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The future of profiling

By on May 21, 2017 in Big Brother, Big Data, Data Protection, Democracy, Privacy, social media

Even worse, profiling and similar techniques are increasingly used not just to classify and understand people, but also to make decisions that have far-reaching consequences, from credit to housing, welfare and employment. Intelligent CCTV software automatically flags “suspicious behaviour”, intelligence agencies predict internet users’ citizenship to decide they are foreign (fair game) or domestic (usually not fair game), and the judicial system claims to be able to predicts future criminals.

As someone once said: it’s Orwell when it’s accurate and Kafka when it’s not.

Privacy International » Cambridge Analytica Explained: Data and Elections »

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WTISD-17: The two faces of Big Data

By on May 17, 2017 in Big Data, Civil rights, Data Protection, Privacy

Big data has a potential to improve society – much like electricity or antibiotics. From health care and education to urban planning and protecting the environment, the applications of big data are remarkable. However, big data comes with big negative impacts. Big data can be used – by both advertisers and government agencies – to violate privacy. The power of big data can be exploited to monitor every single detail of people’s activities globally.

EDRi: Big Data for Big Impact – but not only a positive one »

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EDRi on data mining

By on April 21, 2017 in Big Brother, Big Data, Big Government, Data Protection, Democracy, Privacy

Did Donald Trump become president because he hired the data mining firm Cambridge Analytica, which uses profiling and micro-targeting in political elections? Some say yes, many say no. But what we know is that we are subjected to extensive personalised commercial and political messaging on the basis of data, including metadata, collected and used without our awareness and consent. It can result in changes in our behaviour, at least to some extent.

EDRi: Data mining for profit and election result – how predictable are we? »

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The NSA SWIFT hack

By on April 17, 2017 in Big Brother, Data Protection, EU, Europol, IT security, NSA, Privacy, Rule of law, surveillance, US

Reuters: Hacker documents show NSA tools for breaching global money transfer system »

Documents and computer files released by hackers provide a blueprint for how the U.S. National Security Agency likely used weaknesses in commercially available software to gain access to the global system for transferring money between banks, a review of the data showed.

On Friday, a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers released documents and files indicating NSA had accessed the SWIFT money-transfer system through service providers in the Middle East and Latin America. That release was the latest in a series of disclosures by the group in recent months.

Told you so.

Below, video from the hearings on NSA and mass surveillance in the European Parliament, 24 September 2013 – where Europol and many others try to steer clear of the SWIFT issue. (Some translation problems during a few minutes in the video, but it soon gets better.)

Youtube »

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European Parliament worried about EU-US Privacy Shield

By on April 6, 2017 in Big Brother, Data Protection, EU, EU-US Privacy Shield, NSA, Privacy, US

New rules allowing the US National Security Agency (NSA) to share private data with other US agencies without court oversight, recent revelations about surveillance activities by a US electronic communications service provider and vacancies on US oversight bodies are among the concerns raised by MEPs in a resolution passed on Thursday.

In short, the EU-US Privacy Shield (replacing the »Safe Harbour«-agreement) falls short – especially considering the actions of the new US administration.

Data Privacy Shield: MEPs alarmed at undermining of privacy safeguards in the US »

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Tim Berners-Lee on the future of the web

By on April 4, 2017 in Data Protection, decentralization, Free Information, Internet, WWW

On the better web Berners-Lee envisions, users control where their data is stored and how it’s accessed. For example, social networks would still run in the cloud. But you could store your data locally. Alternately, you could choose a different cloud server run by a company or community you trust. You might have different servers for different types of information—for health and fitness data, says—that is completely separate from the one you use for financial records.

Wired: Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the Web, Plots a Radical Overhaul of His Creation »

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