Orwellabama? Crimson Tide Track Locations to Keep Students at Games; The New York Times, September 12, 2019

Billy Witz, The New York Times; Orwellabama? Crimson Tide Track Locations to Keep Students at Games

Coach Nick Saban gets peeved at students leaving routs early. An app ties sticking around to playoff tickets, but also prompts concern from students and privacy watchdogs.

"Greg Byrne, Alabama’s athletic director, said privacy concerns rarely came up when the program was being discussed with other departments and student groups. Students who download the Tide Loyalty Points app will be tracked only inside the stadium, he said, and they can close the app — or delete it — once they leave the stadium. “If anybody has a phone, unless you’re in airplane mode or have it off, the cellular companies know where you are,” he said.

 

But Adam Schwartz, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog, said it was “very alarming” that a public university — an arm of the government — was tracking its students’ whereabouts.

 

“Why should packing the stadium in the fourth quarter be the last time the government wants to know where students are?” Schwartz said, adding that it was “inappropriate” to offer an incentive for students to give up their privacy. “A public university is a teacher, telling students what is proper in a democratic society.”"

It's Time to Panic About Privacy; The New York Times, April 10, 2019

Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times; It's Time to Panic About Privacy

"Here is the stark truth: We in the West are building a surveillance state no less totalitarian than the one the Chinese government is rigging up.

But while China is doing it through government...we are doing it through corporations and consumer products, in the absence of any real regulation that recognizes the stakes at hand.

It is time start caring about the mess of digital privacy. In fact it's time to panic."

The doorbells have eyes: The privacy battle brewing over home security cameras; The Washington Post, January 31, 2019

Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post; The doorbells have eyes: The privacy battle brewing over home security cameras

"We should recognize this pattern: Tech that seems like an obvious good can develop darker dimensions as capabilities improve and data shifts into new hands. A terms-of-service update, a face-recognition upgrade or a hack could turn your doorbell into a privacy invasion you didn’t see coming."

The Personal Data of 346,000 People, Hung on a Museum Wall; The New York Times, April 13, 2018

Sui-Lee Wee and Elsie Chen, The New York Times; The Personal Data of 346,000 People, Hung on a Museum Wall

"Mr. Deng’s project coincides with a growing debate about the lack of data privacy in China, where people are starting to push back against tech companies and their use of information. Online brokers regularly, and illegally, buy and sell personal information online...

Last month, Robin Li, the chief executive of the search giant Baidu, set off a firestorm when he said that Chinese people were willing to trade privacy for convenience, safety and efficiency...

The rising public anger is taking place amid a similar debate in the United States, over Facebook. But Beijing officials keep the volume lower because personal data is broadly available to another powerful constituency: the Chinese government. Tech companies cooperate with the police in handing over information, with few questions asked. Citizens are resigned to the fact that they are tracked by the government, and there is little pushback about the increased state of surveillance."

No, Mark Zuckerberg, we’re not really in control of our data; The Washington Post, April 12, 2018

Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post; No, Mark Zuckerberg, we’re not really in control of our data

"If Facebook wanted us to be in control of our data, it could put at the top of its home page a button that says “stop tracking me everywhere.” (I’d even pay a subscription fee for it.) There would be another one that says “reset my data.” But the reality is, if we all used those tools, it would probably be a disaster for Facebook’s business, which is based on having the largest pile of data to target its ads. Zuckerberg doesn’t want to talk about how his business is inseparable from its surveillance.

During one exchange, Rep. Anna G. Eshoo asked a question that cut to the core of the matter: “Are you willing to change your business model in the interest of protecting individual privacy?”

Zuckerberg replied, “I'm not sure what that means.”

I think he did."

A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe; Guardian, April 3, 2018

Richard Stallman, Guardian; A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe

"Journalists have been asking me whether the revulsion against the abuse of Facebook data could be a turning point for the campaign to recover privacy. That could happen, if the public makes its campaign broader and deeper.

Broader, meaning extending to all surveillance systems, not just Facebook. Deeper, meaning to advance from regulating the use of data to regulating the accumulation of data. Because surveillance is so pervasive, restoring privacy is necessarily a big change, and requires powerful measures.

The surveillance imposed on us today far exceeds that of the Soviet Union. For freedom and democracy’s sake, we need to eliminate most of it. There are so many ways to use data to hurt people that the only safe database is the one that was never collected. Thus, instead of the EU’s approach of mainly regulating how personal data may be used (in its General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR), I propose a law to stop systems from collecting personal data."

Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?; The New York Times, March 31, 2018

Sapna Maheshwari, The New York Times; Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

"The Electronic Privacy Information Center has recommended more robust disclosure rules for internet-connected devices, including an “algorithmic transparency requirement” that would help people understand how their data was being used and what automated decisions were then being made about them.\

Sam Lester, the center’s consumer privacy fellow, said he believed that the abilities of new smart home devices highlighted the need for United States regulators to get more involved with how consumer data was collected and used.

“A lot of these technological innovations can be very good for consumers,” he said. “But it’s not the responsibility of consumers to protect themselves from these products any more than it’s their responsibility to protect themselves from the safety risks in food and drugs. It’s why we established a Food and Drug Administration years ago.”"

Beware the smart toaster: 18 tips for surviving the surveillance age; Guardian, March 28, 2018

Alex Hern and Arwa Mahdawi, Guardian; Beware the smart toaster: 18 tips for surviving the surveillance age

"Awareness of our digital footprint is one thing, but what are we to do about it? In the wake of the Facebook revelations, it’s clear that we can’t all keep clicking as usual if we value our privacy or our democracy. It’s still relatively early in the internet era and we are all still figuring it out as we go along. However, best practices when it comes to security and online etiquette are starting to emerge. Here’s a guide to some of the new rules of the internet."

They Are Watching You—and Everything Else on the Planet; National Geographic, February 2018

Robert Draper, National Geographic; They Are Watching You—and Everything Else on the Planet

"University of Texas American studies professor Randolph Lewis writes in his new book, Under Surveillance: Being Watched in Modern America, “Surveillance is often exhausting to those who really feel its undertow: it overwhelms with its constant badgering, its omnipresent mysteries, its endless tabulations of movements, purchases, potentialities.”

The desire for privacy, Acquisti says, “is a universal trait among humans, across cultures and across time. You find evidence of it in ancient Rome, ancient Greece, in the Bible, in the Quran. What’s worrisome is that if all of us at an individual level suffer from the loss of privacy, society as a whole may realize its value only after we’ve lost it for good.”

Is a looming state of Orwellian bleakness already a fait accompli? Or is there a more hopeful outlook, one in which a world under watch in many ways might be better off? Consider the 463 infrared camera traps the World Wildlife Fund uses in China to monitor the movements of the threatened giant panda. Or the thermal imaging devices that rangers deploy at night to detect poachers in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve. Or the sound-activated underwater camera system developed by UC San Diego researchers that tracks the nearly extinct vaquita porpoise in the Sea of Cortez. Or the “forest watcher” cameras installed to help protect the shrinking timberlands of Sri Lanka."

With Closed-Circuit TV, Satellites And Phones, Millions Of Cameras Are Watching; Fresh Air, NPR, February 8, 2018

Terry Gross, Fresh Air, NPR; With Closed-Circuit TV, Satellites And Phones, Millions Of Cameras Are Watching

""Journalist Robert Draper writes in National Geographic that the proliferation of cameras focused on the public has led "to the point where we're expecting to be voyeur and exhibitionist 24/7."

"TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Robert Draper says one of the greatest threats to our democracy is gerrymandering, in which the party in power in a state redraws the map of election districts to give the advantage to that party's candidates. Since districts are redrawn only every 10 years following the census, gerrymandering can almost guarantee that the majority party will stay in power. There are a couple of gerrymandering cases currently before the Supreme Court. Draper has reported on gerrymandering, and we'll talk about that a little later.

First, we're going to talk about his new article "They Are Watching You - And Everything Else On The Planet" published in this month's National Geographic. It's about state-of-the-art surveillance from closed-circuit TV to drones and satellites and the questions these surveillance technologies raise about privacy. As part of his research, he spent time in surveillance control rooms in London. And he went to a tech company in San Francisco whose mission is to image the entire Earth every day. Draper is a contributing writer for National Geographic and a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine.

Robert Draper, welcome back to FRESH AIR. So let's start with surveillance. Why did you choose England as the place to report on surveillance?"

What It’s Like to Live in a Surveillance State; New York Times, February 3, 2018

James A. Millward, New York Times; What It’s Like to Live in a Surveillance State

"Will the big-data police state engulf the rest of China? The rest of the world?

As China’s profile grows on the international stage, everyone would do well to ask if what happens in Xinjiang will stay in Xinjiang."

China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone; The Atlantic, February 2, 2018

ANNA MITCHELL AND LARRY DIAMOND, 

The Atlantic; China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone

[Kip Currier: This Atlantic article brings to mind the Black Mirror Bryce Dallas Howard-helmed episode "Nosedive"--in which social media-dependent social-climbing-Americans are ranked from 1 (not good) to 5 (cream of the crop). The difference: China's real life "good citizen score" surveillance system is way scarier than the one imagined in Nosedive; and is more like the "Under His Eye" dystopia of The Handmaid's Tale Gilead authoritarian state.]

"[China] is racing to become the first to implement a pervasive system of algorithmic surveillance. Harnessing advances in artificial intelligence and data mining and storage to construct detailed profiles on all citizens, China’s communist party-state is developing a “citizen score” to incentivize “good” behavior. A vast accompanying network of surveillance cameras will constantly monitor citizens’ movements, purportedly to reduce crime and terrorism. While the expanding Orwellian eye may improve “public safety,” it poses a chilling new threat to civil liberties in a country that already has one of the most oppressive and controlling governments in the world.

China’s evolving algorithmic surveillance system will rely on the security organs of the communist party-state to filter, collect, and analyze staggering volumes of data flowing across the internet. Justifying controls in the name of national security and social stability, China originally planned to develop what it called a “Golden Shield” surveillance system allowing easy access to local, national, and regional records on each citizen. This ambitious project has so far been mostly confined to a content-filtering Great Firewall, which prohibits foreign internet sites including Google, Facebook, and The New York Times. According to Freedom House, China’s level of internet freedom is already the worst on the planet. Now, the Communist Party of China is finally building the extensive, multilevel data-gathering system it has dreamed of for decades."

WTF is GDPR?; TechCrunch, January 20, 2018

Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch; WTF is GDPR?

"The EC’s theory is that consumer trust is essential to fostering growth in the digital economy. And it thinks trust can be won by giving users of digital services more information and greater control over how their data is used. Which is — frankly speaking — a pretty refreshing idea when you consider the clandestine data brokering that pervades the tech industry. Mass surveillance isn’t just something governments do.

The General Data Protection Regulation (aka GDPR) was agreed after more than three years of negotiations between the EU’s various institutions.

It’s set to apply across the 28-Member State bloc as of May 25, 2018. That means EU countries are busy transposing it into national law via their own legislative updates (such as the UK’s new Data Protection Bill — yes, despite the fact the country is currently in the process of (br)exiting the EU, the government has nonetheless committed to implementing the regulation because it needs to keep EU-UK data flowing freely in the post-brexit future. Which gives an early indication of the pulling power of GDPR.

Meanwhile businesses operating in the EU are being bombarded with ads from a freshly energized cottage industry of ‘privacy consultants’ offering to help them get ready for the new regs — in exchange for a service fee. It’s definitely a good time to be a law firm specializing in data protection."

Airlines Are Giving Your Face to Homeland Security; Daily Beast, August 9, 2017

Aliya Sternstein, Daily Beast; Airlines Are Giving Your Face to Homeland Security

"The agency admits there are many privacy issues surrounding this “partner process” that need some resolving (PDF). As CBP’s own June privacy impact assessment states, there remains “a risk that commercial air carriers will use the photographs for purposes beyond departure verification” because “commercial air carriers are not collecting photographs on CBP’s behalf or under CBP authorities.”

Delta and JetBlue said they do not store or directly access passenger biometric data...

To Jeramie Scott, national security counsel at the Electronic Privacy Council, her vision of a planet blanketed by interconnected security cameras and computers seemed all too plausible.

“I don’t think that’s a crazy world. It’s just a scary world for us,” Scott said. “The mission creep possibility is a real, real thing.”

ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley said it would be convenient to walk through checkpoints where you have to stop and show papers today, but would you want to take out your passport and show it to authorities every 10 feet?

“If your face is your passport you’re doing the same thing—we end up with a checkpoint society where people are being tracked,” Stanley said."

The ethics issue: Should we abandon privacy online?; New Scientist, July 5, 2017

Douglas Heaven, New Scientist; The ethics issue: Should we abandon privacy online?

"In an age where fear of terrorism is high in the public consciousness, governments are likely to err on the side of safety. Over the past decade, the authorities have been pushing for – and getting – greater powers of surveillance than they have ever had, all in the name of national security.

The downsides are not immediately obvious. After all, you might think you have nothing to hide. But most of us have perfectly legal secrets we’d rather someone else didn’t see. And although the chances of the authorities turning up to take you away in a black SUV on the basis of your WhatsApp messages are small in free societies, the chances of insurance companies raising your premiums are not."

Legislature Passes Geolocation Privacy Protection Act; Law360, June 28, 2017

Hannah Meisel, Law360; Legislature Passes Geolocation Privacy Protection Act

"A bill in the Illinois General Assembly seeking to limit the collection and disclosure of a smartphone user's geolocation data within applications will be sent on to Gov. Bruce Rauner after the House narrowly approved the legislation Tuesday.

The so-called Geolocation Privacy Protection Act was already approved by the state Senate last month — one of a handful of bills proposed in the Illinois legislature this spring aimed at protecting mobile phone user data."

Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says; Guardian, July 3, 2017

Olivia Solon, Guardian; Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

"A judge has dismissed a lawsuit accusing Facebook of tracking users’ web browsing activity even after they logged out of the social networking site.

The plaintiffs alleged that Facebook used the “like” buttons found on other websites to track which sites they visited, meaning that the Menlo Park, California-headquartered company could build up detailed records of their browsing history. The plaintiffs argued that this violated federal and state privacy and wiretapping laws.

US district judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, dismissed the case because he said that the plaintiffs failed to show that they had a reasonable expectation of privacy or suffered any realistic economic harm or loss."

Fight for privacy only beginning; Sun Sentinel, June 30, 2017

Sun Sentinel Editorial Board; Fight for privacy only beginning

"How much of your privacy are you willing to surrender in exchange for security? How concerned are you that the government has the capacity to trace your comings and goings? How bothered are you by license tag readers, surveillance cameras, red light monitors, websites that track your movements, retailers that collect and share your buying habits?...

In this age of the ubiquitous surveillance camera and the airport pat down, have we surrendered our expectation of privacy?

Is it too late to get it back? Do we feel safer without it?

Do we have a choice?"

Key Government Privacy Watchdog Muzzled During Surveillance Debate; Slate, June 26, 2017

Andrea Peterson, Slate; Key Government Privacy Watchdog Muzzled During Surveillance Debate

"The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, or PCLOB, is a little-known agency that’s had an outsize influence in recent years on the debate over government spying. The board’s job is to make sure that when the executive branch takes action to defend the country, Americans’ privacy rights and civil liberties aren’t forgotten. To carry out that mission, the board has almost unparalleled access to classified information across the intelligence agencies. PCLOB uses that access to advise agencies on how to roll out surveillance programs while minimizing privacy and civil liberties violations, review programs already in operation, and raise the alarm when it uncovers problems.

But right now, despite the high stakes, the board is being held hostage by a personnel shortage...

The board is supposed to be led by a bipartisan group of five people: a full-time chair and four part-time members who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Due to a string of departures over the last year, it’s down to just one part-time member."

Facial Recognition May Boost Airport Security But Raises Privacy Worries; NPR, June 26, 2017

Asma Khalid, NPR; Facial Recognition May Boost Airport Security But Raises Privacy Worries

"JetBlue is pitching this idea of facial recognition as convenience for customers. It's voluntary. But it's also part of a broader push by Customs and Border Protection to create a biometric exit system to track non-U.S. citizens leaving the country...

[Adam Schwartz, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation] says facial recognition is a uniquely invasive form of surveillance.

"We can change our bank account numbers, we even can change our names, but we cannot change our faces," Schwartz says. "And once the information is out there, it could be misused.""...

Back at Logan Airport, passenger Yeimy Quezada feels totally comfortable sharing her face instead of a barcode.

"Even your cellphone recognizes selfies and recognize faces, so I'm used to that technology already," she says. "And, I'm not concerned about privacy because I'm a firm believer that if you're not hiding anything, you shouldn't be afraid of anything."