Apple Releases Mobility Data, Replies to Senate – TMO Daily Observations 2020-04-14
Andrew Orr and John Martellaro join host Kelly Guimont to discuss Apple’s release of (anonymized) mobility data, and their reply to a Senate letter inquiring about the COVID-19 website.
These mobility maps are the PR face of the unfolding privacy disaster. There’s a reason this seemingly innocuous use of big data arrives to push contact tracing back one story in the heap of confusing news. Aggregated data has to come from somewhere and it’s not just thrown away once aggregated.
Even Apple has to spin this, so nobody in the dog-eat-dog world of tech commentary peeks behind the curtain and questions their oft stated privacy stance.
Think one step past the marketing copy and realise just what is going on here. Read moxie on the contact tracing framework. See the ramifications. This is a nightmare of dystopian proportions. No push-back. Docile participation.
What happens on your iPhone, stays on every phone with which you come in contact.
Can we now agree that we’re a long way from the company that doesn’t want your data, so they can’t be asked for it?
I know that mobile phone companies delight in how much data they have, but Apple has the opportunity to do the correct thing into the future, to keep customers inquiries on-device.
Maybe even offer a private cloud option. Eschew big data.
…But we live in a world where Siri can’t even set a timer on my watch without contacting Apple servers. -Personal- computing has gone wrong in a big way, and it only feeds the machine’s hunger for personal data.
There is more Apple can do here..
Feeding government fantasies about controlling the citizenry down to the individual, every move, every relationship, every contact… with such ease, is unbecoming of the Apple its customers want it to be.
Westworld has a phrase that should shake to the core… (insert catastrophic thing here) “…was done before the privacy laws”. Government and corporations (not even Apple, now) cannot come up with privacy laws, it’s against their interests to do so.