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Belgian court: Facebook can keep tracking non-users

By on July 3, 2016 in Big Data, Data Protection, Facebook, Privacy

A Belgian court has overturned a ruling that would have forced Facebook to stop tracking non-users who had visited its pages, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. A Brussels appeals court found that the Belgian Privacy Commission, which brought a case against Facebook last year, does not have jurisdiction over the company’s Ireland-based European headquarters. As The Guardian reports, it also rejected a claim that the case was urgent and needed to be expedited.

This reverses a decision made last year, when a court ordered Facebook to stop using cookies to keep tabs on the web browsing of people who were not logged into accounts or had otherwise opted out of tracking

The Verge: Facebook wins Belgian privacy case over tracking logged-out users »

Ars Technica: Facebook wins privacy case, can track any Belgian it wants »

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Corporatism vs. free speech

By on June 16, 2016 in Big Brother, Big Business, Big Data, Big Government, Censorship, Civil liberties, Democracy, EU, Facebook, Freedom of Speech, Google, Human rights, Rule of law, social media

Politics should stick to lawmaking. Companies should stick to making business.

When the two mix, the result is usually damaging. Politicians lose their focus on principles, their mandate from the voters and the public good. Companies who lobby for subsidies and (often competition reducing) special laws will find themselves worse of in the long run, as they detach from the realities of the market.

Nevertheless, politicians and businessmen are often involved in mutual back-scratching.

Lately, the political EU-apparatus and big data companies have ganged up to curb free speech. The EU, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Microsoft have decided on a mutual approach to keep back hate speech and religious radicalisation on the net.

In other words, the EU encourages private companies to censor statements on the Internet that the politicians do not approve of.

If you are to limit free speech at all — the rules must be clearly set out in law. If there should be any censorship at all — it must be decided in a court of law, in accordance with the laws. And if anyone is being censored — there must be a possibility to appeal the decision.

All these three principles are being thrown out in the EU-Big Data agreement.

And there is nothing you can do about it. Having signed e.g. various social networks terms and conditions, you have essentially given up your rights.

From a political point of view, the EU is acting in a deceptive way. When there are no legal means to censor voices they would like to silence – they turn to private companies to do what they themselves cannot accomplish. (It’s just like when US authorities had PayPal, credit card companies, and the banks to throttle the stream of donations to Wikileaks.)

The EU is short-circuiting the rule of law and democracy itself – in order to curb the people’s civil rights.

This is totally unacceptable.

/ HAX

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Big Brotherism – the next step

By on June 11, 2016 in Data Protection, Facebook, Privacy, social media

A British startup has created a system for offering landlords continuous surveillance of their tenants’ online activity to determine whether they are likely to be asset risks. The system, named Tenant Assured, connects to the tenants’ social media accounts and mines their status updates, photos and private messages, feeding them to an algorithmic model, which is claimed to find potential signs of financial stress (which include posts with keywords like “loan” or “staying in”) or crime. The landlord gets an online dashboard, showing the tenant’s social connections, and a histogram of their online activity times, as well as flagging up any potential danger signs, as well as a five-factor psychometric profile of the tenant, annotated with what a landlord should look for.

Via Metafilter: Renting in the panopticon »

Main article, Washington Post: Creepy startup will help landlords, employers and online dates strip-mine intimate data from your Facebook page »

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Big Government and Big Data fighting over control of your online activities. Blockchain is the obvious alternative.

By on June 6, 2016 in Big Brother, Big Data, Big Government, Blockchain, decentralization, EU, Facebook, Free Software, Google, Internet, Privacy, social media

For many years, the EU has taken many small steps towards introducing an EU ID card: eIDAS. (Or at least a strict common EU standard for nationally issued ID cards.)

An ID card proving the holders identity is one thing. (However, a mandatory ID card as such is a very controversial concept in some member states.) One interesting point is if there is going to be a common personal EU identification number. Another is what information the cards chip will contain and how it is going to be used. No doubt, an EU ID card can be used as a very effective tool for various forms of Big Brotherism.

It is in the light of the EU slowly trying to introduce a common, mandatory ID card that various EU schemes should be scrutinised.

Last week some sites, e.g. Breitbart London ran this story: The European Commission Wants You To Log Into Social Media Accounts With Govt-Issued ID Cards »

Well, that might be a bit oversimplified. What the EU suggests is that it should be possible to use national (EU harmonised) ID cards to log into various online platforms instead of logging in using e.g. Facebook or Google. Thus giving you the possibility of being controlled by Big Government or Big Data.

Giving people a possibility to choose is a good idea, as such. But I’m not sure that I would like Big Government or Big Data to have the control over my online life.

And you should be very suspicious! The moment there is an established platform for online registration (or signing transactions) with an EU approved ID card – this system can be rolled out all over the place. For example, the EU would love to have a system where you have to use your ID card to be able to log on to the Internet. I have met several people in the EU apparatus promoting that idea.

But how should you go about if you don’t want nor Big Government or Big Data to be in control of your online activities?

Actually, it can be done quite easily – by using Blockchain technology, decentralised solutions, and open source software. Ideal, there should be a couple of different such ID providers, competing with each other over providing competent privacy protection.

(All of this might even be possible to achieve using the already existing Bitnation World Citizen ID.)

This can be one of those forks in the road of history: Do we want our online activities to be controlled by Big Government and Big Brother, by Big Data – or a decentralised system with a high level of security, respecting users right to privacy and controlled by no one?

/ HAX

Links:
• The European Commission Wants You To Log Into Social Media Accounts With Govt-Issued ID Cards »
• EU: Communication on Online Platforms and the Digital Single Market Opportunities and Challenges for Europe »

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The beginning of an new era of Internet censorship?

By on May 31, 2016 in Big Brother, Censorship, Civil liberties, Democracy, EU, Facebook, Google, Internet

Internet and social media giants Facebook, Twitter, Google’s YouTube and Microsoft on Tuesday pledged to combat online hate speech in Europe as the European Union’s European Commission unveiled a new code of conduct in Brussels designed to avoid the “spread of illegal hate speech.”

The companies vowed to review most valid requests for removal of illegal hate speech within 24 hours and to remove or disable access if necessary.

To be observed. Closely.

THR: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Vow to Combat Online Hate Speech in Europe »

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Europol, Facebook & Twitter

By on May 20, 2016 in Big Brother, Big Data, Data Protection, Europol, Facebook, Privacy, surveillance

Will the European Police Office’s (Europol’s) database soon include innocent people reported by Facebook or Twitter? The Europol Regulation, which has been approved on 11 May 2016, not only provides a comprehensive new framework for the police agency, but it also allows Europol to share data with private companies like Facebook and Twitter.

EDRi – Europol: Non-transparent cooperation with IT companies »

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An EU-US Privacy Shield?

By on February 2, 2016 in Big Brother, Big Business, Data Protection, EU, Facebook, NSA, Privacy, surveillance, US

Last October the EU-US “Safe Harbour” agreement was canceled by the European Court of Justice. This agreement was created to ensure that European personal data was to be treated with care when handled by US companies. But the ECJ found that the agreement did not meet the requirements of the Data Protection Directive, because of NSA access.

ArsTechnica then reported…

“The most significant repercussion of this ruling is that American companies, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, may not be allowed to send user data from Europe back to the US.”

Link: Europe’s highest court strikes down Safe Harbour data sharing between EU and US »

Today the media has reported that a new agreement has been reached: The EU-US Privacy Shield.

Such an agreement has been a top political priority for the EU as well as the US — as the respective administrations have not wanted data protection to get in the way of business as usual.

But is there a real agreement? Not really. All there is, is a “framework agreement”, basically saying that the EU and the US agree to agree at some point.

Today ArsTechnica writes…

“What that means in practice is that the Commission has negotiated some breathing space to strike a deal with the US.”

“The US has clarified that they do not carry out indiscriminate mass surveillance of European citizens,” EU Commissioner Andrus Ansip has declared. No further details on this, though…

Link: Last gasp Safe Harbour “political deal” struck between Europe and US »

Apparently the EU and the US have no such thing as an actual deal to show. But there is a lot of hot air coming out of Brussels and Washington.

Earlier today, before the news about an “framework agreement” from Brussels, ArsTechnica had an interview with Max Schrems, the Austrian law student who took this case to court to begin with.

“On the subject of any potential new agreement, he argues it would be no better, and that a sector-specific approach to EU-US data transfers would be preferable. “If this case goes back to the ECJ [European Court of Justice]—which it very likely will do, if there is a new safe harbour that does not meet the test of the court—then it will fail again, and nobody wants that,” he says.”

Link: Why Safe Harbor 2.0 will lose again »

Apart from the EU and the US having agreed to agree — everyone seems to be just as much in the dark as before. (There is also the hidden agenda of mass surveillance and intelligence cooperation that led to the end of “safe harbour” in the first place, to be taken into consideration.)

I suppose the new agreement, when it is finalized, will end up in the European Parliament for final approval. Then, if not before, we should know. And it is encouraging that the Parliament has been very vigilant concerning EU-US data protection issues in the past.

/ HAX

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Turning friends into threats

By on January 6, 2016 in Big Brother, Data Protection, Data Retention, Facebook, Google, Privacy, surveillance

Some weeks ago there was some attention and upset reactions about the Chinese concept of “Sesame Credits”. It’s all about what you say, read, buy and do on the Internet. Your credit status then might decide if you can get e.g. a bank loan or permission to travel abroad.

Nasty indeed. But what make the whole thing really upsetting is that your credit status also will be affected by what your friends do online. This really is a diabolic tool for “social control”. (Video»)

It is easy to believe that it is only those communists in China and such anti-democratic regimes that could apply a system like this.

But, actually, most western democracies can easily do the same thing with data retention. This is a perfect tool for building sociograms. A sociogram is a map showing who is connected to who when it comes to the internet and telecommunications. How the authorities look at you can be determined by the friends you have (and by what friends they have).

So, even if you have “nothing to hide” — you still certainly do have something to fear.

And it’s not just about data retention. The same (or even more detailed) information is collected by Facebook and Google. It most certinly can be obtained by the authorities — and is probably also for sale out there. It would be very strange if various intelligence agencies don’t already have access to this information.

In this way, Big Brotherism is breaking down trust between people in our societies. And that is a very bad thing.

/ HAX

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