privacy

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Amazon Will Sell Your Face for as Low as 40 Cents for Facial Recognition

Andrew Orr ·

Reporters at The California Sunday Magazine recently published an overview of facial recognition technology. It’s a long read and it provides a lot of information on this technology and how it works. Among the tidbits that caught my eye I wanted to share this one:

Why has the use of facial recognition become such a hot-button issue now? The most obvious answer is that the technology has been improved, streamlined, and commercialized to the point that it has become widely accessible, available for purchase for as low as 40 cents an image if you opt for Amazon’s facial-recognition software plan.

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Location is One of The Big Factors in Advertising

Andrew Orr ·

Jennifer Jolly wrote an article wondering if Siri was spying on her because she began to see ads in Spanish after her husband began speaking Spanish at home, within “earshot” of her iPad. The answer is, of course, no. In her buried lede she tells us that she had just moved to a predominantly Spanish-speaking part of Oakland California. It seems reasonable to me that you would see Spanish ads in a Spanish area. Although I’m sure the device’s language is a factor. We did have news last year that contractors listened to some snippets of Siri recordings, but that was to improve the service and not sell ads. Meanwhile, if you turn on Limit Ad Tracking in Settings, your advertising identifier is zeroed. After that, location becomes one of the big factors in advertising.

And Apple says it engineers its devices to protect user privacy. When it comes to Siri, which is integrated in nearly every Apple device, the assistant is designed to activate only after the wake word (“Hey, Siri”) or a waking action is completed, Apple says.

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Facebook Hilariously Reminds its Users About ‘Data Privacy Day’

Andrew Orr ·

In the next few weeks you might see a reminder in the Facebook to review your privacy settings. That is, what little privacy the company gives you.

The updates represent Facebook burnishing its image to some extent. It spent much of the last decade embroiled in privacy problems that ranged from the Cambridge Analytica scandal through to data exposure on a third-party system. At the same time, it’s safe to say many people want to know their data is being used properly — the prompt and expanded tools could provide a degree of reassurance.

I don’t think it’s possible for Facebook to burnish its image.

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Amazon’s Ring Surveillance App is Loaded With Trackers

Andrew Orr ·

Not only are Ring doorbell cameras used as surveillance, but the app itself too. Like many apps, it’s loaded with third-party trackers and analytics tools. The EFF examined the Android app.

As we’ve mentioned, this includes information about your device and carrier, unique identifiers that allow these companies to track you across apps, real-time interaction data with the app, and information about your home network. In the case of MixPanel, it even includes your name and email address.

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Leaked Documents Reveal Antivirus Surveillance Industry

Andrew Orr ·

Leaked documents reveal that an Avast antivirus subsidiary called Jumpshot packages what you do on your computer and sells it to companies like Google, Microsoft, Pepsi, and more.

The data obtained by Motherboard and PCMag includes Google searches, lookups of locations and GPS coordinates on Google Maps, people visiting companies’ LinkedIn pages, particular YouTube videos, and people visiting porn websites. It is possible to determine from the collected data what date and time the anonymized user visited YouPorn and PornHub, and in some cases what search term they entered into the porn site and which specific video they watched.

I write a lot about privacy and security, and I try hard to be optimistic that eventually things will change and some day we will have a federal privacy law.

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Privacy, Parenting, and Monitoring Your Kids’ Electronics

Andrew Orr ·

Wired is publishing a series on parenting, and this article is written by a father who monitors his teens’ electronics.

Later, after discovering my daughter had secreted a contraband Chromebook in her room to watch late-night Friends, all devices would be sequestered in the master bedroom overnight.

And this rule was above all else: The devices all belong to me and my wife, and we are entitled to see anything and everything on them.

I didn’t get a cell phone until I was in college, so my parents didn’t have to worry about me blasting my teenage cringe online. At the same time, this guy sounds like the type to physically remove the door to his kid’s room so they can’t hide from him.

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Britain Wants Strict Privacy Rules for Kids

Andrew Orr ·

Today Britain rolled out strict privacy protections for kids, like requiring tech platforms to turn on protections by default.

The new rules are the most comprehensive protections to arise from heightened global concern that popular online services exploit children’s information, suggest inappropriate content to them and fail to protect them from sexual predators. The British children’s protections far outstrip narrower rules in the United States, which apply only to online services aimed at children under 13.

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Clearview AI Helps Law Enforcement With Facial Recognition

Andrew Orr ·

In a long read from NYT, Kashmir Hill writes about a startup called Clearview AI that works with law enforcement on facial recognition.

You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared. The system — whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites — goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government or Silicon Valley giants.

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Your Online Activity is a Social Credit Score

Andrew Orr ·

Violet Blue has an interesting take, that of your online activity as a social credit score. The SCC is something we usually associate with China, but we’re seeing trends suggesting America is moving toward a similar system.

Combine this with companies like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and yes, Airbnb deciding what legal behaviors are acceptable for service, and now we’re looking at groups of historically marginalized people being denied involvement in mainstream economic, political, cultural and social activities — at scale.

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Students Want to Ban College Facial Recogntion

Andrew Orr ·

Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Fight for the Future are teaming up to ban college facial recognition from campuses.

Facial recognition surveillance spreading to college campuses would put students, faculty, and community members at risk…Schools that are already using this technology are conducting unethical experiments on their students. Students and staff have a right to know if their administrations are planning to implement biometric surveillance on campus. Grassroots organizing stopped facial recognition from ruining music festivals. Now we’re going to stop it from invading university campuses.

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Scotland Police to Use ‘Cyber Kiosks’ to Extract Smartphone Data

Andrew Orr ·

Starting January 20, 2020 Scotland police will use devices called cyber kiosks to analyze the contents of smartphones during investigations.

Police Scotland will only examine a digital device where there is a legal basis and where it is necessary, justified and proportionate to the incident or crime under investigation.

Cyber kiosks used by Police Scotland will not be enabled to store data from digital devices.  Once an examination is complete, all device data is securely deleted from the cyber kiosk.

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Fresh Cambridge Analytica Leaks Reveal Scope of Manipulation

Andrew Orr ·

A fresh wave of Cambridge Analytica leaks is being disseminated by the press, and it reveals that its misinformation and manipulation reached at least 65 countries.

Platforms whose profiteering purpose is to track and target people at global scale — which function by leveraging an asymmetrical ‘attention economy’ — have zero incentive to change or have change imposed upon them. Not when the propaganda-as-a-service business remains in such high demand…

This campaign is still going, because Cambridge Analytica shut down and renamed itself as Emerdata.

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Techno Artist Curtis Wallen Created a ‘Clandestine Communication Network’

Andrew Orr ·

Curtis Wallen’s latest project, called Proposition For An On Demand Clandestine Communication Network, tells people how to avoid surveillance and make a secret phone call.

This is not easy, of course. In fact, it’s really, comically hard. “If the CIA can’t even keep from getting betrayed by their cell phones, what chance do we have?” he says. Still, Wallen believes PropCom could theoretically keep users’ activities hidden. It’s hard, he emphasizes, but not impossible.

He basically uses a prepaid burner phone, a Faraday bag, and an encrypted phone number. I hope he bought the phone from a place that doesn’t use cameras or facial recognition, because that could help trace him.

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New Year’s Resolution: Delete These Apps

Andrew Orr ·

As we near the end of a decade, much of the news lately is about privacy, like apps that track your location. For your 2020 resolution, consider deleting these apps.

And as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, apps are sure to become an ever-increasingly important part of our lives. Still, that means there are certain apps that you should probably cut out of your life for good—for the benefit of your finances, mental health, privacy, and time. As we kick off the 2020’s, here are the apps you should consider kicking off your smartphone.

The article mentions categories of apps, and not many individual apps. So here’s my advice: Delete apps from Facebook and Google.

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Pentagon Warns Military Not to Use Home DNA Kits

Andrew Orr ·

A Department of Defense memo warns U.S. military members about the privacy risks of home DNA kits.

The memo provides little details on how genetic profiles could endanger security, other than noting that potential “inaccuracies” in health information could pose a risk to military personnel, who are required to report medical issues. Most of the health reports provided by DNA companies typically pertain to medical risks, though, such as a predisposition to cancer, rather than diagnosing a condition.

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NYT Reporters Used a Leaked Location Database to Track the President

Andrew Orr ·

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to call this piece “explosive”, “stunning” et cetera. Reporters at the New York Times found a database of location data containing “50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans.” These Americans included two Secret Service agents (and by extension the President), a Department of Defense official, CIA agents leaving for home, and much more. The article is a nightmare to browse because it’s one of their interactive ones, but it’s still worth the read.

The data reviewed by Times Opinion didn’t come from a telecom or giant tech company, nor did it come from a governmental surveillance operation. It originated from a location data company, one of dozens quietly collecting precise movements using software slipped onto mobile phone apps.