The Evolution of the Militarized Data Broker

Unlimited Hangout 16.01.25

Data gathering has been militarised from the onset:

'The first unclassified briefing for scientists was titled “birds of a feather briefing” and was formalized during a 1995 conference in San Jose, CA, which was titled the “Birds of a Feather Session on the Intelligence Community Initiative in Massive Digital Data Systems.” That same year, one of the first MDDS grants was awarded to Stanford University, which was already a decade deep in working with NSF and DARPA grants. The primary objective of this grant was to “query optimization of very complex queries,” with a closely-followed second grant that aimed to build a massive digital library on the internet. These two grants funded research by then-Stanford graduate students and future Google cofounders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Two intelligence-community managers regularly met with Brin while he was still at Stanford and completing the research that would lead to the incorporation of Google, all paid for by grants provided by the NSA and CIA via MDD.. Google would certainly set the standard for success during the first Dot Com bubble. Yet, shortly following their incorporation, two similar Silicon Valley companies with significant ties to the intelligence community would also emerge from colleges affiliated with the MDDS – PayPal and Facebook. PayPal was launched in December 1998 as Confinity Inc. by founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, alongside Luke Nosek and Ken Howery…

It was also during these formative years that the PayPal team worked closely with the intelligence community. Levchin later stated in an interview with Charlie Rose that: “I think the government working with a private sector is a great thing. When we were working on security and anti-fraud measures at PayPal, we collaborated with every imaginable three and four-letter agency and those were some of the best, most productive relationships I’ve had as a business person…I think if the private sector can help them, we should.”… In 2003, a year after PayPal was sold to eBay, Thiel approached Alex Karp, a fellow alumnus of Stanford with a new venture concept: “Why not use Igor to track terrorist networks through their financial transactions?” Thiel took funds from the PayPal sale to seed the company, and after a few years of pitching investors, the newly-formed Palantir received an estimated $2 million investment from the CIA’s venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel. Palantir’s co-founders consulted with John Poindexter during his tenure as head of DARPA’s then-embattled Total Information Awareness in efforts to privatize the controversial surveillance program… As of 2013, Palantir’s client list included “the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the Centre for Disease Control, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, Special Operations Command, West Point and the IRS” with around “50% of its business” coming from public sector contracts. Palantir is closely connected to the U.S. government, but its financial spin-off, Palantir Metropolis, is focused on providing “analytical tools” for “hedge funds, banks and financial services firms” to outsmart each other. As The Guardian reports: “Palantir does not just provide the Pentagon with a machine for global surveillance and the data-efficient fighting of war, it runs Wall Street, too.”’

Palantir, Anduril sign partnership for AI training in defense

Reuters 06.12.24

Palantir is starting to have its tentacles all over the place:

‘Data analytics firm Palantir Technologies and defense tech company Anduril Industries have partnered to use defense data for artificial intelligence training, the companies said on Friday. The partnership will leverage Palantir's AI platform to structure, label and prepare defense data for training to deploy those models onto national security systems, while Anduril's systems will aid in the retention and distribution of government defense data.’

Tech firm Palantir spoke with MoJ about calculating prisoners’ ‘reoffending risks’

The Guardian 16.11.24

Talk of sovereignty after Brexit are seriously meaningless after the introduction of foreign tech to manage vital systems:

‘The US spy tech company Palantir has been in talks with the Ministry of Justice about using its technology to calculate prisoners’ “reoffending risks”, it has emerged… Amnesty International is among the organisations expressing concern about the expanding role Palantir is attempting to carve out after it was controversially awarded a multimillion-pound contract with the NHS last year… Palantir had been in talks with the MoJ and the Prison Service about how “secure information sharing and data analytics can alleviate prison challenges and enable a granular understanding of reoffending and associated risks”, the executive added… The Labour backbencher Clive Lewis said he was concerned that “big corporate entities” such as Palantir were trying to become integral parts of providing public services. “We are inviting in a highly extractive corporate entity which is always going to act in its own interests first, not what would ultimately be the interests of the NHS or other public services. You can go down a science-fiction route but iyou ultimately where will it leave us?” Lewis said. “It feels to me as if there is pressure for this Labour government to deliver growth at all costs. My fear is that it will lead us into taking shortcuts to deliver that growth at a rapid rate and we may regret what we have done.”’

Tech firm Palantir spoke with MoJ about calculating prisoners’ ‘reoffending risks’

The Guardian 16.11.24

As long as outside tech firms get embedded into the UK system, there won’t be any meaningful sovereign control over our institutions:

‘The US spy tech company Palantir has been in talks with the Ministry of Justice about using its technology to calculate prisoners’ “reoffending risks”, it has emerged… Amnesty International is among the organisations expressing concern about the expanding role Palantir is attempting to carve out after it was controversially awarded a multimillion-pound contract with the NHS last year… Palantir had been in talks with the MoJ and the Prison Service about how “secure information sharing and data analytics can alleviate prison challenges and enable a granular understanding of reoffending and associated risks”, the executive added… However, Amnesty International UK’s business and human rights director, Peter Frankental, has expressed concern. “It’s deeply worrying that Palantir is trying to seduce the new government into a so-called brave new world where public services may be run by unaccountable bots at the expense of our rights,” he said. “Labour faces the serious challenge of ensuring digital technologies are used in line with human rights, including protecting people’s privacy, right to equality, non-discrimination and data protection. “Ministers need to push back against any use of artificial intelligence in the criminal justice, prison and welfare systems that could lead to people being discriminated against, unfairly targeted and other miscarriages of justice. The Post Office scandal is a stark warning of what can happen when digital technologies are considered infallible.” Concerns about Palantir have been compounded by the political role played by its co-founder and chair, Peter Thiel, a major Silicon Valley supporter of Donald Trump, as well as a backer and former employer of the vice-president-elect, JD Vance. Thiel once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”’

Musk's X Corp loses lawsuit against Israeli data-scraping company

Reuters 10.05.24

Israel will snoop into most tech services and use it to its advantage:

‘A U.S. judge dismissed a lawsuit in which Elon Musk's X Corp accused an Israeli data-scraping company of illegally copying and selling content, and selling tools that let others copy and sell content, from the social media platform.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled on Thursday that X, formerly Twitter, failed to plausibly allege that Bright Data Ltd violated its user agreement by allowing the scraping and evading X's own anti-scraping technology.’

How US Intelligence and an American Company Feed Israel’s Killing Machine in Gaza

The Nation 12.04.24

Palantir is a deeply embedded defence data mining behemoth. Remember that when you look at the NHS and its close relationship to the tech company:

‘One of Unit 8200’s newest and most important organizations is the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Center, which, according to a spokesman, was responsible for developing the AI systems that “transformed the entire concept of targets in the IDF.” Back in 2021, the Israeli military described its 11-day war on Gaza as the world’s first “AI war.”… As one of the world’s most advanced data-mining companies, with ties to the CIA, Palantir’s “work” was supplying Israel’s military and intelligence agencies with advanced and powerful targeting capabilities—the precise capabilities that allowed Israel to place three drone-fired missiles into three clearly marked aid vehicles…

Palantir’s AI machines need data for fuel—data in the form of intelligence reports on Palestinians in the occupied territories. And for decades a key and highly secret source of that data for Israel has been the US National Security Agency, according to documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden… According to the Top Secret/Special Intelligence agreement between the NSA and Israel, “NSA routinely sends ISNU [Israeli SIGINT National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection…as part of the SIGINT relationship between the two organizations.” It adds, “Raw SIGINT includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content.”…

The company is currently developing an even more powerful AI targeting system called TITAN (for “Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node”). According to Palantir, TITAN is a “next-generation Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance ground station enabled by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to process data received from Space, High Altitude, Aerial and Terrestrial layers.” Although designed for use by the US Army, it’s possible that the company could test prototypes against Palestinians in Gaza. “How precise and accurate can you know a system is going to be unless it’s already been trained and tested on people?” said Catherine Connolly of the Stop Killer Robot coalition, which includes Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.’

Sainsbury’s boss defends decision to sell customers’ Nectar card data

The Guardian 13.12.23

That was always going to be the case and, if pressed, supermarkets would also confess to selling biometrics to facial recognition data companies, such as Clearview:

‘Last weekend, it emerged Sainsbury’s and its rival Tesco are making an estimated £300m a year from selling information on individual shopping habits collected through loyalty card schemes.’

Private UK health data donated for medical research shared with insurance companies

The Guardian 12.11.23

Data means money for health companies. Expect that to go this way with NHSX:

‘Sensitive health information donated for medical research by half a million UK citizens has been shared with insurance companies despite a pledge that it would not be. An Observer investigation has found that UK Biobank opened up its vast biomedical database to insurance sector firms several times between 2020 and 2023. The data was provided to insurance consultancy and tech firms for projects to create digital tools that help insurers predict a person’s risk of getting a chronic disease. The findings have raised concerns among geneticists, data privacy experts and campaigners over vetting and ethical checks at Biobank.’

UK owners of smart home devices being asked for swathes of personal data

The Guardian 07.09.23

Data gathering has become a lucrative side hustle for most companies:

‘Owners of smart home devices are being asked for swathes of personal data that is then potentially shared with social media firms such as TikTok, research has found… The consumer group analysed the data collection practices of popular brands behind a range of smart devices. Experts looked at what information they require to set up an account, what data permissions their apps request and what activity marketing companies are tracking on people’s products. Every brand looked at required exact location data as well as an approximate one, despite this arguably not being necessary for the functionality of the product. For smart cameras and doorbells, Which? found Ezviz devices, sold by major high-street retailers including Argos, had by far the most tracking firms active. This included TikTok’s business marketing unit, Pangle, Huawei, as well as Google and Meta.’

OpenAI’s hunger for data is coming back to bite it

Technology Review 19.04.23

Just as with Clearview, unethical and parasitic theft of human data will not bode well for ChatGPT:

‘In the past few weeks, several Western data protection authorities have started investigations into how OpenAI collects and processes the data powering ChatGPT. They believe it has scraped people’s personal data, such as names or email addresses, and used it without their consent.  The Italian authority has blocked the use of ChatGPT as a precautionary measure, and French, German, Irish, and Canadian data regulators are also investigating how the OpenAI system collects and uses data. The European Data Protection Board, the umbrella organization for data protection authorities, is also setting up an EU-wide task force to coordinate investigations and enforcement around ChatGPT… If OpenAI cannot convince the authorities its data use practices are legal, it could be banned in specific countries or even the entire European Union. It could also face hefty fines and might even be forced to delete models and the data used to train them, says Alexis Leautier, an AI expert at the French data protection agency CNIL. OpenAI’s violations are so flagrant that it’s likely that this case will end up in the Court of Justice of the European Union, the EU’s highest court, says Lilian Edwards, an internet law professor at Newcastle University. It could take years before we see an answer to the questions posed by the Italian data regulator…

OpenAI has another problem. The Italian authority says OpenAI is not being transparent about how it collects users’ data during the post-training phase, such as in chat logs of their interactions with ChatGPT.  “What’s really concerning is how it uses data that you give it in the chat,” says Leautier. People tend to share intimate, private information with the chatbot, telling it about things like their mental state, their health, or their personal opinions. Leautier says it is problematic if there’s a risk that ChatGPT regurgitates this sensitive data to others. And under European law, users need to be able to get their chat log data deleted, he adds.  OpenAI is going to find it near-impossible to identify individuals’ data and remove it from its models, says Margaret Mitchell, an AI researcher and chief ethics scientist at startup Hugging Face, who was formerly Google’s AI ethics co-lead.’

U.S. and China wage war beneath the waves – over internet cables

Reuters 24.03.23

The war for data is happening under the sea:

‘Across the globe, there are more than 400 cables running along the seafloor, carrying over 95% of all international internet traffic, according to TeleGeography, a Washington-based telecommunications research firm. These data conduits, which transmit everything from emails and banking transactions to military secrets, are vulnerable to sabotage attacks and espionage, a U.S. government official and two security analysts told Reuters…  Eavesdropping is a worry too. Spy agencies can readily tap into cables landing on their territory. Justin Sherman, a fellow at the Cyber Statecraft Initiative of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, told Reuters that undersea cables were “a surveillance gold mine” for the world’s intelligence agencies.  “When we talk about U.S.-China tech competition, when we talk about espionage and the capture of data, submarine cables are involved in every aspect of those rising geopolitical tensions,” Sherman said.'

Data collection during COVID-19 normalized surveillance, says civil liberties organization

Biometric Update 20.12.22

The emergency measures which had been gleefully adopted during the covid 19 pandemic, have been, and will continue to be, the gift that keeps on giving:

‘The COVID-19 pandemic spread more than just viral infection, with trends in surveillance presenting new concerns about personal data risk and other potential abuses, according to a new report by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO).  As summarized in a post from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), a member organization of INCLO, “Under Surveillance: (Mis)Use of Technology in Emergency Responses” outlines five overarching trends in surveillance during the pandemic, and attendant concerns about misuse of the technologies in question.  Personal data collection became part of the effort to neutralize COVID-19, with private tech organizations playing an outsized role in many processes. “During the pandemic companies cooperated with governments to develop contact-tracing apps and tools and engaged in data-sharing agreements that were often murky,” says the CCLA. INCLO also expressed concern about what it means for democratic oversight when companies such as Apple and Google are large enough to dictate protocols in responding to a global public health crisis.  Furthermore, said INCLO, existing technologies that were repurposed on the fly may not have had the necessary oversight. And in general, the period saw an increased normalization and entrenchment of mass biometric surveillance as a part of life.’

Inside Fog Data Science, the Secretive Company Selling Mass Surveillance to Local Police

Electronic Frontier Foundation 31.08.22

Data brokers are doing well:

‘The kind of data that Fog sells to law enforcement originates from third-party apps on smartphones. Apps that have permission to collect a user’s location can share that data with third-party advertisers or data brokers in exchange for extra ad revenue or direct payouts. Downstream, data brokers collect data from many different apps, then link the different data streams to individual devices using advertising identifiers. Data brokers often sell to other data brokers, obfuscating the sources of their data and the terms on which it was collected. Eventually, huge quantities of data can end up in the hands of actors with the power of state violence: police, intelligence agencies, and the military.  Over the past few years, journalists have uncovered several links between private brokers of app-derived location data and the US government. Babel Street, best known for its open-source intelligence (OSINT) tools for analyzing social media and the like, sells location data as part of a secret add-on service called “Locate X.” Venntel, a subsidiary of marketing data company Gravy Analytics, has sold raw location data to several different US agencies, including ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the FBI. And broker X-Mode paid app developers around 3 cents per user per month for access to location data, then sold it directly to defense contractors.  Enter Fog Data Science. Like the other companies, Fog buys data from the private market and packages it for use by law enforcement. Unlike most others, Fog seems to target smaller agencies. Venntel has sold a year’s worth of data to the Department of Homeland Security for more than $650,000; meanwhile, Fog sold its service to the sheriff of Washington County, OH, for $9,000 a year. While Venntel, Babel Street, and Anomaly 6 have made headlines for dealings with three-letter federal agencies, public records show that Fog appears to have targeted its business at local, regional, and state law enforcement. That is, Fog sells its services to police agencies that most Americans are far more likely to interact with than federal law enforcement. The records received by EFF confirm past or ongoing contractual relationships with at least 18 state and local law enforcement clients; several other agencies took advantage of free trials of Fog’s service. Notes from one agency’s meeting with Fog state that the company works with “50-60” agencies nationwide…  

The market for app-derived location data is massive. Dozens of companies actively buy and sell this data with assistance from thousands more. Many of them put raw data up for sale on the open market. And at least a handful of companies sell this kind of data to the federal government. Despite this, Fog Data Science is the only company EFF is aware of that sells individualized location data to state and local law enforcement in the United States.’

TikTok’s ties to China: why concerns over your data are here to stay

The Guardian 08.11.22

Social media is not the only data hoarder.  Just look up at all FR cameras in retail shops in the UK:

‘“It’s less about TikTok and more about the Chinese Communist party,” said James Lewis, a senior vice-president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US thinktank. “The CCP is unscrupulous and opportunistic when it comes to spying, so distrust is more than justified.”  “Social media pages are a great source of personal detail” for spy agencies, Lewis says, adding that intelligence is now a “big data” game.’

Who Is Collecting Data from Your Car?

The Markup 27.07.22

That would be anyone who stands to make a profit - privacy rights be damned:

‘The Markup has identified 37 companies that are part of the rapidly growing connected vehicle data industry that seeks to monetize such data in an environment with few regulations governing its sale or use.  While many of these companies stress they are using aggregated or anonymized data, the unique nature of location and movement data increases the potential for violations of user privacy…  These data points are processed by the car’s computers and transmitted via cellular radio back to the car manufacturer’s servers.   As the trip continues, additional information is collected: the vehicle location and speed, whether the brakes are applied, which song is playing on the entertainment system, whether the headlights are on or the oil level is low.   The data then begins its own journey from the car manufacturer to companies known as “vehicle data hubs” and on through the connected vehicle data marketplace…  Cyphers said the amount of personal data collected in combination with a lack of regulations for its sale and use is troubling. “When you see the volume of data that’s up for sale, and the lack of regulation in the vast majority of American states regarding how companies can use data, it seems like a match made in privacy hell.”’

Palantir: Trump-backer’s data firm that wants access to your NHS records

The Guardian 21.06.22

Seriously bad news if bid is won by this very shady and sinister company:

‘According to a document sent to potential bidders for the five-year contract, it will “provide access to real-time data to enable decision-making to better coordinate care”. Speaking at London Tech Week last week, the health secretary, Sajid Javid, said: “This is the perfect moment to bring data together and reap the benefits.”…  But the prospect of it setting up an overarching data platform for NHS England has alarmed Foxglove, a UK legal campaign group that focuses on accountability in the technology industry. Foxglove’s concerns, and those of similar organisations, centre on two aspects: the safety of patient data, and the nature of the company that will set up the data framework and seek to exploit it.  “A firm like that has no place being the ‘operating system for the NHS’ – period,” says Cori Crider, a director at Foxglove, who adds that the company “makes no secret of its desire to keep profiting from war and surveillance”…  Phil Booth, founder of medConfidential, which campaigns for confidentiality in healthcare, says Palantir is the favourite for the contract because it already carries out some of the work envisioned in the FDP.  “Palantir is already doing many of the things which are going to be done by the platform. To move away from something that is already deeply embedded into NHS England’s systems would be a significant shift.”  He adds that it is “crazy” to amalgamate such a wide variety of NHS functions into a single monolithic system.

“NHS England proposes swapping out all of the complex data flows across a whole host of life-critical systems just by buying one company’s product off the shelf. This single platform, the idea of one thing to rule them all, is odd. You cannot just slap in all the data and expect the entire ecosystem’s architectures to align and integrate.”…  The head of Palantir’s London office is Louis Mosley, grandson of Oswald Mosley and nephew of the late former president of Formula One’s governing body, Max Mosley, who became a privacy campaigner later in life. Speaking to the Sunday Times in 2020, Louis Mosley said Palantir’s origins were as a defender of personal privacy. “Palantir was actually started to guard against government overreach into personal privacy. Much of the software we’ve built is to prove those kinds of protections.”’

Is ‘fake data’ the real deal when training algorithms?

The Guardian 18.06.22

Data evidence is veering into a fabricated reality, which can only increase data manipulations mushrooming into a modelled universe:

‘“Big data” defines the field of AI for a reason. To train deep learning algorithms accurately, the models need to have a multitude of data points. That creates problems for a task such as recognising a person falling asleep at the wheel, which would be difficult and time-consuming to film happening in thousands of cars. Instead, companies have begun building virtual datasets.  Synthesis AI and Datagen are two companies using full-body 3D scans, including detailed face scans, and motion data captured by sensors placed all over the body, to gather raw data from real people. This data is fed through algorithms that tweak various dimensions many times over to create millions of 3D representations of humans, resembling characters in a video game, engaging in different behaviours across a variety of simulations…  The big sell for the synthetic data approach is that it’s quicker and cheaper by a wide margin. But these companies also claim it can help tackle the bias that creates a huge headache for AI developers. It’s well documented that some AI facial recognition software is poor at recognising and correctly identifying particular demographic groups. This tends to be because these groups are underrepresented in the training data, meaning the software is more likely to misidentify these people.’

Latest statistics on England mortality data suggest systematic mis-categorisation of vaccine status and uncertain effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccination

ResearchGate December 2021

Amazing how one set of data can be used to misdirect the narrative over vaccine effectiveness.  This phenomenon is not restricted to the UK alone:

‘At first glance the ONS data suggest that, in each of the older age groups, all-cause mortality is lower in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. Despite this apparent evidence to support vaccine effectiveness-at least for the older age groups-on closer inspection of this data, this conclusion is cast into doubt because of a range of fundamental inconsistencies and anomalies in the data. Whatever the explanations for the observed data, it is clear that it is both unreliable and misleading. While socio-demographical and behavioural differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated have been proposed as possible explanations, there is no evidence to support any of these. By Occam's razor we believe the most likely explanations are systemic miscategorisation of deaths between the different categories of unvaccinated and vaccinated; delayed or non-reporting of vaccinations; systemic underestimation of the proportion of unvaccinated; and/or incorrect population selection for Covid deaths.’

Facebook Doesn’t Know What It Does With Your Data, Or Where It Goes: Leaked Document

Vice 26.04.22

Data troves collected by Facebook disappear into the ether, according to the company, which may help them evade regulatory requirements:

‘“We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as ‘we will not use X data for Y purpose.’ And yet, this is exactly what regulators expect us to do, increasing our risk of mistakes and misrepresentation,” the document read. (Motherboard retyped the document from scratch to protect a source.)   In other words, even Facebook’s own engineers admit that they are struggling to make sense and keep track of where user data goes once it’s inside Facebook’s systems, according to the document. This problem inside Facebook is known as “data lineage.”…  “Facebook has a general idea of how many bits of data are stored in its data centers,” he said in an online chat. “The where [the data] goes part is, broadly speaking, a complete shitshow.”  “It is a damning admission, but also offers Facebook legal cover because of how much it would cost Facebook to fix this mess,” he added. “It gives them the excuse for keeping that much private data simply because at their scale and with their business model and infrastructure design they can plausibly claim that they don't know what they have.”…  Privacy experts who have been fighting against Facebook in an attempt to limit how the company uses private data say they believe the document is an admission that it cannot comply with regulations.  “This document admits what we long suspected: that there is a data free-for-all inside Facebook, and that the company has no control whatsoever over the data it holds,” Johnny Ryan, a privacy activist and senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, told Motherboard in an online chat. “It is a black and white recognition of the absence of any data protection. Facebook details how it breaks each principle of data protection law. Everything it does to our data is illegal. You’re not allowed to have an internal data free-for-all.”’

Your connected car knows you. The tussle for that data's hitting high gear

Reuters 14.03.22

Another market to be mined, revealing who you are:

‘Companies in Europe and beyond are vying for control of the crown jewels of the connected car era: your vehicle's data.  The contest is entering a pivotal phase as EU regulators look to hammer out the world's first laws for the ballooning industry around web-enabled vehicles, pitting carmakers against a coalition of insurers, leasing companies and repair shops…  Many companies view data as the gold of the new wired world, though for some it's more akin to air or water.  "If you don't have access to data in the future, eventually you'll be squeezed out," says Tim Albertsen, CEO of ALD , Societe Generale's (SOGN.PA) car leasing division, which commands millions of vehicles…  "Europe's auto industry is committed to giving access to the data generated by the vehicles it produces," said a spokesperson for the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA). "However, uncontrolled access to in-vehicle data poses major safety, (cyber) security, data protection and privacy threats.”…  

Vehicle manufacturers have big plans for data.  For example Stellantis (STLA.MI), the world's No. 4 carmaker, expects to generate 20 billion euros ($22.4 billion) annually by 2030 from software products and subscription services. Such offerings are also central to General Motors' (GM.N) plan to double annual revenue to around $280 billion. read more  Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) said data is becoming the "key source of value creation and innovation", adding that customers have "full control" over it, citing vehicle security and customer sovereignty as its main focuses.  BMW rejected suggestions it was withholding data.  The German company said it can share nearly 100 data points with third parties if drivers requested it and could make more available if companies prove a real business need for them and a willingness to take responsibility for cybersecurity risks. Auto supplier groups like FIGIEFA say carmakers can access thousands of data points…  "There is a need to regulate this, as you cannot leave this in the hands of car manufacturers," said Nicolas Jeanmart, industry group Insurance Europe's head of personal and general insurance. "It should be for each driver to decide what they want to do with their data.”'

What is the quantum apocalypse and should we be scared?

BBC 27.01.22

Yes we should be scared as most aspects of our lives are digitised:

‘A number of countries, including the US, China, Russia and the UK, are working hard and investing huge sums of money to develop these super-fast quantum computers with a view to gaining strategic advantage in the cyber-sphere.  Every day vast quantities of encrypted data - including yours and mine - are being harvested without our permission and stored in data banks, ready for the day when the data thieves' quantum computers are powerful enough to decrypt it.  "Everything we do over the internet today," says Harri Owen, chief strategy officer at the company PostQuantum, "from buying things online, banking transactions, social media interactions, everything we do is encrypted.  "But once a functioning quantum computer appears that will be able to break that encryption... it can almost instantly create the ability for whoever's developed it to clear bank accounts, to completely shut down government defence systems - Bitcoin wallets will be drained.”'

A data ‘black hole’: Europol ordered to delete vast store of personal data

The Guardian 10.01.22

The data collection by Europe’s data agency will soon equal that of the NSA’s:

‘The EU’s police agency, Europol, will be forced to delete much of a vast store of personal data that it has been found to have amassed unlawfully by the bloc’s data protection watchdog. The unprecedented finding from the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) targets what privacy experts are calling a “big data ark” containing billions of points of information. Sensitive data in the ark has been drawn from crime reports, hacked from encrypted phone services and sampled from asylum seekers never involved in any crime…  The confrontation pits the EU data protection watchdog against a powerful security agency being primed to become the centre of machine learning and AI in policing.  The ruling also exposes deep political divisions among Europe’s decision-makerson the trade-offs between security and privacy. The eventual outcome of their face-off has implications for the future of privacy in Europe and beyond…  

Eric Topfer, a surveillance expert at the German Institute for Human Rights, has studied the proposed new Europol regulation and said it foresees the agency pulling in data directly from banks, airlines, private companies and emails. “If Europol will only have to ask for certain kinds of information to have them served on a silver platter, then we are moving closer to having an NSA-like agency.”…  The struggle with EDPS over data storage is the latest evidence of Europol favouring technosolutions to security concerns over privacy rights. Europol’s boss, previously Belgium’s top cop, co-wrote an op-ed in July 2021 which argued that the needs of law enforcement agencies to extract evidence from smartphones should trump privacy considerations. The article argues for a legal right to the keys to all encryption services.  No mention was made of Pegasus spyware revelations that showed that many governments, including some in Europe, were actively attempting to intercept the communications of human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers for whom encryption offers their only protection.'

Facebook’s Data Center Plans Rile Residents in the Netherlands

Wired 07.01.21

The road to a digital world is far from being climate-friendly:

‘Microsoft built the first hyperscale in the Netherlands in 2015. Since then, two more have been built, and that number is expected to grow, according to trade group the Dutch Data Center Association. But Meta’s plan for the Zeewolde site, known as Tractor Field 4, is by far the biggest yet. It would span 166 hectares, the equivalent of more than 1,300 Olympic swimming pools, and would devour 1,380 gigawatt-hours of energy a year, at least double what the municipality’s 22,000 residents consume in the same period.’

Report – Legal Loopholes and Data for Dollars: How Law Enforcement and Intelligence Agencies Are Buying Your Data from Brokers

CDT 09.12.21

Data brokers are raking it in with no regulatory oversight while authorities are fully exploiting this pattern:

‘We found significant evidence of agencies exploiting loopholes in existing law by purchasing data from private data brokers. The practice has prompted scrutiny from government watchdogs as well as members of Congress (Tau, 2021a; Wyden, 2021)... This data is aggregated by companies called ‘data brokers’ that typically lack any direct relationship with the individuals whose data they collect and sell, but may accumulate personal data from multiple sources with varying degrees of granularity, ranging from anonymized trends to the specific locations of individuals at specific times. Advertisers, retailers, and other companies may then seek access to data for varied commercial purposes.’

Why hide what happens in the first two weeks after vaccination?

HART 01.12.21

Data interpretation is a tool serving a political narrative totally divorced from facts:

‘There have been numerous papers published showing how well the vaccines protect people after the second dose. Some of this effect is an illusion…  With covid vaccination there is a two week period after vaccination that is not included in the data. The rationale given for this is that vaccines take a while to induce antibodies and therefore the first two weeks’ data are not relevant. Obviously this is flawed. What if the vaccines have deleterious effects that are visible straightaway, that have nothing to do with antibody production? An example is the high rate of shingles seen after covid vaccination, suggesting there is a problem with viral reactivation. This may explain why Sars-CoV-2 infection rates are actually higher in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated in the first two weeks after vaccination.  The effect of eliminating the first two weeks is a misleading data bias. If people become infected and are dying during that period, this needs to be included. The possibility that the vaccine itself may exert an effect on infection rate cannot be overlooked and the entire dataset needs to be included in order to accurately assess effectiveness. By only measuring the period after the higher risk of infection (0-14 days) it is possible to be deceived. Any signal would be missed.’

Amazon wages secret war on Americans' privacy, documents show

Reuters 19.11.21

Disgusting practices by this particular tech behemoth:

‘This story is based on a Reuters review of hundreds of internal Amazon documents and interviews with more than 70 lobbyists, advocates, policymakers and their staffers involved in legislation Amazon targeted, along with 10 former Amazon public-policy and legal employees. It is the third in a series of reports revealing how the company has pursued business practices that harm small businesses or put its own interests above those of consumers. The previous articles showed how Amazon has circumvented e-commerce regulations meant to protect Indian retailers, and how it copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands over those of other vendors on its India platform…. The data Amazon amasses includes Alexa voice recordings; videos from home-camera systems; personal health data from fitness trackers; and data on consumers’ web-searching and buying habits from its e-commerce business…

Amazon categorized officials by their strategic importance, according to the 2014 document. The highest tier included leaders in Congress and in the legislatures of two key states: California and Washington, where Amazon fought privacy legislation. Such VIPs (“Very Important Policymakers”) should be targeted for meetings, Amazon site visits or campaign donations at least annually… The company also gave public-policy staffers a mobile app enabling them to look up the number of Amazon employees in a given politician’s electoral district, the three former employees said. Company lobbyists would open lawmaker meetings with such figures, which two of the employees said carried an implied threat: These are jobs Amazon can take away. One called job creation the public-policy team’s “fundamental bargaining chip.”

Facebook and Google’s new plan? Own the internet

Wired 07.10.21

To truly own the internet, you need to own the cables which data runs through:

‘The world’s biggest owner of cables is a household name, at least to Americans – it’s AT&T, which has a stake in around 230,000 kilometres of international internet cabling, or around one sixth of the total. But looking at others in the top ten reveals why both Big Tech and Western governments are starting to pay the apparently dull issue of cable ownership more attention: in second place is China Telecom, while Chunghwa Telecom (based in Taiwan) is third and China Unicorn is sixth.  In the tenth and eleventh spots, however, are some very familiar names: Facebook and Google. Big Tech is getting into big cables – and doing so in a big way. Over the past few years, 80 percent of investment in new cables has flowed from the two US tech giants. As of today, Facebook owns or co-owns 99,399 kilometres of cables, Google 95,876 kilometres. And more investments are on their way: in August, Facebook and Google announced their plans for building a 12,000 kilometre undersea cable, Apricot, which will link Singapore, Japan, Guam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Indonesia when completed in 2024. For Google, that came hot on the heels of a previous announcement about the Echo subsea cable, which will connect California, Singapore, Guam and Indonesia. For its part, Facebook has thrown its weight behind the coalition of telcos building what might turn out to be the longest subsea cable ever: 2Africa, a 45,000 kilometre-long cord planned to encompass the whole African continent and connect 33 countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle-East by 2024. In May 2020 Bloomberg reported that the project will cost under $1 billion – but that was before Facebook announced several expansions to the initial design.'

Web Scrapers Claim to Possess and Sell Personal Data on 1.5 Billion Facebook Users on a Hacker Forum

Privacy Affairs 04.10.21

Clearview did it with images and now ‘scrapers’ are in for a very lucrative market:

‘The traders claim to have obtained the data by scraping rather than hacking or compromising individual users’ accounts. Scraping is a process of web data extraction or harvesting where publicly available data is accessed and organized into lists and databases.  While technically, no accounts have been compromised, this is little solace to those whose data may now end up in the hands of unscrupulous internet marketers and likely also in the hands of cybercriminals.  Unethical marketers may utilize this data to bombard specific individuals or groups of individuals with unsolicited advertising.  The fact that phone numbers, real-life location, and users’ full names are included in the data is especially concerning. In addition, SMS and Push notification spam are becoming increasingly more prevalent even though most countries made these practices illegal many years ago.'

Amazon launches robot to roll around house, Disney resort voice assistant

Reuters 29.09.21

Squeezing that extra visual data from the inside of the home, the horrid robot joins Alexa for an additional ‘home invasion’:

‘The home robot is designed to take up tasks such as home monitoring, setting up routines and reminders, and can play music and TV shows while rolling around the house.  The device, which has digital eyes on a rotating screen mounted on wheels, is available at an introductory invite-only price of $999.99 and regular price of $1,449.99.’

Project Liberty is a decentralized internet project funded by billionaire Frank McCourt

Reclaim the Net 24.09.21

Good luck McCourt.  Just make sure you have a say in which servers this data is being stored:

‘The solution, according to McCourt, is building a “civic architecture” using blockchain technology, which he described as a “gift to humanity.” The blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin and other crypto assets, decentralizes data by storing it across a large network of computers.  The first step of McCourt’s plan is the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP) that developers would use to create social media services and apps. Users would have the option to share their data with the developer but also have the option to remove such permissions at any time…

“Project Liberty is a campaign with an idea to solve this problem that doesn’t rely on controlling and stifling innovation,” he says.  “We think tech is a big part of the problem, but we believe totally that tech needs to be part of the solution.”’

How Hamburg became Europe’s unlikely data protection trailblazer

Wired 20.09.21

We need loads more people like Johannes Caspar:

‘“Even though his office is comparatively small, Caspar has been more proactive than many other data protection authorities,” says Jan Penfrat, a senior policy adviser at the European Digital Rights, or EDRi, network. “That has a lot to do with how he acquired this status. He hasn't shied away from going after the big guys. Other data privacy authorities could have done the same but didn’t.”'

NHS app storing facial verification data via contract with firm linked to Tory donors

The Guardian 15.09.21

Covid passports are definitely the gateway to digital IDs.  Facial recognition is now part of the increasing biometric data collection for the NHS:

‘Cori Crider, director of Foxglove, a team of lawyers investigating the misuse of technology, said : “So long as this system to log into the NHS app is optional then it may be fine but officials definitely shouldn’t be ‘nudging’ patients to log in with their faces to access healthcare.  “We should all also reflect on whether we’re heading towards a world where people have to use their faces just to walk into the supermarket or the pharmacy or the nightclub.”  Dr Stephanie Hare said: “Once this stuff is brought in, it’s very difficult to get rid of. It’s the thin end of the wedge and Covid is an opportunity for companies to get a foothold.”

Walgreens leaving Covid-19 test recipients’ data unprotected is a reminder that we can’t blindly trust ‘infallible’ tech

RT 14.09.21

Helen Buyniski asks why we are constantly having to trust tech giants with our data.  With the impending spectre of vaccine passports, breaches are bound to multiply:

‘With the fall of hundreds of thousands of small businesses under Covid-19 economic shutdowns, the issue of unaccountable ‘too big to jail’ megacorporations has only become more urgent. As these giant companies merge their databases, there is a risk of security flaws multiplying until hackers are literally able to wear our identities like skin suits as they walk down the streets, spoofing our faces to facial recognition cameras, our fingerprints to unlock our phones, and our very blood to cross national borders.   Crossing our fingers and hoping for the best isn’t going to cut it anymore. We must approach technological solutions with the same suspicion we would level at any carnival huckster. Humanity has allowed itself to be dazzled by technologies it doesn’t understand for far too long, and we’re nearing the point of no return.’

WhatsApp Faces 267M Fine for breaching Europe’s GDPR

TechCrunch 02.09.21

It may not be a significant amount to cough up but it sends a message that Facebook may not get away with bending rules:

‘The Facebook-owned messaging app has been under investigation by the Irish DPC, its lead data supervisor in the European Union, since December 2018 — several months after the first complaints were fired at WhatsApp over how it processes user data under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), once it begun being applied in May 2018…  A key principle of the GDPR is that entities which are processing people’s data must be clear, open and honest with those people about how their information will be used.  The DPC’s decision today (which runs to a full 266 pages) concludes that WhatsApp failed to live up to the standard required by the GDPR.  Its enquiry considered whether or not WhatsApp fulfils transparency obligations to both users and non-users of its service (WhatsApp may, for example, upload the phone numbers of non-users if a user agrees to it ingesting their phone book which contains other people’s personal data); as well as looking at the transparency the platform offers over its sharing of data with its parent entity Facebook (a highly controversial issue at the time the privacy U-turn was announced back in 2016, although it predated GDPR being applied).’

China’s coming data laws leave firms with more questions than answers

Reuters 27.08.21

Mistrust between countries goes both ways:

'The data security law, which goes into effect on Sept. 1, requires all companies in China to classify the data they handle into several categories and governs how such data is stored and transferred to other parties.  Key categories include "national core data" and "important data", for which mishandling could carry a penalties of up to 10 million yuan or even a criminal charge. But the government has not yet provided definitions for these or given further details on what type of data may fall into which category, lawyers say.  For example, the law says only that companies looking to transfer "important data" overseas must perform a security assessment each time…  The legal moves reflect Beijing's growing concern over the mountains of data private firms have amassed and whether such information could be at risk of attack and misuse, especially by foreign states.’

NHS data grab on hold as millions opt out

The Guardian 22.08.21

Given a chance, people will tell data lords to take a hike.  Now millions in the UK will be spent to allay fears and concerns about this serious intrusion into their private records:

‘More than a million people opted out of NHS data-sharing in one month in a huge backlash against government plans to make patient data available to private companies, the Observer can reveal…  “We became aware of this latest GP [data] grab in late March,” said Phil Booth, coordinator of medConfidential, one of the groups most critical of the scheme. “We said ‘well that’s just going to blow up’ … and then it did blow up, exactly as we predicted.  “People do care about their GP records and their medical confidentiality. And there is a simple straightforward thing that they can do, which is to tell their GP ‘please don’t let my data be used in this way’.”’

The Taliban Have Seized U.S. Military Biometrics Devices

The Intercept 17.08.21

The witch-hunts will soon begin after data trove of US empire’s ‘collaborators’ falls into the hands of the opposition:

‘The Taliban have seized U.S. military biometrics devices that could aid in the identification of Afghans who assisted coalition forces, current and former military officials have told The Intercept.  The devices, known as HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, were seized last week during the Taliban’s offensive, according to a Joint Special Operations Command official and three former U.S. military personnel, all of whom worried that sensitive data they contain could be used by the Taliban. HIIDE devices contain identifying biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints, as well as biographical information, and are used to access large centralized databases. It’s unclear how much of the U.S. military’s biometric database on the Afghan population has been compromised…  But the U.S. didn’t only collect information about criminals and terrorists; the government appears to also have been collecting biometrics from Afghans assisting diplomatic efforts, in addition to those working with the military. For example, a recent job posting by a State Department contractor sought to recruit a biometric technician with experience using HIIDE and other similar equipment to help vet personnel and enroll local Afghans seeking employment at U.S. embassies and consulates.  The federal government has collected biometric data from Afghans despite knowing the risks entailed by maintaining large databases of personal information, especially given recent cyberattacks on government agencies and private companies. These efforts are continuing to expand.’

No need to swap data for drinks, says privacy body

BBC 17.08.21

The amount of data being gathered in UK pubs is more valuable than the drinks you’re ordering:

‘App and web-based ordering has become commonplace during the pandemic.  But the Information Commissioner's Office told the BBC that customers should be aware they had a choice over whether to share information.  Venues should only ask for data that is "relevant and necessary", the ICO said.  "I think it's too easy to upload an app and straight away put your name, email address, payment details in, without actually understanding fully where that information may be shared and why it's being used," said Suzanne Gordon, director of data protection at the ICO.  "Ultimately this is your data, it's your personal information and you need to be confident when you're handing it over and the reasons why”…  Over the last year, lots of businesses have suddenly got a mountain of information about their customers that they didn't have access to before. Your local knows your name, an email address, maybe your date of birth, maybe your home address.   For the bar or pub, that's incredibly valuable information, worth much more than the round you just bought. It tells them what you like drinking, what time you're likely to visit, who you were sitting with and how frequently you reorder.   Perhaps you're not bothered about the offers and discounts sent by them, but you might be more annoyed by calls from other companies, which could be in the small print of the app. Car insurance companies would be very interested in how much and how frequently you drink, while any number of other businesses would love to get hold of your mobile number.’ 

Former Google Employee Tells Russell Brand: Big Tech ‘Stripmining Brains for Profit’

Children’s Health Defence 13.08.21

Brilliant interview with Tristan Harris, of ‘The Social Dilemma:

‘In a clip from his “Under the Skin” podcast, Brand spoke with Tristan Harris, a former Google employee featured in the Netflix film, “The Social Dilemma” and founder of the Center for Humane Technology, about how our attention and free will are being turned into a product and mined by the most powerful businesses in the world.  When it comes to social media, Harris said people aren’t customers — they are the product. Social media giants are “stripmining our brains for profit,” he said.  “Your mind is the very thing that’s being stripmined for extraction,” said Harris. “We are worth more when our free will or consciousness is turned into dead slabs of predictable human behavior.”’

China’s gene giant harvests data from millions of women

Reuters 07.07.21

Whoever owns the data is king.  Now, western researchers and governments are scrutinising  China’s huge genetic bank, having willingly bought into its system previously:

‘A Chinese gene company selling prenatal tests around the world developed them in collaboration with the country's military and is using them to collect genetic data from millions of women for sweeping research on the traits of populations, a Reuters review of scientific papers and company statements found…  BGI is one of about half a dozen major providers of the tests, more generally known as non-invasive prenatal tests (NIPT), which women take about 10 weeks into a pregnancy to capture DNA from the placenta in the woman’s bloodstream. Its tests are marketed in at least 13 European Union countries, including Germany, Spain and Denmark, as well as in Britain, Canada, Australia, Thailand, India and Pakistan. They are not sold in the United States.  However, the company is a pivotal player in a genomics race between China and the United States. In its latest annual report, it said it “has been working hard to promote Chinese technology, Chinese experience and Chinese standards to ‘go global.’”’

Advertisers Are Selling Americans' Data to Hundreds of Shady Businesses Abroad

Gizmodo 29.06.21

Who cares about clients as long as the profits are in?:

‘Senator Ron Wyden has released a list of hundreds of secretive, foreign-owned companies that are buying up Americans’ data. Some of the customers include companies based in states that are ostensibly “unfriendly” to the U.S., like Russia and China.  First reported by Motherboard, the news comes after recent information requests made by a bipartisan coalition of Senators, who asked prominent advertising exchanges to provide a transparent list of any “foreign-headquartered or foreign-majority owned” firms to whom they sell consumer “bidstream data.” Such data is typically collected, bought, and sold amidst the intricate advertising ecosystem, which uses “real-time bidding” to monetize consumer preferences and interests…  In response to the information requests, most companies seem to have responded with vague, evasive answers. However, advertising firm Magnite has provided a list of over 150 different companies it sells to while declining to note which countries they are based in. Wyden’s staff spent time researching the companies and Motherboard reports that the list includes the likes of Adfalcon—a large ad firm based in Dubai that calls itself the “first mobile advertising network in the Middle East”—as well as Chinese companies like Adtiming and Mobvista International.   Magnite’s response further shows that the kinds of data it provides to these companies may include all sorts of user information—including age, name, and the site names and domains they visit, device identifiers, IP address, and other information that would help any discerning observer piece together a fairly comprehensive picture of who you are, where you’re located, and what you’re interested in.’

UK government plans to collect and share NHS data are hugely concerning – here’s why

The Conversation 15.06.21

Underhand tactics deployed by the UK government to cash in on US-style healthcare data mining:

‘The GP records of England’s 61 million NHS users are set to be gathered into a new database which third parties will be able to access. The new data-sharing scheme, called General Practice Data for Planning and Research (GPDPR), will “pseudnoymise” the patient data it collects and shares. NHS Digital claims this will mean the data will remain confidential when it’s accessed by academics and the healthcare industry for use in research and health planning…  Critics see it as a “data grab” taking place under the cover of a pandemic, with one academic labelling the scheme’s guarantees of anonymity “worthless”, given how easy it is to identify people via their medical histories…  In November 2015, the health records of NHS patients held by the Royal Free London Trust were transferred, without explicit consent from patients and in a way found not to fully comply with the UK’s Data Protection Act, to Google DeepMind. Around the same time, personal data from NHS patients were shared with the Home Office to trace individuals tagged as “potential immigration offenders”.  In 2019, it was revealed that international pharmaceutical companies had obtained access to NHS patient data. More recently, the involvement of big data company Palantir in the NHS COVID-19 datastore has generated significant controversy…  There also remain significant privacy concerns. Research has shown that “anonymised” data can never be truly anonymous, and that there exist techniques and methods that can be used to re-identify people in anonymised datasets like the one proposed by NHS Digital.’

GPs warn over plans to share patient data with third parties in England

The Guardian 30.05.21

The confidentiality rule between GPs and patients will soon be eroded and data given away to third parties:

‘Critics have voiced concerns over the NHS Digital plans, which would put the medical histories of more than 55 million patients into a database available to academic and commercial third parties for research and planning purposes. Privacy campaigners have already spoken out against the proposals, which include sharing anonymised mental and sexual health data, criminal records, and more sensitive information. The records would be scraped from every patient in England registered to a GP clinic by NHS Digital, which runs the country’s healthcare IT systems. The Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK), a campaigning and lobbying organisation comprised of doctors, said it was concerned this would “erode the doctor/patient relationship, leaving patients reluctant to share their problems due to fears of where their data will be shared”. Dr Ellen Welch, a GP and the editorial leader of DAUK, said: “NHS Digital has failed to publicise this adequately to patients or healthcare staff, and we feel more time is needed to explain to patients how exactly their data will be used, who will benefit from it and what implications it may have for individuals.”’

Google’s plans to bring AI to education make its dominance in classrooms more alarming

Fast Company 28.05.21

Are there any more sectors that Google won’t go into to suck data?:

‘“As more teachers use Classroom as their ‘hub’ of learning during the pandemic, many schools are treating it as their learning management system (LMS),” wrote Classroom’s program manager. “While we didn’t set out to create an LMS, Classroom is committed to meeting the evolving needs of schools.” The road map for Classroom as a school LMS was just one plan laid out at its annual Learning with Google conference, which also included the launch of 40 new Chromebook laptop models alongside feature upgrades across its educational products. These developments illustrate an ongoing strategic expansion that Google has been pursuing in education for 15 years, since launching its free software for education in 2006 and low-cost Chromebooks in 2011. Its competitive edge in both school hardware and software has only advanced during the pandemic… Google’s data mining in education has only become more contested. In February 2020, the attorney general of New Mexico filed a lawsuit alleging Google violates the privacy of students who use its Chromebooks and software, in contravention of both federal law and the Student Privacy Pledge to which Google is itself a signatory. Google, claimed the attorney general, had pledged to only collect, maintain, use, and share student data expressly for educational purposes, but was continuing to mine it for commercial purposes…

Controversies over data collection and sharing are likely to intensify with the expansion of Classroom. Research published by a team from universities in Australia and the U.K., to which I contributed recently, highlighted how hundreds of external education technology providers are integrated into Classroom, potentially enabling Google to extend its data extraction practices far beyond the platform… Google has produced the hardware, software, and underlying cloud and data systems on which education systems are increasingly dependent, at scales that cross geographical and political borders and continents. These are technical, ethical, and political issues that should not only be delegated to educators and school leaders to sort out. They need to be addressed at the regulatory level, and through democratic, collective discussion about the future of schools beyond the pandemic.’

Oracle Boasted That Its Software Was Used Against U.S. Protesters. Then It Took the Tech to China.

The Intercept 25.05.21

So much hypocrisy abounds within US’ criticism of China’s surveillance regime:

‘In a recent House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on China, Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., cited Oracle as an example of how U.S. companies enable surveillance overseas. In fact, several of the products that Oracle markets to police abroad were first tested in the United States. Among the products that Oracle pushed in the China documents was Endeca, which allows police to both visualize data and mine social media. The documents describe the software’s use by Chicago police as a pioneering event that paved the way for police adoption elsewhere… Oracle previously denied directly selling software to Chinese police for the explicit purpose of combing through citizens’ data. But it confirmed that the slide decks, which were hosted on its website in February, are genuine. Several of the documents have since been taken down… “Oracle wants to take the money from supplying tools to intelligence agencies, but then they want to argue that they have no culpability for the use,” said Jack Poulson, executive director of the accountability nonprofit Tech Inquiry, who compared the company’s China efforts to Google’s cloud sales to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. “Obviously a company would like to take all of the money they can with as little responsibility as possible. But why are we letting them do that?”’

Microsoft vs Indian Farmers: Agri-Stacking the System

Off-Guardian 19.05.21

Highly controversial agricultural reforms will be used to sidestep farmers:

‘The data giants and e-commerce companies will not only control data about consumption but also hold data on production, logistics, who needs what, when they need it, who should produce it, who should move it and when it should be moved. Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta and traditional agribusiness will work with Microsoft, Google and the big-tech giants to facilitate AI-driven farmerless farms and e-commerce retail dominated by the likes of Amazon and Walmart. A cartel of data owners, proprietary input suppliers and retail concerns at the commanding heights of the economy, peddling toxic industrial food and the devastating health impacts associated with it. And elected representatives? Their role will be highly limited to technocratic overseers of these platforms and the artificial intelligence tools that plan and determine all of the above. As for farmers, many if not most will be forced to leave the sector. Tens of millions unemployed and underemployed ‘collateral damage’ stripped of their means of production. Centuries’ old knowledge of cultivation and cultural practices passed on down the generations – gone. The links between humans and the land reduced to an AI-driven technocratic dystopia in compliance with the tenets of neoliberal capitalism. As it currently stands, AgriStack will help facilitate this end game.’

Facebook faces prospect of ‘devastating’ data transfer ban after Irish ruling

REUTERS 15.05.21

Facebook plans to hoover European data may hopefully get scuppered:

‘Ireland’s data regulator can resume a probe that may trigger a ban on Facebook’s transatlantic data transfers, the High Court ruled on Friday, raising the prospect of a stoppage that the company warns would have a devastating impact on its business. The case stems from EU concerns that U.S. government surveillance may not respect the privacy rights of EU citizens when their personal data is sent to the United States for commercial use. Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), Facebook's lead regulator in the European Union, launched an inquiry in August and issued a provisional order that the main mechanism Facebook uses to transfer EU user data to the United States "cannot in practice be used”. Facebook had challenged both the inquiry and the Preliminary Draft Decision (PDD), saying they threatened "devastating" and "irreversible" consequences for its business, which relies on processing user data to serve targeted online ads. The High Court rejected the challenge on Friday. "I refuse all of the reliefs sought by FBI (Facebook Ireland) and dismiss the claims made by it in the proceedings," Justice David Barniville said in a judgment that ran to nearly 200 pages.’

The world’s data explained: how much we’re producing and where it’s all stored

The Conversation 04.05.21

No doubt the world will soon wake up to the fact that data is the biggest polluting energy consumer of our times:

‘Digital information has become so entrenched in all aspects of our lives and society, that the recent growth in information production appears unstoppable. Each day on Earth we generate 500 million tweets, 294 billion emails, 4 million gigabytes of Facebook data, 65 billion WhatsApp messages and 720,000 hours of new content added daily on YouTube. In 2018, the total amount of data created, captured, copied and consumed in the world was 33 zettabytes (ZB) – the equivalent of 33 trillion gigabytes. This grew to 59ZB in 2020 and is predicted to reach a mind-boggling 175ZB by 2025. One zettabyte is 8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bits… To meet the ever-growing demand for digital data storage, around 100 new hyperscale data centres are built every two years. My recent study examined these trends and concluded that, at a 50% annual growth rate, around 150 years from now the number of digital bits would reach an impossible value, exceeding the number of all atoms on Earth. About 110 years from now, the power required to sustain this digital production will exceed the total planetary power consumption today.’

A secretive Home Office unit has hoarded data on millions of people

WIRED 07.04.21

No transparency or accountability at work in this creepy privacy violation in the UK:

'While a government procurement notice published in January 2020 says the unit has access to commercial databases, data from immigration and border systems, and data from police and intelligence agencies as sources of information, almost all of the specifics were redacted in the Data Privacy Impact Assessment documents made available by the Home Office.   In total, more than 30 data providers are listed in the documents. Only two of these, fraud prevention company GB Group and data analytics firm, Dun & Bradstreet, were not redacted. GB Group acknowledged it provided data to the unit but declined to provide any further details citing “confidentiality obligations”. Dun & Bradstreet says it is against its policy to comment on its work with clients.  “The potential scope of this secret mass data gathering is truly frightening,” says Edin Omanovic, the advocacy director of Privacy International. “Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing you would expect from an intelligence agency, not a little-known department in the Home Office.”’

As scientists learn more about how to manipulate the brain, ethicists say data could one day be collected, sold and exploited

News Trust 29.03.21

Straight-from-the-source harvested data would be commercially exploited if no regulations are in place:

‘Yuste is part of a group of scientists and lawmakers, stretching from Switzerland to Chile, who are working to rein in the potential abuses of neuroscience by companies from tech giants to wearable startups.  Following his team's discovery, he launched the NeuroRights Initiative, which advocates five "neuro-rights" to protect how a person's brain data is accessed and used, including a right to mental privacy and to free will.  In Chile, senate member Guido Girardi is pushing to translate those principles into law, with a bill that would give legal protection to a suit of neuro-rights, and a complementary reform to the country's constitution.  This month, the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research began debating Girardi's proposal, which got unanimous support from parliament in December 2020.  His office hopes the bill will be adopted later in the year.  ”If this technology is industrialized without the proper regulations and rules, it will threaten fundamental human autonomy," he said in a phone interview… In 2018, Ienca published a review of six commercially available "neuromonitoring" headsets in the journal Nature Biotechnology.  He found that the electroencephalography (EEG) data gathered by the devices as they measure electrical activity in the brain could be leaked online, sold to third parties, or subjected to uses that consumers did not consent to.’

Millions of websites offline after fire at French cloud services firm

REUTERS 10.03.21

Sabotage by competitors or pure accident?:

‘A fire at a French cloud services firm has disrupted millions of websites, knocking out government agencies’ portals, banks, shops, news websites and taking out a chunk of the .FR web space, according to internet monitors…  There was no immediate explanation provided for the blaze, which erupted just two days after the French cloud computing firm kicked off plans for an initial public offering…  There was no immediate explanation provided for the blaze, which erupted just two days after the French cloud computing firm kicked off plans for an initial public offering…  Founded by Klaba in 1999, OVHcloud competes against U.S. giants Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Corp’s Azure and Alphabet Inc’s Google Cloud, which dominate the market.  “OVH is a pretty important hosting company on the internet,” said Mike Prettejohn, who directs UK-based network security company Netcraft. He said the affected servers hosted 3.6 million websites, including niche government platforms in France, Britain, Poland and the Ivory Coast.’

Stop Letting Google Get Away With It

Gizmodo 05.03.21

Google tightens its mammoth control of users’ data:

‘What Google does plan on building, though, is its own slew of “privacy-preserving” tools for ad targeting, like its Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLoC for short. Just to get people up to speed: While cookies (and some of these planned universal ID’s) track people by their individual browsing behavior as they bounce from site to site, under FLoC, a person’s browser would take any data generated by that browsing and basically plop it into a large pot of data from people with similar browsing behavior—a “flock,” if you will. Instead of being able to target ads against people based on the individual morsels of data a person generates, Google would allow advertisers to target these giant pots of aggregated data…  Which brings us back to that Google blog post from earlier this week—the post that was literally called “charting a course towards a more privacy-first web,” while also glossing over all of the obvious problems that others have pointed out with FLoC: how tracking is still tracking, even if it’s happening in aggregate. How Google’s claim that targeting based on FLoC is “95% as effective” as cookie-based targeting seems to be built on bunk math. How this ploy would give Google exclusive access to a ton of user data that the company already largely monopolizes. If Google actually wants to shift the national conversation on consumer privacy, then it should start by clarifying what they think “privacy” actually means.’

Revealed: Data giant given ‘emergency’ Covid contract had been wooing NHS for months

The Bureau 24.02.21

The UK government is really selling itself short.  So much for that much-lauded sovereignty:

‘Palantir, once funded by the CIA and known in the US for its involvement with defence and immigration agencies, shot to prominence in the UK last March, when it was given an “emergency” contract by the NHS to assist in handling the coronavirus pandemic, for an initial cost of just £1 (now a longer-term £23.5m deal)… Palantir, once funded by the CIA and known in the US for its involvement with defence and immigration agencies, shot to prominence in the UK last March, when it was given an “emergency” contract by the NHS to assist in handling the coronavirus pandemic, for an initial cost of just £1 (now a longer-term £23.5m deal)…  In December, Palantir’s contract with NHS England, for use of its Foundry software and engineers – which after its first trial period in March had been extended at £250,000 a month for six months – became a fully fledged two-year deal to provide the NHS with “data management platform services” at a cost of £23.5m… 

Palantir’s move into British healthcare follows the secret and sometimes controversial work it has carried out for US defence and intelligence agencies. The company was once funded by the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel…  Over the past decade, records show its increasing familiarity with the Pentagon through its Gotham analytics software, used in Iraq by the Special Operations Command. The company also worked on the US army’s Distributed Common Ground System, a battlefield intelligence platform.   Its involvement with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement made headlines in 2019 when it was revealed that its software was being used to help locate undocumented immigrants in the US.’ 

Tech companies shroud their algorithms in secrecy. It’s time to pry open the black box (video)

Aeon 18.02.21

Nice ‘call-to-arms’ video:

‘The so-called father of capitalism, Adam Smith, would frown upon the ‘free markets’ of the 21st century, argues the US economics writer Rana Foroohar. For Smith, a functioning market required transparency, a mutual understanding of exchanges and a shared moral framework. And, as Foroohar puts it in this brief animation for the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), surveillance capitalism – pioneered by Google, and now, to varying degrees, ubiquitous worldwide – comes up short on all three fronts. Featuring excerpts from a presentation given by Foroohar at the RSA House in London in 2019, this brief animation lays out the many ways in which surveillance capitalism continues to encroach unchecked, and one potential plan for course correction.’

Tim Berners-Lee’s plan to save the internet: give us back control of our data

The Conversation 05.02.21

Data control may hopefully revert to internet users in the near future:

‘Berners-Lee’s latest intervention comes as increasing numbers of people regard the online world as a landscape dominated by a few tech giants, thriving on a system of “surveillance capitalism” – which sees our personal data extracted and harvested by online giants before being used to target advertisements at us as we browse the web…  Scholars argue that data extraction, combined with “network effects”, has led to teach monopolies. Network effects are seen when a platform becomes dominant, encouraging even more users join and use it. This allows the dominant platform more possibilities to extract data, which they use to produce better services. In turn, these better services attract even more users. This tends to amplify the power (and database size) of dominant firms at the expense of smaller ones.  This monopolisation tendency explains why the data extraction and ownership landscape is dominated by the so-called GAFAM – Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft – in the US and the so-called BAT – Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent – in China. In addition to companies, governments also have monopoly power over their citizens’ data…  Berners-Lee isn’t just backing data sovereignty: he’s building the tech to support it. He recently set up Inrupt, a company with the express goal of moving towards the kind of world wide web that its inventor had originally envisioned. Inrupt plans to do that through a new system called “pods” – personal online data stores…  Inrupt has built these pods as part of its Solid project, which has followed the form of a Silicon Valley startup – though with the express objective of making pods accessible for all. All websites or apps a user with a pod visits will require authentication by Solid before being allowed to request an individual’s personal data. If pods are like safes, Solid acts like the bank in which the safe is stored.’

Google’s next big Chrome update will rewrite the rules of the web 

WIRED 02.02.21

Why anyone would use Chrome is beyond me.  In these new lauded measures, Google would still offer advertisers a box to put you in:

'So what are the alternatives? Google’s plan is to target ads against people’s general interests using an AI system called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). The machine learning system takes your web history, among other things, and puts you into a certain group based on your interests. Google hasn’t defined what these groups will be yet but they will include thousands of people that have similar interests. Advertisers will then be able to put ads in front of people based on the group they’re in. If Google’s AI works out you really like sneakers, for example, then you’ll be chucked in a group with other similarly-minded sneaker fans… Ultimately, if the web moves to a system where first-party data becomes the main way of serving adverts then the biggest tech platforms could benefit the most. “It could be that Google's ad tech division is at equality with other ad tech companies,” says Paul Bannister, co-founder of ad management firm CafeMedia. “The problem is that [blocking third-party cookies] widens the gap between walled gardens and what they can do versus the open web.” It’s likely that eliminating third-party cookies will push advertisers to rely on logins and user accounts to collect their own first-party data. Or rely on Google and Facebook to collect that data for them. 

Bannister argues that such changes will likely mean that more advertising money is spent on  platforms such as Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, where targeting within a closed ecosystem will be easier. “It has centralised control of the data with a smaller and smaller group of very large companies,” says Bannister. “And they are far more likely to misuse the data and harm people in the process.”’

Democrat Senator wants govt. to investigate Amazon’s ‘invasive’ fitness tracker, which records user and asks for NUDES

RT 19.12.20

Data being collected by fitness trackers and then shared with third parties is going way beyond the product’s purview:

‘Last year, a study in the British Medical Journal found that nearly eight in 10 health apps “routinely” share personal information with third parties, without providing transparency.  “There have been so many privacy violations in the past, and selling of data,” Klobuchar told the Washington Post after sending her letter. “Of course people just don’t want to have their data shared out there on the Internet, but it’s also about employers getting the data, insurance companies getting the data, all kinds of things”…  Amazon is just one tech giant looking to cross over into healthcare. Google, Apple, and Facebook have all made inroads into the lucrative healthcare market, counting on the vast amounts of user data they collect to give them an edge over their competitors. In his testimony before Congress two years ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that his company collects medical data from users, with that collection continuing even after users log off. A 2016 lawsuit revealed that the company collected data on one user’s participation in cancer support groups outside Facebook.’

Your Credit Score Should Be Based on Your Web History, IMF Says

Gizmodo 18.12.20

This is too risible to contemplate:

‘In a new blog post for the International Monetary Fund, four researchers presented their findings from a working paper that examines the current relationship between finance and tech as well as its potential future. Gazing into their crystal ball, the researchers see the possibility of using the data from your browsing, search, and purchase history to create a more accurate mechanism for determining the credit rating of an individual or business. They believe that this approach could result in greater lending to borrowers who would potentially be denied by traditional financial institutions.’

Facebook will move UK users to US terms, avoiding EU privacy laws

The Guardian 15.12.20

In an ever-escalating stand-off between EU regulations and its new proposed litigation against tech giants, Facebook goes the easy way and stores its data in the US:

‘Facebook will shift all its users in the United Kingdom into user agreements with the corporate headquarters in California, moving them out of their current relationship with Facebook’s Irish unit and out of reach of Europe’s privacy laws.  The change takes effect next year and follows a similar move announced in February by Google…  Privacy advocates fear the UK may move to an even looser data privacy regime, especially as it pursues a trade deal with the United States, which offers far fewer protections. Some also worry that UK Facebook users could more easily be subject to surveillance by US intelligence agencies or data requests from law enforcement.  “The bigger the company, the more personal data they hold, the more they are likely to be subject to surveillance duties or requirements to hand over data to the US government,” said Jim Killock, the executive director of the UK-based nonprofit Open Rights Group. US courts have held that constitutional protections against unreasonable searches do not apply to non-citizens overseas.’

Refugees are at risk from dystopian ‘smart border’ technology

The Conversation 08.12.20

Data decides whether to turn an asylum seeker out:

'Unmanned aerial vehicles (drones, for example) are often deployed in the surveillance of refugees in the US and the EU; big data analytics are being used to monitor migrants approaching the border. Though methods of border security and management vary, a great deal are increasingly used to prevent migratory movements.  Artificial intelligence (AI) is an important component of migration management. For instance, the EU, the US and Canada invest in AI algorithms to automate decisions on asylum and visa applications and refugee resettlement. Meanwhile, the real-time data collected from migrants by various smart border and virtual wall solutions such as satellites, drones and sensors are assessed by AI algorithms on the border.’

How an ICE Contractor Tracks Phones Around the World

VICE 03.12.20

Data flows are seriously murky:

‘Venntel, a government contractor that sells location data of smartphones to U.S. law enforcement agencies including ICE, CBP, and the FBI, gathers information through a highly complex supply chain of advertising firms, data resellers, and ultimately innocuous-looking apps installed on peoples' phones around the world, according to a cache of documents obtained by Norwegian media organization NRK and shared with Motherboard…  "I don't think people understand just to what degree your location tells you everything you need to know about someone's life; just how invasive that is," a source who previously worked at another location data firm that has contracts with U.S. law enforcement and military agencies told Motherboard…  In February, The Wall Street Journal reported that Venntel had sold access to smartphone location data to ICE and CBP. ICE used the data to identify immigrants who were later arrested and CBP used  Venntel's product to find cell phone activity in unusual places, such as remote sections of the U.S.-Mexico border, the report said.  Since then, Motherboard found that the Venntel data is "global," according to a CBP document Motherboard obtained. The IRS has also used Venntel's data, and is currently under investigation by the Inspector General for doing so without a warrant. Public procurement records show Venntel has also sold products to the DEA and FBI.'

How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps

VICE 16.11.20

Scandalous, yet so predictive:

‘Through public records, interviews with developers, and technical analysis, Motherboard uncovered two separate, parallel data streams that the U.S. military uses, or has used, to obtain location data. One relies on a company called Babel Street, which creates a product called Locate X. U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), a branch of the military tasked with counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and special reconnaissance, bought access to Locate X to assist on overseas special forces operations. The other stream is through a company called X-Mode, which obtains location data directly from apps, then sells that data to contractors, and by extension, the military.’

The way we use data is a life or death matter – from the refugee crisis to COVID-19

The Conversation 12.11.20

Like accounting sheets, data is open to interpretation:

‘In the specific context of the Mediterranean, this selective reading of data not only minimises the chances of successful asylum applications for those lingering in the reception centres of Greece and Turkey, it also allows governments and the EU as a whole to evade any legal and political responsibility for the human cost of border policing. By not collecting data on those who drown, the EU can hide the fact that for all its sophisticated mapping and tracking technologies, they have no interest in using the data to save lives, or for rescuing men, women and children lost at sea.  No records of deaths means no records of how many European governments watched drown…  So, next time you look at a map and or data visualisation, ask: who is this for? Whose power does it enhance or consolidate? Who is missing from the data? Who was never asked, forgotten or excluded? Who loses? And how can we do it better?’

 

'I was refused a home Covid test after credit check’

BBC 07.11.20

Not enough financial credit history held in database excludes you from access to medical tests.  Are we inching towards a Chinese model of Social Credit System?

‘Because Laura has been in the UK less than a year, she has not built up much of a credit history.  "In the end, it became clear that people with no credit history were having very similar problems. People who haven't taken out loans or don't have phone contracts or credit cards here in the UK," she says.  "That's what led us to believe that we actually were being excluded from the process because we don't have a credit history here in the UK…”  The Department for Health and Social Care, which is running the test system across the UK, says it uses a credit reference agency, TransUnion, to verify people's identities to "reduce fraud and prevent multiple testing kits being ordered, diverting capacity from where it is needed most”.'

This data expert helped Trump win. Now he’s built a machine to take him down

Fast Company 02.11.20

A ‘barometer’ targets voters in order to sway election results:

‘On the internet, we’re subject to hidden A/B tests all the time, but this one was also part of a political weapon: a multimillion-dollar tool kit built by a team of Facebook vets, data nerds, and computational social scientists determined to defeat Donald Trump…  By this spring, the project, code named Barometer, appeared to be paying off. During a two-month period, the data scientists found that showing certain Facebook ads to certain possible Trump voters lowered their approval of the president by 3.6%. For the frantic final laps, they’ve set their sights on motivating another key group of swing-state voters—young Democratic-leaning voters, mostly women and people of color—who could push Joe Biden to victory.’

Two Bay Area counties halt COVID-19 test program run by Google offshoot

LA Times 26.10.20

Vampiric Google company goes in for data under health check guise:

'“From where we sit, this is an old story,” she said. “Corporations that are not really invested in the community come helicoptering in, bearing gifts, but what they’re taking away is much more valuable.” That thing of value, Aboelata believes, are the data Verily requests from everyone who signs up for a test…  “While the form tells you that Verily may share data with ‘entities that assist with the testing program,’ it doesn’t say who those entities are. If one of those unnamed and unknown entities violates your privacy by misusing your data, you have no way to know and no way to hold them accountable,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for digital privacy.’

DuckDuckGo, EFF, and others just launched privacy settings for the whole internet

Fast Company 08.10.20

Excellent news.  Hope these measures get quickly enforced:

'A group of tech companies, publishers, and activist groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, and DuckDuckGo are backing a new standard to let internet users set their privacy settings for the entire web…  That new standard, called Global Privacy Control, lets users set a single setting in their browsers or through browser extensions telling each website that they visit not to sell or share their data. It’s already backed by some publishers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Financial Times, as well as companies including Automattic, which operates blogging platforms wordpress.com and Tumblr.’

Estonia is a ‘digital republic’ – what that means and why it may be everyone’s future

The Conversation 07.10.20

If you want a digital society to thrive, you give the data to its people:

‘Branding itself the first “digital republic” in the world, Estonia has digitised 99% of its public services. And, in an era when trust in public services are declining across the globe, Estonia persistently achieves one of the highest ratings of trust in government in the EU. The Estonian government claims that this digitisation of public services saves more than 1,400 years of working time and 2% of its GDP annually...  Two decades ago, in 2001, Estonia created an anti-silo data management system called X-Road through which public and private organisations can share data securely while maintaining data privacy through cryptography. Built in partnership with Finnish government, X-Road came under cyber-attack from Russian IP addresses in 2007. This attack made clear how vulnerable centralised data management systems are, and so Estonia required a distributed technology that is resistant to cyber-attack. Addressing this need, in 2012 Estonia became the first country to use blockchain technology for governance.’

Big tech firms may be handing Hong Kong user data to China

BBC 30.09.20

With global data transfers, democracy is overriden by financial concerns:

‘The allegation of possible secret cooperation between major companies and Hong Kong authorities follows the implementation of a sweeping and controversial new national security law that allows Hong Kong authorities to demand sensitive user data from companies if it is deemed to threaten national security...  Kwong says it would create “huge problems” for her and fellow activists if their most “highly sensitive and intimate” data – collected over many years of using Facebook and Google – was handed to Beijing.  She said: “I don’t want to put it that way but I will. If Google or other technology companies comply with this national security law, it is actually helping indirectly the Hong Kong government, the Chinese government, to oppress or crack down on the civil society.”’

Dominic Cummings' data law shake-up a danger to trade, says EU

The Guardian 25.09.20

For UK’s Cummings, data is manna:

'The government’s newly published national data strategy, promising a “transformation” long sought by Boris Johnson’s chief adviser and the former Vote Leave director, has sparked concern at a sensitive time with the continued flow of data between the UK and EU member states in question.  The European commission is currently examining whether the UK’s data laws will be in line with the EU’s general data protection regulation (GDPR) and law enforcement directive after 1 January 2021, allowing the movement of data vital to the law enforcement agencies but also the banking, health, entertainment, insurance and tech sectors…  Two years ago, Cummings, who championed vast data collection by the Vote Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum campaign, described the EU’s GDPR as “horrific”.  “One of the many advantages of Brexit is we will soon be able to bin such idiotic laws,” Cummings wrote. “We will be able to navigate between America’s poor protection of privacy and the EU’s hostility to technology and entrepreneurs.”'

Facebook says it may quit Europe over ban on sharing data with US

The Guardian 22.09.20

Misleading title as Facebook could never afford to leave Europe.  More court wrangles over who gets to spy on its users:

‘“In the event that [Facebook] were subject to a complete suspension of the transfer of users’ data to the US,” Yvonne Cunnane argued, “it is not clear … how, in those circumstances, it could continue to provide the Facebook and Instagram services in the EU.”  Facebook denied the filing was a threat, arguing in a statement that it was a simple reflection of reality. “Facebook is not threatening to withdraw from Europe,” a spokesperson said…  The filing is the latest volley in a legal battle that has lasted almost a decade. In 2011, Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer, began filing privacy complaints with the Irish data protection commissioner, which regulates Facebook in the EU, about the social network’s practices.  Those complaints gathered momentum two years later, when the Guardian revealed the NSA’s Prism program, a vast surveillance operation involving direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet companies. Schrems filed a further privacy complaint, which was eventually referred to the European court of justice.’

Scientists use big data to sway elections and predict riots — welcome to the 1960s

Nature 16.09.20

Interesting article about Simulatics - a data gathering tool which was created for the Vietnam war:

'Consider the strange trajectory of the Simulmatics Corporation, founded in New York City in 1959. (Simulmatics, a mash-up of ‘simulation’ and ‘automatic’, meant then what ‘artificial intelligence (AI)’ means now.) Its controversial work included simulating elections — just like that allegedly ‘pioneered’ by the now-defunct UK firm Cambridge Analytica on behalf of UK Brexit campaigners in 2015 and during Donald Trump’s US presidential election campaign in 2016…  Before his early death in 1984, Pool was also a key force behind the founding of the most direct descendant of Simulmatics, the MIT Media Lab. Pool’s work underlies the rules — or lack of them — that prevail on the Internet. Pool also founded the study of “social networks” (a term he coined); without it, there would be no Facebook. Pool’s experiences with student unrest at MIT — and especially with the protests against Simulmatics — informed his views on technological change and ethics. Look forward. Never look back.’

Podcast: COVID-19 is helping turn Brazil into a surveillance state

Technology Review 16.09.20

When data hoarding goes under the guise of helping citizens yet is used as a centralised dictatorial system:

‘Certainly the biggest move came in October, 2019, when more or less out of the blue president Bolsonaro signed a decree essentially compelling all public bodies to start sharing citizen information between each other more or less freely. This took many observers by surprise. It was something that wasn't debated publicly. Many people didn't really see it coming… So the rationale behind the decree—according to the public line —was to improve the quality and consistency of the data that the government holds on citizens. One of the effects of the pandemic was to shine a light on millions of citizens who were in fact previously invisible to the government. Not registered on any public system. by the end of April, around 46 million had registered to apply for emergency financial aid… One of the things that came out in June was articles leaked to The Intercept, which showed that ABIN, the  security agency, requested the data of 76 million Brazilian citizens. All of those who hold driving licenses. So this was seen as perhaps the first known use of this degree to enact a large data grab.’

How Maria Schneider Is Using Her Jazz Orchestra to Take On Big Tech

Billboard 17.09.20

Sometime in the very near future, no artist could afford to make music unless streaming giants pay in for the talents they so ruthlessly exploit for data gathering:

‘“Early on, I became very aware that big data companies were using musicians as carrots so that they could gather data from users,” says Schneider, 59. “And this has been a huge frustration for me. It has really destroyed the music industry for those that make the music, and now I feel that for our society at large it’s a catastrophic loss…”  In addition to writing op-eds and blog posts about the danger of Big Tech’s access to consumers’ data, she speaks at colleges to young musicians about the danger it poses to the future of their profession. In 2014, she testified before Congress about YouTube’s notice-and-takedown policies, especially regarding how hard the company makes it for independent musicians to use the ContentID system that could keep their works off the service. In July, she filed a putative class action suit against YouTube, alleging that its denial of ContentID to independent creators who don’t license their music to the company leave them with “no meaningful ability to police the extensive infringement of their copyrighted work.”’

Facebook launches court challenge of Irish watchdog over data transfers from EU to US

RT 11.09.20

Facebook is a US intelligence lapdog and a brilliant spy tool:

‘Social media giant Facebook has launched legal action against the Irish Data Protection Commission in an attempt to halt a proposed order that could stop the company from transferring data from the EU to the US.’

Privacy is power

Aeon Magazine 02.09.20

Your data is yours to own:

‘Treating data as a commodity is a way for companies to earn money, and has nothing to do with building good products. Hoarding data is a way of accumulating power. Instead of focusing only on their bottom line, tech companies can and should do better to design the online world in a way that contributes to people’s wellbeing. And we have many reasons to object to institutions collecting and using our data in the way that they do… Furthermore, privacy is not only about you. Privacy is both personal and collective. When you expose your privacy, you put us all at risk. Privacy power is necessary for democracy – for people to vote according to their beliefs and without undue pressure, for citizens to protest anonymously without fear of repercussions, for individuals to have freedom to associate, speak their minds, read what they are curious about. If we are going to live in a democracy, the bulk of power needs to be with the people. If most of the power lies with companies, we will have a plutocracy. If most of the power lies with the state, we will have some kind of authoritarianism. Democracy is not a given. It is something we have to fight for every day. And if we stop building the conditions in which it thrives, democracy will be no more. Privacy is important because it gives power to the people. Protect it.’

Google's new transatlantic data cable to land in Cornwall

BBC 28.07.20

Big corporations are increasingly controlling the flow of data between countries:

‘The latest cable, named "Grace Hopper" after an American computer scientist and naval rear admiral, will hit the UK at Bude, in Cornwall. It is Google's fourth privately owned undersea cable…  And Google is not alone in pursuing ownership of vital data infrastructure.   Microsoft and Facebook, for example, are joint-owners with telecoms company Telxius of the Marea cable, which runs from the US to Spain.  In May, Facebook announced another project to build a 37,000km (23,000-mile) undersea cable to supply faster internet to 16 countries in Africa.’

EU privacy watchdog orders data transfers to US under ‘Privacy Shield’ protocol to stop immediately after Facebook lawsuit

RT 24.07.20

New privacy shields for data transfer between EU and US to start immediately:

‘In a landmark ruling last week, the EU Court of Justice ruled that an EU-US data flow agreement named ‘Privacy Shield’ is not private enough to pass muster with European law. The case was taken against Facebook by an Austrian activist after National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the US government was sifting through people’s online communications and data, including data transferred under ‘Privacy Shield’ and its predecessor, ‘Safe Harbor. Tech firms will have no grace period to switch their privacy protocols, and must comply immediately, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) said in a statement on Friday. Furthermore, the onus is on these firms to ensure that whatever protocol they switch to is legally sound.   Two such protocols exist: Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) and Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs). However, not all variants of them are compliant with European privacy law, and companies using them must carry out a privacy assessment, and stop sending data if this assessment fails.’

The end of Privacy Shield spells trouble for Brexit Britain

WIRED 17.07.20

When data transfers are jurisdictionally politicised:

‘The UK wants unrestricted data transfers with both the EU and the US. The former would ideally be achieved via an EU adequacy decision, whereby the European Commission formally recognises the UK as a safe haven for data transfers. The latter was going to be achieved by the UK and US essentially copying the EU-US Privacy Shield, which had been “rolled over” in UK law before Brexit. Today’s invalidation undermines both plans.   The EU will be concerned that if companies transfer EU citizens’ data to the UK, the UK might in turn transfer that data to the US, under the unlawful Privacy Shield framework. Put simply, the UK may not be granted adequacy if it is seen as backdoor to unprotected US data transfers. The UK will have to decide what is more important: data flows with the EU or the US?..  That said, neither the ECJ nor data protection regulators can turn off the internet. Despite the judgement, huge volumes of EU-US data transfers will continue unabated, either via SCCs or unlawfully, and it is difficult to imagine any legal ruling or political agreement ever stopping this. Despite the complications for the UK, an adequacy decision is still very much in play, as the Commission strongly desires to keep the data flowing.’

Traders thought Apple had 'the holy grail' of oil data, but the quest continues

REUTERS 02.07.20

Apple is losing big on its reputation by peddling location data:

'In mid-April, Apple Inc (AAPL.O) unveiled new data tracking human mobility trends, capturing user activity in searching for directions on smartphones.   The timing was perfect. Traders were chasing any clue to fathom the speed of recovery from the fastest and deepest collapse in fuel demand in history during coronavirus lockdowns. They relished the chance to incorporate mobility data into trading models…  

Several traders told Reuters on background that the discrepancy caused them to discount Apple’s index.   The sticking point, they said, was that Apple’s mobility data is based on search information rather than miles traveled. Matt Sallee, managing director of investment firm Tortoise Capital Advisors, said that data has not correlated as strongly to demand as other indexes.’

Facebook flaw let 5,000 developers gather personal data

BBC 02.07.20

Seriously bad form:

'Apps on Facebook are supposed to be prevented from accessing people's personal data if the app has not been used for 90 days.  But Facebook said that lock-out had not always worked due to a flaw in how it recorded inactivity.  ”We fixed the issue the day after we found it," the company said.  Facebook has not stated how many users had their personal data scraped.  The harvesting of Facebook users' personal information by third-party apps was at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal that was exposed in 2018.   Cambridge Analytica's app on Facebook had harvested not only the data of people who interacted with it, but also that of friends who had not given consent. The company built a vast and lucrative database in the process.’

Why we need to know more about the UK government’s COVID-19 data project – and the companies working on it

The Conversation 24.06.20

Shady deals at the heart of British government:

‘But while it appears the app is off the table – or at least that England and Wales will get a more privacy respectful one run by internet giants – there’s still reason to be concerned about NHSX’s use of patient data and how it’s being shared with private firms. Palantir’s original contract was published under legal pressure but its renewed contract has not. In particular, we do not know whether NHSX is paying Palantir properly this time. 

We also know more clearly that there’s a lot that we’re not being told, as the government has only published a DPIA for data being combined and stored but not for how it is then being used for planning, including possibly through AI. The DPIA only assesses Palantir’s role for data storage, and yet the firm’s original contract also mentions “data analytics”, “support tracking, surveillance, and reporting”, and none of that is covered in the document. It also doesn’t mention Faculty, which says it is working on data dashboards and modelling as part of its contract with NHSX.’

The Trump 2020 app is a voter surveillance tool of extraordinary power

Technology Review 21.06.20

Power and data-hungry political apps are on the rise in the US and elsewhere:

'Data collection and targeted online messaging were integral to the 2016 US presidential election, and they will be again in 2020. But there has been a shift. In the same way that candidates in the last cycle used Facebook to reach and persuade voters, ongoing research from our team at the propaganda research lab at UT Austin’s Center for Media Engagement suggests that 2020 will be defined by the use of bespoke campaign apps. Purpose-built applications distributed through the App Store and Google Play Store allow the Trump and Biden teams to speak directly to likely voters. They also allow them to collect massive amounts of user data without needing to rely on major social-media platforms or expose themselves to fact-checker oversight of particularly divisive or deceptive messaging…  

This and similar forms of relational organizing are already the norm in Mexico and Latin America, where they are used not to increase civic engagement but instead by mass manipulators seeking to adapt to the increased scrutiny of bots and sock-puppet accounts. In our study—where the participants were interviewed on condition of anonymity, as is typical in our work—one prominent Mexican journalist elaborated on this:  “Well, in Latin America and in Mexico we don’t use bots or software. It was left behind a few years ago because it was really easy to detect on Twitter or Facebook and by researchers like me … we are entering an era of war propaganda, and I think that’s where the trend is headed.”’

Google got rich from your data. DuckDuckGo is fighting back

WIRED 08.06.20

On the vampiric data churning methods of search engines:

‘It makes its money in the same way as Google: through advertisements. Each time a user clicks on an ad that is shown alongside search results, the company takes home a small amount of money. But where the two differ is that DuckDuckGo uses contextual advertising over the data-heavy behavioural advertising that helps Google earn billions each quarter.   Contextual adverts are shown to users based on the searches they make: if you DuckDuckGo “Mercedes”, you’ll be served adverts for cars on that page. Google “Mercedes”, however, and adverts for cars will follow you off the page and around the web, because Google adds that data to the other information it knows about you. Behavioural advertising is much more lucrative, as each time an ad is clicked on there’s a higher likelihood the person will buy. Google’s expertise in knowing what users will be most likely to click on is rivalled only by that of Facebook… 

The vast ad networks of Facebook and Google are fed with personal data collected across the web. Trackers from both companies gather information about online activity from almost all of the web’s most popular sites. By collecting billions of data points, the companies are able to build revenues in excess of $20 billion every three months. The vast majority of this money comes from advertising – in particular behavioural advertising. Trackers and cookies are present across almost all websites; they monitor and track people’s activities online and log them under unique identifiers connected to individuals (Wired.co.uk uses trackers to collect and share reader data as part of business practices). But at the start of April this year, the data protection regulator for Ireland, which oversees all the big US tech companies headquartered in the country, released a report saying many websites fail to give “basic information” to people that visit them and that “most ordinary users will not be aware of the extent to which they may be tracked”.  This tracking allows companies to collect data on people’s interests and activities, which they can feed into advertising models and use to serve people behavioural adverts linked to their interests; Facebook’s Pixel, for example, is on more than eight million websites. “Strategically, Google and Facebook have all the user data,” Weinberg says. DuckDuckGo’s web browser, like its search engine, does not store personal data. In addition, it blocks the invisible trackers hidden on web pages. The company wants to see less tracking elsewhere, too.’

This trendy social-distancing bracelet will vibrate when you go somewhere you shouldn’t – and GCHQ has its maker’s back

RT 03.06.20

A new bracelet for construction workers aims to keep distancing in place:

‘In theory, workers in construction, logistics and similar industries will be wearing the bracelets to help them keep the prescribed distance of two meters (or whatever their management sets the alert to). All the data will be meticulously logged and analyzed – because if someone gets the virus, all his workplace contacts need to be identified and isolated.  Sounds really good and benign. And so sellable, too: big corporations across the world lose millions each day because they “had to stop running and send their workers home because they can’t effectively enforce safe distancing measures,” Tended CEO Leo Scott Smith explained to local news site Lincolnite.’

Nearly 40% of Icelanders are using a covid app—and it hasn’t helped much

Technology Review 11.05.20

Mobility data didn’t do much for Iceland.  Humans had to do the legwork:

'Rakning C-19, which launched in early April, was hailed as a way to “make the tracing of transmissions easier” at the time. It tracks users’ GPS data to compile a record of where they have been, allowing investigators—with permission—to look at whether those with a positive diagnosis are potentially spreading the disease.   And it gained traction quickly: according to MIT Technology Review’s Covid Tracing Tracker, it has the largest penetration rate of all contact trackers in the world, having been downloaded by 38% of Iceland’s population of 364,000… “The technology is more or less … I wouldn’t say useless,” says Gestur Pálmason, a detective inspector with the Icelandic Police Service who is overseeing contact tracing efforts. “But it’s the integration of the two that gives you results. I would say it [Rakning] has proven useful in a few cases, but it wasn’t a game changer for us.”’

Google muscles into videoconferencing with ‘secure’ Zoom competitor as 3 out of 5 Americans don’t trust Big Tech with private data

RT 30.04.20

The rush is on to collect data via apps which people are desperate to use due to covid:

‘“Your Meet data is not used for advertising, and we don’t sell your data to third parties,” the company stressed, insisting “our approach to security is simple: make products safe by default.”  Millions of users who’ve unwittingly had their data exploited by the tech giant might beg to differ, and the results of a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll published Wednesday reveal that despite the media hype surrounding Google’s collaboration with Apple to roll out the semi-official US coronavirus testing app, Americans aren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of trusting the megacorporation with even more private information.’

Five things we need to do to make contact tracing really work

Technology Review 28.04.20

Many factors will throw spanners in the wheel of its purported necessity:

‘Once the country begins to reopen, but before there is a vaccine or effective treatment, the primary way of preventing the spread of covid-19 will be manual tracing….

Contact tracing is a form of surveillance that, in the worst case, can be abused by companies or governments. Medical surveillance has repeatedly proved to be a life-saving tool, however, and Apple and Google say they are making privacy a priority by building decentralized systems designed to make malicious surveillance difficult while also providing key data to public health authorities. This is all new, and success is highly reliant on the actions of governments themselves… 

But even if a tracing app were downloaded by everyone who could legitimately use it, a major challenge is the simple fact that not everyone has a smartphone… 

“If you ask me whether any Bluetooth contact-tracing system deployed or under development anywhere in the world is ready to replace manual contact tracing, I will say, without qualification, that the answer is, ‘No,’” Bay wrote. “Any attempt to believe otherwise is an exercise in hubris, and technology triumphalism. There are lives at stake. False positives and false negatives have real-life (and death) consequences. We use TraceTogether to supplement contact tracing—not replace it.”’

Contact-tracing app will be ‘key part’ of UK government’s Covid-19 ‘surveillance programme’ – Johnson spokesman

RT 28.04.20

Well at least they’re using the right terminology; surveillance:

‘Shadow deputy leader of the House, Afzal Khan, said that while the app has an “important role to play,” legislation should ensure that it stores data in a decentralized manner.  Solicitor General Michael Ellis QC assured Khan that the app will be “voluntary participation only” and there will be “no private identifiable information on it.” Furthermore, the whole process will be “data protection compliant and there will be an ethical advisory board monitoring it,” he said.  Internet law professor Lilian Edwards told MPs on Tuesday, however, that there was a “precedent of other pandemics leading to a mass land grab in extensive state surveillance.”’

Amazon, Google, and Apple have moved past monopoly status to competing directly with governments… and winning

RT 27.04.20

Big corporations have leverage over governments:

‘Charging that Amazon has gained unprecedented monopoly power through the sheer wealth of data it has collected on its users, allowing it to clone sellers’ products and undercut them on price, the senator likened the company’s “capacity for data collection” to “a brick and mortar retailer attaching a camera to every customer’s forehead.” With the coronavirus pandemic forcing the lion’s share of commerce online, Amazon has assumed near-omnipotence… In some ways, the company is at least as powerful as the government whose laws it goes through the motions of obeying. Amazon’s cloud servers host the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, and other US agencies, meaning if the company decided to throw a temper tantrum in response to legal penalties (as it threatened to do in France) government operations could be severely disrupted… 

Germany was forced on Sunday to scrap its plans for an open-source privacy-prioritizing contact-tracing system (the so-called Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing platform) after Apple refused to make changes to its iOS operating system that would have allowed public health apps built on the platform to access Bluetooth data from a central server… A central server controlled by the German government would have deprived Apple and Google of the user data that is their lifeblood – clearly an unacceptable scenario for the trillion-dollar companies. Faced with such powerful opposition, a German government source told Reuters there was “no alternative but to change course.”’

NHS rejects Apple-Google coronavirus app plan

BBC 27.04.20

NHSX goes for a centralised model, rejecting Google’s and Apple’s decentralised one: 

‘Like the authorities in many other countries, NHSX has opted to use wireless Bluetooth transmissions to keep track of each qualifying meeting, and has said that the alerts will be sent anonymously, so that users do not know who triggered them.  It has opted for a "centralised model" to achieve this - meaning that the matching process, which works out which phones to send alerts to - happens on a computer server.  This contrasts with Apple and Google's "decentralised" approach - where the matches take place on users' handsets.  The tech giants believe their effort provides more privacy, as it limits the ability of either the authorities or a hacker to use the computer server logs to track specific individuals and identify their social interactions.  But NHSX believes a centralised system will give it more insight into Covid-19's spread, and therefore how to evolve the app accordingly.’

How a nonprofit you’ve never heard of made the web safer for everyone

Fast Company 24.04.20

Still very wary of free software but let’s hope this company lives up to its reputation:

‘Run by the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), the service provides these certificates to websites for free, allowing your browser to create a secure and validated connection to a server that’s effectively impenetrable to snooping… 

After the revelation of the scope and nature of wide-scale, routine data collection by U.S. national security agencies added to the already-known and suspected habits of other democracies and repressive countries, tech firms shifted heavily into encrypting connections everywhere they could. That meant more encryption between data centers run by the same company (as Google added starting in 2013), encryption of data at rest stored on servers, and browser makers calling users’ attention to unprotected web sessions.  That last part was critical, as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari slowly increased warnings about nonencrypted connections—and finally turned those warnings into outright error messages.’

UK government using confidential patient data in coronavirus response

The Guardian 12.04.20

Palantir and the UK government are snooping in a big way:

‘Palantir, the US big data firm founded by the rightwing billionaire Peter Thiel, is working with Faculty, a British artificial intelligence startup, to consolidate government databases and help ministers and officials respond to the pandemic.  Data is also being used by Faculty to build predictive computer models around the Covid-19 outbreak. One NHS document suggests that, two weeks ago, Faculty considered running a computer simulation to assess the impact of a policy of “targeted herd immunity”. Lawyers for Faculty said the proposed herd immunity simulation never took place… While such data will be anonymised, it remains sensitive and confidential, and its use on a centralised new government database is likely to raise questions among privacy experts. A Whitehall source said they were alarmed at the “unprecedented” amounts of confidential health information being swept up in the project, which they said was progressing at alarming speed and with insufficient regard for privacy, ethics or data protection.’

Don’t be evil, just OBEY: After Covid-19 tech giants will have even more control over what you see & what you think

RT 11.04.20

Tech and its immeasurable power is truly mind-boggling:

‘Knowledge is power, and whoever controls the media, controls the information flow and controls the power. That’s how these tech companies set out to achieve a common goal: controlling your cognitive map. It’s not about what’s said and debated, it’s about what’s buried and left out.  Why does it seem like Silicon Valley’s digital censorship is the same digital censorship as in China? Simple, it’s the same. As Covid-19 ravages the world, digital tyranny is killing democracy while the US Congress sits silently and lets it happen. To be clear, Silicon Valley needs regulation and needs it now. Congress needs to wake up.’

Coronavirus: Covid-19 detecting apps face teething problems

BBC 08.04.20

Gathering voice data is crucial for identifying people.  More fodder for AI:

‘Two leading universities are trying to develop apps that listen to users' coughs and voices to predict whether they are infected with the coronavirus.  But the two projects are taking different approaches to privacy… 

Cambridge University launched the Covid-19 Sounds project on Tuesday.  Members of the public are being invited to breathe and cough into a computer's microphone, as well as provide details of their age, gender, approximate location, and whether they have recently tested positive for the coronavirus.  They are then asked to read the following phrase three times: "I hope my data can help to manage the virus pandemic.”  The aim is to collect enough data to check whether from these sounds we're able to diagnose people who have Covid-19 and perhaps even the stage of the disease," explains Prof Cecilia Mascolo.  "If we get this to work, we could perhaps help services such as the UK's 111 NHS helpline.”.. 

The Carnegie Mellon team's Covid Voice Detector is built on the foundations of earlier voice-profiling work done at the Pittsburgh-based university.  It briefly went live on 30 March. Users were asked to cough, record vowel sounds and recite the alphabet, as well as provide details about themselves.  At the end of the process, the tool displayed an indication of how likely they were to have Covid-19.  But the researchers realised a rethink was required.  "It doesn't matter how many disclaimers you put up there - how clearly you tell people that this has not been medically validated - some people will take the machine as the word of God," explains Dr Rita Singh.  "If a system tells a person who has contracted Covid-19 that they don't have it, it may kill that person.  "And if it tells a healthy person they have it, and they go off to be tested, they may use up precious resources that are limited.  "So, we have very little room for error either way, and are deliberating on how to present the results so that these risks vanish.”'

Facebook plans to install Portals in thousands of UK care homes

WIRED 07.04.20

UK government has invited FB in March to install Portal in care homes:

‘Facebook was among the technology companies summoned to Downing Street in mid-March for a meeting chaired by government advisor Dominic Cummings and Matthew Gould, CEO of NHS England’s digital innovation branch NHSX, during which companies were asked to cooperate with the UK government in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic… 

Stephanie Hare, a researcher and broadcaster working on a book on technology ethics, says that the coronavirus crisis will push governments to settle for “less than ideal” solutions. "We may need to use what we have and minimise the risks,” Hare says.  “Essentially, if there’s a need for a service, we must ask ourselves: if not Facebook, or any other big tech company, then who?”  "The question is whether we can pressure these firms to walk the walk on technology ethics. That means transparency, fairness, accountability, consent, privacy by design.”  Eva Blum-Dumontet, a senior research officer at Privacy International, underlines that transparency is “the key to every partnership” between the NHS and any company. “It’s normal that everyone, including Facebook, is willing to participate in this ‘war’ effort, but we must be aware of what the price of what Facebook is offering is,” Blum-Dumontet says.  “We need to understand what is going to happen with the data from the conversations, with their metadata, whether Facebook will have access to that, and whether they will be encrypted,” she adds. “We must make sure that FB ensure that transparency.”’

Coronavirus: Google reveals travel habits during the pandemic

BBC 03.04.20

Data, the touted solution to solving COVID:

‘Google is to publicly track people's movements over the course of the coronavirus pandemic.  The tech firm will publish details of the different types of places people are going to on a county-by-county basis in the UK, as well as similar data for 130 other countries.  The plan is to issue a regular updates with the figures referring back to activity from two or three days prior.  The company has promised that individuals' privacy will be preserved… 

The company says it has both anonymised the records and mixed in some randomly-generated data to safeguard individual users' histories, device owners can also decide not to supply data.  "The data may prove startling to people who are unaware of just how much information Google collects," remarked the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.’

Coronavirus: Israeli spyware firm pitches to be Covid-19 saviour

BBC 03.04.20

A much-maligned company from a repressive regime would like to track people from all nations:

‘A controversial Israeli cyber-security company is marketing software that uses mobile phone data to monitor and predict the spread of the coronavirus.  NSO Group says it is in talks with governments around the world, and claims some are already testing it…  

NSO said a number of governments around the world were piloting the system, but would not reveal their identity or whether any of them had started using it in the field.’

Coronavirus: How China's using surveillance to tackle outbreak (Video)

BBC 02.04.20

The start of many new reports describing data and how it could ‘save’ lives:

‘The coronavirus pandemic may have emerged in China, but the country now has fewer cases than the US, Italy and Spain.  The Chinese government has used tools such as phone tracking to control the outbreak. Other countries are starting to look at similar technological solutions.  But how does China's controversial surveillance system work and can state intervention on this scale be justified?’

Palantir in Talks With Germany, France for Virus-Fighting Tool

Bloomberg 01.04.20

Peter Thiel’s company is set to make a lot of profit as most governments are falling for his data mining idea:

‘The software company is in discussions with authorities in France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the person said, asking not to be identified because the negotiations are private. It already has a deal with the U.K.’s National Health Service, one of a number of big U.S. tech firms drafted in to help curb the pandemic, the government said in a blog entry last week.  Palantir, which got its start doing projects for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, has said its technology can do everything from helping to trace and analyze the spread of the virus to helping hospitals predict staff and supply shortages and finding bottlenecks in the medical supply chain. The company is also telling the prospective customers that it can help countries with plans to exit quarantine measures, the person said… Palantir, which has about 800 employees stationed in Europe, has contracts with governments in about 30 countries. It sells two types of solutions: one called Gotham, tailored for intelligence agencies, and Foundry, mainly used by the private sector. Both products are being proposed to health agencies in Europe, sometimes mixing the solutions depending on the clients’ needs, the person said.

Still, the company has run into controversy about how its data-mining capabilities have been used in the past, such as enabling immigration deportation policies championed by U.S. President Trump. The 16-year-old firm would also have to overcome squeamishness from some European governments about using U.S. technology.’

Do you know how Zoom is using your data? Here's why you should

The Guardian 01.04.20

The group conferencing app which many are using throughout the pandemic has been criticised widely for infringing data rights:

‘You may think you are working from the privacy of your own home, but the software is probably sharing a lot more information about you than you realise. Zoom has an attention-tracking feature, for example, which notifies the host of some video calls if participants click away to look at something else.

In any article about privacy violations, it is pretty much a given that Facebook will be mentioned. This is no exception. Recent analysis by Vice found that Zoom’s iOS app was sending analytics data to Facebook, even when the user did not have a Facebook account and even though this was not addressed in Zoom’s privacy policy. This data included things such as the user’s location and the device’s advertiser identifier information, a unique ID that lets companies send you targeted ads. On Friday, Zoom issued a statement saying “whoops!’” and announcing it had updated its software to stop sending iOS data to Facebook.’

Yes, mobile technology can help solve the Covid-19 crisis – but can also fuel the authoritarian virus sweeping across the world

RT 24.03.20

The pretext of enhancing/enforcing health measures may not be as it seems:

‘Around the world there has been a rush to use digital technologies, particularly contact-tracing apps on mobile phones as part of an integrated coronavirus control strategy that identifies infected people and their recent person-to-person contacts… The thinking behind these apps is laudable. By tracking people’s movements, where and when they interact with others, a picture can be built about how the virus might spread, who should be targeted for isolation or testing. This could be very helpful in containing the virus.
But there is an obvious caveat here which needs to be highlighted before we rush into embracing a high-tech solution which may have important unintended consequences. And the caveat is, which problem is being solved with this approach?
According to Professor Christophe Fraser from Oxford University’s Big Data Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine, and one of those pushing for a new mobile tracing app in the UK and Europe, coronavirus ‘is unlike previous epidemics and requires multiple inter-dependent containment strategies…. almost half of coronavirus transmissions occur in the very early phase of infection, before symptoms appear, so we need a fast and effective mobile app for alerting people who have been exposed.’…
Because governments are in a panic, the biggest unintended consequence could be the trampling of civil liberties without restraint, totally disproportionate to the threat and the problem we are facing. This is not a military war. It is a civilian health crisis. We should jealously guard our democratic rights as determinedly as we should be looking for vaccines and other technological innovations that can solve the problem we face.’

'Selfie app' to keep track of quarantined Poles

AFP 24.03.20

Apps flourish to control movements:

‘Poland on Friday launched a smartphone app allowing people under a mandatory 14-day quarantine for coronavirus to send selfies to let authorities know they are indeed staying home. "People in quarantine have a choice: either receive unexpected visits from the police, or download this app," Karol Manys, digital ministry spokesman, told AFP.’

Google wants to move UK users’ data to the US – what does that mean for your rights? 

The Conversation 04.03.20

What happens when UK moves citizens’ data to US:

‘The EU GDPR currently bans data transfers to non-EU countries that do not provide adequate levels of data protection. Although the US and the EU do have a data transfer agreement, it is being challenged by privacy and data protection interest groups who think US data protection law isn’t strong enough. In particular, they are worried that transferred data could be caught up in the US government’s mass surveillance initiatives.

Another practical change is that enforcing data protection law in the UK will be entirely up to the ICO. And it is perhaps doubtful that this regulator will be as effective as the might of European data protection authorities, backed by the European Court of Justice.’

Lawmakers revisit Project Nightingale, demanding more info from Ascension, Google

Beckers Hospital Review 03.03,20

Google is being secretive about its data collection:

‘A bipartisan group of U.S. senators are probing Google and St. Louis-based Ascension again for more information on the controversial "Project Nightingale," according to The Wall Street Journal.  Last November, after news broke about Project Nightingale, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, Bill Cassidy and Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to Google and Ascension asking for details on the program, including how many patients are involved, what data is shared and who at Google had access.  

In its latest push, the senators are still seeking answers on whether patients were informed that their information was being shared with Google, a complete list of the data shared, what services Google has promised to provide Ascension, and if any data has been breached.  Under Project Nightingale, Ascension has agreed to share data on millions of patients with Google, who will then use the data to create an optimized search engine for the health system's EHR.’

Who will really benefit from the EU's big data plan?

WIRED 21.02.20

EU is looking to create a major data pool from industries:

‘Hence the Commission’s unveiling, on Wednesday, of Shaping Europe’s digital future. A programmatic document which will need time and a lot of haggling to be actually implemented, it touches on a vast range of topics – from privacy, to antitrust, to AI and "technology sovereignty". One line in a leaked early draft promised that it would help European companies “become the next generation of big tech.” The line is gone in the final version – “big” anything always sounds ominous – but the spirit still permeates the strategy, and its two accessory white papers, on AI and on data. The EU wants to build its own technology giants. Which brings us back to industrial data.   

Given the US’s and China’s unbridgeable advantage in transforming users’ data into money and datasets to train AI algorithms, and given Europe’s fondness for strong privacy regulations, the EU has decided to enter a different race. Rather than focusing on personal data, the EU wants to help its companies and startup access data gathered from connected objects.’

GOOGLE TO MOVE UK CITIZENS’ DATA TO US, PUTTING IT UNDER CONTROL OF TRUMP GOVERNMENT

The Independent 20.02.20

Brexit means UK’s Google data will be moved to the US:

‘“Moving people's personal information to the USA makes it easier for mass surveillance programmes to access it," said Jim Killock, executive director of Open Rights Group. "There is nearly no privacy protection for non-US citizens.  "We have no reason to trust a Donald Trump government with information about UK citizens. The possibilities for abuse are enormous, from US immigration programmes through to attempts to politically and racially profile people for alleged extremist links.  "Data protection rights will also become more fragile, and are likely to be attacked in trade agreements pushing 'data flows’.  "Google's decision should worry everyone who think tech companies are too powerful and know too much about us. The UK must commit to European data protection standards, or we are likely to see our rights being swiftly undermined by 'anything goes' US privacy practices."‘

Amazon: What They Know About Us (VIDEO)

Panorama 15.02.20

Highly interesting look into Amazon’s practices.

Why Amazon knows so much about you

BBC 18.02.20

Amazon owes its success in being a data peddler:

‘Part of Marketplace’s success is down to Amazon’s willingness to share increasing amounts of analytics with the sellers. But only Amazon gets complete access. “Whether you're Target or another big retailer, or whether you’re a small entrepreneur who set up a third-party seller account, in all situations you’re basically renting the Amazon customer,” explains Thomson. “In the end, Amazon collects all that data - and it stays within the Amazon database.”… So, society now has a choice: continue letting Amazon learn ever more about us in the name of better service, or consider forcing it to divide up its data - and maybe even itself - to prevent it knowing too much.’

Why you can’t escape dark patterns

Fast Company 07.02.20

GDPR rules are being ignored and worked around:

‘There are few solutions. The researchers suggest that regulators use automated tools to more quickly scan for violations, that designers create tools to help regulators enforce the law, and that regulators restrict CMP vendors so that only sites in compliance with GDPR rules can go live.  

Another avenue, of course, is overhaul: going beyond improving status quo enforcement and making positive changes, such as designing consent forms that are user-friendly—clearly written and allow users to quickly and easily make privacy decisions that are best for them. 

The issue is that there is no incentive to do this: If a company’s UX makes consent options transparent enough to be compliant with the GDPR, their data collection will be a tiny fraction of what it was previously, Carroll tells me. That’s not in the interest of most businesses today.’

Who owns your DNA? You should, according to this biodata bill of rights

Fast Company 06.02.20

‘Our research shows that consumers are drawn to the promise of products, services, and experiences personalized to the extreme, resulting in a significant demand for products driven by biodata. At the same time, governments and the private sector are radically expanding the collection and use of biodata. The question is then, how do we shape a future where biodata improves our way of life rather than becomes a catalyst for a dystopian state of permanent surveillance? The answer begins with acknowledging the fundamental rights that are under threat and demanding a universal agreement to protect them before it’s too late.'

YouTube’s algorithm seems to be funneling people to alt-right videos

Technology Review 29.01.20

Or, it could be that the world at large is leaning towards a dark ‘right’:

‘The team, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, also found evidence that the overlap between alt-righters and others who dabble in intellectual dark web and alt-lite material is growing. The authors estimate that about 60,000 people who commented on alt-lite or intellectual dark web content got exposed to alt-right videos over a period of about 18 months. The work was presented at the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Barcelona this week.’

The Global Risks Report 2020 from World Economic Forum

15.01.20

‘Vulnerable data. 4IR technologies run on data, making privacy a major challenge. IoT devices collect and share data that are potentially highly sensitive for individuals, companies and states, from personal identification and medical records to national security information. The data brokering market—aggregating, disaggregating, copying, searching and selling data for commercial purposes—is worth an estimated US$200 billion a year. Data theft can enable the manipulation of individual and collective behaviour, leading to physical and psychological harm.’ 

Smart doorbell company Ring may be surveilling users through its app

The Guardian 29.01.20

 ‘The “Ring for Android” app shares user data including names, private IP addresses, mobile network carriers and sensor data with a number of third-party trackers, the investigation found. At least four analytics and marketing companies receive such information from customer devices.  “Ring claims to prioritize the security and privacy of its customers, yet time and again we’ve seen these claims not only fall short, but harm the customers and community members who engage with Ring’s surveillance system,” Bill Budington, senior staff technologist at the EFF and author of the report, said.  Every time a customer opens the Ring app, it sends information to Facebook about the user, including the time zone, device model, language preferences, screen resolution, and a unique identifier, the report found.’

One year inside Trump's monumental Facebook campaign

The Guardian 29.01.20

Facebook is the big winner here: 

‘“The campaign is all about data collection,” Parscale told the Guardian. “If we touch you digitally, we want to know who you are and how you think and get you into our databases so that we can model off it and relearn and understand what’s happening.”…  Ads about immigration use especially dark rhetoric and imagery, stoking fear of “caravan after caravan” of migrants or urging voters to vote yes or no on whether to “deport illegals”. An ad that ran after the impeachment inquiry began used images of Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro and members of the fringe group the Revolutionary Communist party burning an American flag to suggest that Democratic candidates were “destroying American values”. “Only one man can stop this chaos,” the ad announces, before Trump appears under blue skies…  Facebook ads are designed to induce online actions, and almost all of the Trump campaign’s ads are clearly intended to produce one of four: donating money, attending a rally, buying campaign merchandise, or providing the campaign with a user’s email address or mobile phone number…  To achieve these ends, the campaign appears to be using some of the most basic and click-inducing marketing tricks, which have little if anything to do with presidential politics…  “Was Facebook responsible for Donald Trump getting elected?” he wrote in a leaked memo. “I think the answer is yes, but not for the reasons anyone thinks. He didn’t get elected because of Russia or misinformation or Cambridge Analytica. He got elected because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser. Period.”’

Europe has a plan to break Google and Amazon's cloud dominance

WIRED 27.1.20

A new DATA project is envisaged for Europe which would wean them off Google and US cloud servers:

‘Details about what the project will actually look like are thin on the ground – Renda says that, though the project is currently Franco-German, it could easily be scaled up to the full European territory. “The issue is – are we talking about purely national data localisation or a federated cloud,” says Renda. “But I think overall it would be consistent with the ambitions of France and Germany, to have a federation of like minded countries with with sufficient level of mutual trust in terms of data storage and data protection.”  Summa explains that GAIA-X includes the existing cloud infrastructure but will also include “new technologies.” “GAIA-X will have two layers – one is the application layer on which the users will interact with their service, and one is the infrastructure layer consisting of interconnected data centers with flexible and dynamic bandwidths, creating a virtual European cloud infrastructure,” he says. Finance wise, “details are still to be finalized”, but the project will require “extensive upfront investments” that “will pay off in the long run.”’

Cut Back on Email If You Want to Fight Global Warming

Bloomberg 25.1.20

Data centres are seriously bad for the environment:

‘BloombergNEF warns that energy efficiency upgrades or other technological improvements are unlikely to offset data’s greenhouse gas emissions, even if they are deployed quickly. Energy computing workloads are likely to more than double as more AI comes online, more devices are connected, and people do more work in the cloud. But no one seems to know how much fossil fuel energy is being used versus how much is being offset. Bresniker says the tech industry is “flying blind” when it comes to the true cost of storing data. The picture is clouded by a constant stream of efficiency and memory upgrades, increased renewable power, and AI aimed at data-center efficiency.  “We don’t really understand what the footprint is,” he says.’

“OUT OF CONTROL” – A REVIEW OF DATA SHARING BY POPULAR MOBILE APPS

ForbrukerRådet 14.1.20

Big data derived from all devices:

‘The actors, who are part of what we call the digital marketing and adtech industry, use this information to track us over time and across devices, in order to create comprehensive profiles about individual consumers. In turn, these profiles and groups can be used to personalize and target advertising, but also for other purposes such as discrimination, manipulation, and exploitation. Although the adtech industry operates across different media such as websites, smart devices, and mobile apps, we chose to focus on adtech in apps.’

Science publishers review ethics of research on Chinese minority groups

Nature 6.12.19

Nature article raising ethical concerns over genetic data obtained from UIghurs in China:

‘Moreau says that it’s hard to see how Uyghur peoples could give free, informed consent to DNA or facial-recognition work — given that so many people in that ethnic group have been sent to internment camps (which China calls education facilities). “It is my opinion that no population-genetics research on Chinese populations can be considered ethical, because the risk of abuse is so pervasive.”’

Australia Fires And Technology’s Climate Vampire: Why The Environmental Impact Of 5G Expansion Could Be Massive

IBTimeS 1.5.20

Connected devices and the risk to global harm:

‘Among the numerous missed stories of last year, was a report by a climate think tank on the environmental impact of our digital revolution calling for urgent action to reduce our use of cell phones, digital devices and the internet of things (IOT). In short, experts warn that the phenomenal growth of interconnected wireless devices, data centers and networks central to the digital revolution contributes to global warming more than it helps to prevent it. It turns out that the highly touted next-generation 5G wireless technology has serious climate impacts.’

You’re very easy to track down, even when your data has been anonymized

Technology Review 7.23.19

De-anonymisation doesn’t work:

‘However, a new study in Nature Communications suggests this is far from the case.  Researchers from Imperial College London and the University of Louvain have created a machine-learning model that estimates exactly how easy individuals are to reidentify from an anonymized data set. You can check your own score here, by entering your zip code, gender, and date of birth.’ 

This startup claims its deepfakes will protect your privacy

Technology Review 20.12.19

Israeli company wants to use deep fake to anonymise your data - counterproductive: 

'The fact that D-ID positions itself as a privacy solution is revealing. With elements of new data protection laws like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act remaining open to interpretation, some companies are proving ingenious at marketing themselves. These technologies “comply” with regulations in a way that benefits the companies that want to make money from data, rather than the people whose data is being captured. This is a violation of the spirit of the law, say critics. Britt Paris, an information science scholar at Rutgers University, calls D-ID exploitative and an example of “further encroachment of the datafication of everyday life.”’

Edward Snowden says Facebook, Amazon and Google engage in ‘abuse'

CNET 4.11.19

On abuse of data collection:

‘“But Snowden argued that the problem with the legislation is in its name. It shouldn't regulate data protection, he said, but data collection. "If we learned anything from 2013, it's that eventually, everything leaks," he said.”’

Why Irish data centre boom is complicating climate efforts

The Guardian 6.1.20

DATA in Ireland”

‘The surge in Irish data processing will require significant new energy infrastructure and increase emissions, complicating Ireland’s response to the climate crisis. The cloud can create carbon: it is estimated that when the music video Despacito reached 5bn streamed YouTube views in 2018, the energy consumption was equivalent to powering 40,000 US homes a year (it has now exceeded 6.5bn views).’

CARS ARE SECRETLY SPYING ON US

Futurism 18.12.19

Data snatching occurs in cars now:

‘The car had been tracking his location, monitoring activity on the cell phone he had connected, and collecting other data points that it sent straight to General Motors. It’s a disturbing revelation that serves as yet another reminder that digital privacy is a myth’.

Tim Berners-Lee unveils global plan to save the web

The Guardian 24.11.19

Tim Berners-Lee on plan to save the internet:

‘“I think people’s fear of bad things happening on the internet is becoming, justifiably, greater and greater,” Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, told the Guardian. “If we leave the web as it is, there’s a very large number of things that will go wrong. We could end up with a digital dystopia if we don’t turn things around. It’s not that we need a 10-year plan for the web, we need to turn the web around now.”’

Fresh Cambridge Analytica leak ‘shows global manipulation is out of control’

The Guardian 4.1.20

DATA manipulation and the Cambridge Analytica scandal:

‘Kaiser said the Facebook data scandal was part of a much bigger global operation that worked with governments, intelligence agencies, commercial companies and political campaigns to manipulate and influence people, and that raised huge national security implications.’

TOWARDS DIGITAL SOBRIETY

Working Group March 2019

Lean ICT Report on slowing down digital progress due to very high energy costs.

Political Operatives Are Faking Voter Outrage With Millions Of Made-Up Comments To Benefit The Rich And Powerful

Buzzfeed 3.10.19

FCC using falsely-created bulk-generated emails to promote veto of net neutrality:

‘The tech publication ZDNet found that “anti-net neutrality spammers are flooding FCC's pages with fake comments” and that several people whose names appeared as commenters said they had not posted a word. Reporters at Gizmodo and the Verge found similar examples.  Pro–net neutrality comments were called into question, too. Nearly 8 million identical one-sentence comments supporting the existing regulations were tied to email addresses from FakeMailGenerator.com. Many of those used plausible names but with nonsensical street-and-city combinations that do not exist. Another million comments, also supporting net neutrality, claimed to come from people with @pornhub.com email addresses.’

I tracked everything my baby did until nothing made sense any more

WIRED 22.10.19

Baby data:

‘Right now, Google’s nascent interest in tracking your newborn’s bowel movements is a relative footnote. Soon, it could be the whole story. Or, to put it another way, Google and Pampers will soon have access to, in aggregate, data on how huge numbers of babies sleep and potentially be able to offer advice on how they might sleep better. When it comes to selling that data back to exhausted parents, you can pretty much name your price.’

'Movie Idiocracy is a reality!' Google gets to chug millions of gallons of drinking water from dwindling aquifer to cool servers

RT 11.10.19

Google to use aquifer water in California to cool its servers:

‘While Google insists it strives to “build sustainability” into all of its projects, critics have slammed the move for putting Big Tech ahead of South Carolinians, arguing the aquifer in question is drying up and that its remaining supply should be preserved for residents.  “I don’t have a beef against Google itself, but I don’t think it is appropriate to use pristine groundwater for cooling computers, versus providing that water for people,” Clay Duffie, manager of a water utility in the town of Mount Pleasant, told local media. “We are obviously concerned about the long term, safe sustainable yield of that aquifer.”’

The Internet Cloud Has a Dirty Secret

Fortune 18.09.19

DATA carbon footprint:

‘Computer servers, which store website data and share it with other computers and mobile devices, create the magic of the virtual world. But every search, click, or streamed video sets several servers to work — a Google search for "Despacito" activates servers in six to eight data centers around the world — consuming very real energy resources.’ 

How Data Hoarding Is the New Threat to Privacy and Climate Change

Medium 01.08.19

A lot of this data is total waste, completely unnecessary.  In a Medium article, Tyler Elliot Bettilyon writes: 

‘The data we generate is itself a kind of digital pollutant — a new kind of trash for the information age. Some data is a waste product in the same way that junk mail is a waste product. How many computational resources are dedicated to the zillions of spam emails sent every day? How much bandwidth is dedicated to ads sitting unclicked in your sidebar? Increasingly, records of nearly every digital transaction — no matter how trivial — are transmitted to a data center and stored. It may seem hyperbolic to harp on a few wasted bits, but this is a serious problem’.

5G’s Waveform Is a Battery Vampire

IEEE Spectrum 24.06.19

‘“I don’t think the carriers really understood the impact on the mobile phone, and what it’s going to do to battery life.  5G is going to come with a price, and that price is battery consumption.  [China] has “been vocal about the power consumption of their base stations” says James Kimery, the director of marketing for RF and software-defined radio research at National Instruments Corp.   

A 5G base station will consume three times more power than a 4G one, and more are needed for effective communication.’

How Much Data Do We Create Every Day? The Mind-Blowing Stats Everyone Should Read

Forbes 21.05.18

‘The amount of data we produce every day is truly mind-boggling. There are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day at our current pace, but that pace is only accelerating with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT). Over the last two years alone 90 percent of the data in the world was generated… The Internet of Things, connected “smart” devices that interact with each other and us while collecting all kinds of data, is exploding (from 2 billion devices in 2006 to a projected 200 billion by 2020) and is one of the primary drivers for our data vaults exploding as well.’