete.

“It appears as though Twitter is saying, ‘Look we know it’s possible, but we don’t want it being done.’ ”

…

According to Parsons, the weekend Twitter closures may force groups to analyze the different reasons tweets are deleted, rather than posting all deletions automatically, which could change the data’s impact.

“The way in which (the information is) published can be very different, the context can be much broader, and depending on the intent of the group in question, it could be more damning,” he said.

The debate, he added, shows the impact corporations such as Twitter can have on how public figures communicate with people.

“With the American election right now and the Canadian election going on, that’s where these sorts of deletions are often most interesting to the general public,” he said.

 

Categories
Links

Lack of public Wi-Fi in Toronto raises privacy concerns: experts

Lack of public Wi-Fi in Toronto raises privacy concerns: experts:

The lack of public Wi-Fi in Toronto means those in need of wireless Internet must trade their privacy for connectivity, experts say.

…

Privacy concerns aside, Christopher Parsons with the Citizen Lab at U of T said leaving Wi-Fi in the hands of businesses limits access. While a public Wi-Fi system would be open to all, not everyone can afford the price of admission – implied or otherwise – at places like Starbucks.

“For some people, stepping in and getting a latte for five dollars is fine, but for other people that five-dollar latte is an incredible extravagance. They may not feel comfortable in that situation, or they may not feel welcome.”

Categories
Links Quotations

What’s worse than a cookie? A ‘perma-cookie’

What’s worse than a cookie? A ‘perma-cookie’:

Last fall, Verizon in the U.S. was found to be using the headers to cash in on the mobile advertising market and deliver targeted ads to customers.

It was later revealed that other advertisers, unaffiliated with Verizon’s own advertising program, were taking advantage of the headers to then track and target cellphone users for ads, even if customers had opted out.

Privacy experts also worry about the potential for governments and criminals to hijack the data.

Christopher Parsons, the managing director of a telecom transparency project run out of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, says that national security services and agencies “already track Canadians, Americans and citizens of other nations using unencrypted identifying information and there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t use perma-cookies for similar tracking purposes.”