T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon slapped with $200M fine — here’s what they illegally did with your data; Mashable, April 30, 2024

Matt Binder, Mashable ; T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon slapped with $200M fine — here’s what they illegally did with your data

"AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile allegedly provided location data to third parties without their users' consent, which is illegal.

“Our communications providers have access to some of the most sensitive information about us," said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement. "These carriers failed to protect the information entrusted to them. Here, we are talking about some of the most sensitive data in their possession: customers’ real-time location information, revealing where they go and who they are.” 

FCC fines the biggest U.S. mobile carriers

According to the FCC, T-Mobile has been fined the largest amount: $80 million. Sprint, which has merged with T-Mobile since the FCC's investigation began, also received a $12 million fine.

AT&T will have to pay more than $57 million and Verizon will dole out close to $47 million."

How G.M. Tricked Millions of Drivers Into Being Spied On (Including Me); The New York Times, April 23, 2024

Kashmir Hill , The New York Times; How G.M. Tricked Millions of Drivers Into Being Spied On (Including Me)

"Automakers have been selling data about the driving behavior of millions of people to the insurance industry. In the case of General Motors, affected drivers weren’t informed, and the tracking led insurance companies to charge some of them more for premiums. I’m the reporter who broke the story. I recently discovered that I’m among the drivers who was spied on."

This is how the Smithsonian will reckon with our dark inheritance; The Washington Post, August 20, 2023

Lonnie G. Bunch III, The Washington Post;  This is how the Smithsonian will reckon with our dark inheritance

"As a historian, I have always felt that a full, unvarnished, honest telling of history is the only way for us to move forward as a people, as a nation and as institutions. All of us are profoundly shaped by the past, for good and for ill, and the Smithsonian — like so many other museums and universities — is grappling with a legacy once deemed acceptable but that is so clearly ethically wrong today.

The Post’s recent coverage regarding the human remains still housed in our collections is certainly illustrative of the Smithsonian’s darkest history. This is our inheritance, and we accept the responsibility to address these wrongs to the fullest extent possible."

Suicide Hotline Left Ethics Board Out Of The Loop About Data-Sharing With For-Profit Spinoff; Forbes, February 24, 2022

Alexandra S. Levine , Forbes; Suicide Hotline Left Ethics Board Out Of The Loop About Data-Sharing With For-Profit Spinoff

"“Data-sharing with a for-profit company? That's bad... and you can't get consent from people for that in the moment when they're signing up with [a] crisis,” Ranney says. “This would never have passed a sniff test.”"

Cambridge University rejected Facebook study over 'deceptive' privacy standards; The Guardian, April 24, 2018

Matthew Weaver, The Guardian; Cambridge University rejected Facebook study over 'deceptive' privacy standards

"Exclusive: panel told researcher Aleksandr Kogan that Facebook’s approach fell ‘far below ethical expectations’

A Cambridge University ethics panel rejected research by the academic at the centre of the Facebook data harvesting scandal over the social network’s “deceptive” approach to its users privacy, newly released documents reveal."

It’s Time to Regulate the Internet; The Atlantic, March 21, 2018

Franklin Foer, The Atlantic; It’s Time to Regulate the Internet

"If we step back, we can see it clearly: Facebook’s business model is the evisceration of privacy. That is, it aims to adduce its users into sharing personal information—what the company has called “radical transparency”—and then aims to surveil users to generate the insights that will keep them “engaged” on its site and to precisely target them with ads. Although Mark Zuckerberg will nod in the direction of privacy, he has been candid about his true feelings. In 2010 he said, for instance, that privacy is no longer a “social norm.” (Once upon a time, in a fit of juvenile triumphalism, he even called people “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their data.) And executives in the company seem to understand the consequence of their apparatus. When I recently sat on a panel with a representative of Facebook, he admitted that he hadn’t used the site for years because he was concerned with protecting himself against invasive forces.

We need to constantly recall this ideological indifference to privacy, because there should be nothing shocking about the carelessness revealed in the Cambridge Analytica episode...

Facebook turned data—which amounts to an X-ray of the inner self—into a commodity traded without our knowledge."

Data scandal is huge blow for Facebook – and efforts to study its impact on society; Guardian, March 18, 2018

Olivia Solon, Guardian; Data scandal is huge blow for Facebook – and efforts to study its impact on society

"The revelation that 50 million people had their Facebook profiles harvested so Cambridge Analytica could target them with political ads is a huge blow to the social network that raises questions about its approach to data protection and disclosure.

As Facebook executives wrangle on Twitter over the semantics of whether this constitutes a “breach”, the result for users is the same: personal data extracted from the platform and used for a purpose to which they did not consent.

Facebook has a complicated track record on privacy. Its business model is built on gathering data. It knows your real name, who your friends are, your likes and interests, where you have been, what websites you have visited, what you look like and how you speak."

How Privacy Became a Commodity for the Rich and Powerful; New York Times, May 9, 2017

Amanda Hess, New York Times; How Privacy Became a Commodity for the Rich and Powerful

[Kip Currier: Excellent article on the growing "Privacy Divide" between the rich and not-rich, as well as philosophical and political Privacy Divides over what "privacy" even means and entails in the digital age. The author also provides a nice "quick and dirty" overview on how notions about privacy have evolved over time].

"In an 1890 paper called “The Right to Privacy,” Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis cited “recent inventions and business methods” — including instant photography and tabloid gossip — that they claimed had “invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life.” They argued for what they called the right “to be let alone,” but also what they called “the right to one’s personality.”

Now that our privacy is worth something, every side of it is being monetized. We can either trade it for cheap services or shell out cash to protect it. It is increasingly seen not as a right but as a luxury good. When Congress recently voted to allow internet service providers to sell user data without users’ explicit consent, talk emerged of premium products that people could pay for to protect their browsing habits from sale. And if they couldn’t afford it? As one congressman told a concerned constituent, “Nobody’s got to use the internet.” Practically, though, everybody’s got to...

How often have you shielded the contents of your screen from a stranger on the subway, or the partner next to you in bed, only to offer up your secrets to the data firm tracking everything you do?"

Study of Babies Did Not Disclose Risks, U.S. Finds; New York Times, 4/10/13

Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times; Study of Babies Did Not Disclose Risks, U.S. Finds: "A federal agency has found that a number of prestigious universities failed to tell more than a thousand families in a government-financed study of oxygen levels for extremely premature babies that the risks could include increased chances of blindness or death."

Commission: Researchers Knew Of Ethical Problems In Guatemala STD Study; NPR's Shots Blog, 8/30/11

Eliza Barclay, NPR's Shots Blog; Commission: Researchers Knew Of Ethical Problems In Guatemala STD Study:

"U.S. researchers knowingly breached medical ethics by infecting Guatemalans with venereal diseases in the 1940s without informing them of the risks, a presidential commission has found.

The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which was asked by President Obama to investigate the Guatemala study in October 2010, came to the conclusion after learning that the researchers had conducted similar research with American prisoners in 1943 but had given them the chance to make informed consent.

The U.S. government formally apologized for the "reprehensible research" last year."