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Content type: Examples
At the 2016 Usenix conference, MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) presented a system called Chronos that could use wifi signals to detect the position of a person or object inside a room to within tens of centimetres. MIT claimed Chronos was 20 times more accurate than previous wifi-based tracking systems, 94% successful in detecting which room a person was in, and 97% accurate in determining if a customer was inside or outside a shop. The researchers hoped…
Content type: Examples
In a presentation at London's 2016 Black Hat cybersecurity conference, researchers from UCL showed that it was possible to use ultrasound to track consumers across multiple devices. Marketers were already using beacons inaudible to the human ear to activate functions on devices via their microphones, and retailers were using shopping reward apps such as Shopkick to push department or aisle-specific ads while customers were in their stores. The UCL researchers noted, however, the inherent…
Content type: Examples
In June 2016, National Security Agency deputy director Richard Ledgett told a conference on military technology conference that the agency was researching whether internet-connected biomedical devices such as pacemakers could be used to collect foreign intelligence. Ledgett identified the complexity of the Internet of Things as both a security nightmare and an opportunity for signals intelligence. However, the NSA prioritises its resources by focusing solely on technology used by its opponents…
Content type: Examples
In September 2016, an algorithm assigned to pick the winners of a beauty contest examined selfies sent in by 600,000 entrants from India, China, the US, and all over Africa, and selected 44 finalists, almost all of whom were white. Of the six non-white finalists, all were Asian and only one had visibly dark skin. The contest was run by Beauty.ai, an initiative from the Russia and Hong Kong-based Youth Laboratories, and was supported by Microsoft and Nvidia. The reason was the lack of diversity…
Content type: Examples
In 2015, the Canadian Department of National Defence issued a procurement request for a contractor who could find "vulnerabilities and security measures" in a 2015 pick-up truck whose model and make were not specified and "develop and demonstrate exploits" for the military. The contractor was to find as many exploits as possible by analysing every part of the truck, demonstrate that the hacks could actually hurt someone or enable an attacker to gather information, and deliver explicit source…
Content type: Call to Action
Email your MP using any or all of the points below to start your message
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Make sure you put: "Urgent: Data Protection Bill - Amendments for Report State on 9 May" in the subject title
Use the ‘Contact’ box above to send your email
Points to raise in your letter
RE: Data Protection Bill - Amendments for Report State on 9 May…
Content type: Examples
In the 2014 report "Networked Employment Discrimination", the Future of Work Project studied data-driven hiring systems, which often rely on data prospective employees have no idea may be used, such as the results of Google searches, and other stray personal data scattered online. In addition, digital recruiting systems that only accept online input exclude those who do not have internet access at home and must rely on libraries and other places with limited access and hours to fill in and…
Content type: Examples
The news that connected TVs and set-top boxes were listening in on their owners' conversations led the state of California to pass legislation (AB1116) prohibiting companies from operating a voice recognition feature without prominently informing the user or installer during initial setup. In addition, the bill bars manufacturers and third parties from using recordings of spoken words "collected through the operation of a voice recognition feature" in order to improve their voice recognition or…
Content type: Examples
In 2016, 21-year-old Russian photographer Egor Tsvetkov launched the "Your Face is Big Data" project. He created the project by semi-secretly photographing passengers seated across from him on the St. Petersburg metro, then uploading the images to an online service called FindFace. FindFace's service, which is intended to facilitate checking out potential dates met through online sites, takes uploaded random photographs and searches for matches on Russia's most popular social network, Vkontakte…
Content type: Examples
In a 2015 study of 79 apps listed in NHS England's Health Apps Library, which tests programs to ensure they meet standards of clinical and data safety, researchers at Imperial College London discovered that 70 of them sent personal data to associated online services and 23 sent that data without encrypting it. Four included both health and personal data in the unprotected transfer. The study also found that even though more than half the apps had privacy policies, these were vague and unclear…
Content type: Examples
Because banks often decline to give loans to those whose "thin" credit histories make it hard to assess the associated risk, in 2015 some financial technology startups began looking at the possibility of instead performing such assessments by using metadata collected by mobile phones or logged from internet activity. The algorithm under development by Brown University economist Daniel Björkegren for the credit-scoring company Enterpreneurial Finance Lab was built by examining the phone records…
Content type: Examples
A new generation of technology has given local law enforcement officers in some parts of the US unprecedented power to peer into the lives of citizens. The police department of Frenso California uses a cutting-edge Real Time Crime Center that relies on software like Beware.
As officers respond to calls, Beware automatically runs the address. The program also scoures billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and the man’s social…
Content type: Examples
In 2016, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California published a report revealing that the social media monitoring service Geofeedia had suggested it could help police track protesters. The report's publication led Twitter and Facebook to restrict Geofeedia's access to their bulk data. ACLUNC argued that even though the data is public, using it for police surveillance is an invasion of privacy. Police are not legally required to get a warrant before searching public data; however…
Content type: Examples
Documents submitted as part of a 2015 US National Labor Relations Board investigation show that Walmart, long known to be hostile to unions, spied on and retaliated against a group of employees who sought higher wages, more full-time jobs, and predictable schedules. In combating the group, who called themselves the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), Walmart hired an intelligence-gathering service from Lockheed Martin, contacted the FBI, and set up an internal Delta team…
Content type: Examples
At the Sixth Annual Conference on Social Media Within the Defence and Military Sector, held in London in 2016, senior military and intelligence officials made it clear that governments increasingly view social media as a tool for the Armed Forces and a "new front in warfare". Social media are also viewed as a source of intelligence on civilian populations and enemies and as a vector for propaganda. The conference was sponsored by Thales, which was working with the National Research Council of…
Content type: Examples
In 2015, a data leak apparently linked to the new Uber partner app exposed the personal information of hundreds of drivers, including their Social Security numbers, scanned drivers' licences, tax forms, and other documents. The information was likely to have been available for at least a few hours. Uber said the leak was fixed within 30 minutes and affected no more than 674 US drivers.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z4mjkj/uber-left-hundreds-of-drivers-licenses-and-social-…
Content type: Examples
In 2015, US director of national intelligence James Clapper, backed by National Security Agency director Admiral Michael Rogers, warned Congress that the next phase of escalating online data theft is likely to involve manipulating digital information. Clapper and Rogers viewed this type of attack as more likely than a catastrophic event of digitally triggered damage to physical infrastructure. The pair believed that manipulating and deleting data would compromise data integrity and undermine…
Content type: Examples
In 2016, a group of criminologists intend on identifying the famous graffiti artist Banksy used a forensic technique known as geographical profiling. The technique is more commonly used to identify potential suspects in cases of serial rape, arson, and murder, and works by mapping crimes to see if they cluster around particular geographical locations. The researchers had, however, a clue: the Daily Mailhad previously identified a candidate: Robin Gunningham. The researchers used addresses…
Content type: Examples
Computer programs that perform risk assessments of crime suspects are increasingly common in American courtrooms, and are used at every stage of the criminal justice systems to determine who may be set free or granted parole, and the size of the bond they must pay. By 2016, the results of these assessments were given to judges during criminal sentencing and a sentencing reform bill was proposed in Congress to mandate the use of such assessments in federal prisons. In a study of the risk scores…
Content type: Examples
In May 2015, the US Department of Justice and the FBI submitted a declaration to an Oregon federal judge stating that the US government's no-fly lists and broader watchlisting system relied on predictive judgements of individuals rather than records of actual offences. The documents were filed as part of a longstanding case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which claimed that the government did not provide steps individuals could take to get off the blacklists and that the process…
Content type: Examples
In 2014, NYC Planning Labs Chris Whong was sent and made public a complete a complete dump of historical trip and fare logs from New York City taxis in response to a Freedom of Information request. The more than 20GB of uncompressed data comprising more than 173 million individual trips included pickup and drop-off locations and times and other metadata - but also personally identifiable information about the driver. Careful analysis enabled researchers to deanonymise the entire dataset,…
Content type: Examples
As GPS began being increasingly incorporated into smartphones, satnav manufacturers like the Dutch company TomTom were forced to search for new revenue streams. In 2011, TomTom was forced to apologise when the Dutch newspaper AD reported that the company had sold driving data collected from customers to police, which used it to site speed cameras in locations where speeding was common. TomTom said that any information it shares had been anonymised; however, in response to the newspaper story…
Content type: Examples
In 2014, India's newly elected prime minister, Narendra Modi, allocated INR70.6 billion (upwards of £750 million) to a plan called "100 Smart Cities". Although a year later the funding dropped to INR1.4 billion, smart city-themed conference continued to take place in Delhi and Mumbai, and urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu expected imminent roll-out of cities with infrastructure comparable to any developed European city. However, the earliest of these cities - such as Palava City, built…
Content type: Examples
In 2015, The Intercept obtained documents showing that the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota used a fake Facebook account to friend and monitor local Black Lives Matter activists, and collect their personal information and photographs without their knowledge. The account was discovered in a cache of files the Mall of America provided to Bloomington officials after a large BLM protest against police brutality that was held at the mall. After the protest, the city charged 11 protesters…
Content type: Examples
In 2015, Boston advertising executive John Flynn, CEO of Copley Advertising, began developing a system that uses standard online advertising and tracking techniques, coupled with geofencing, to send advertisements to women's smartphones when they are sitting inside Planned Parenthood clinics and other abortion facilities. The system was soon adopted by the northern California-based crisis pregnancy centres network RealOptions and the evangelical adoption agency Bethany Christian Services. The…
Content type: Examples
New Hampshire Supreme Court rules information brokers liable for harms caused by selling information
In 2003, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that information brokers and private investigators may be liable for the harms caused by selling information. In the case in question, Amy Boyer, a young woman, was murdered by Liam Youens, a stalker. Youens obtained her information from Docusearch, which bought her social security number and used a subcontractor to place "pretext" calls in order to get Boyer to reveal her employment information. The ruling led the private investigation industry to…
Content type: Examples
Uber has closely studied how dynamic pricing functions and when it's acceptable to users. One discovery is that round numbers signal haste and sloppiness where riders appear to believe that more precise numbers (for example, 2.1 instead of 2) have been carefully worked out by an algorithm. The company's head of head of economic research Keith Chen says that riders will pay up to 9.9 times the normal price if their phone's battery is almost dead, information the Uber app openly collects in order…
Content type: Examples
In 2015, a series of interviews with Moshe Greenshpan, the founder and CEO of the Israeli company Skakash, revealed the existence of the company's facial recognition software Churchix. The software is intended to help churches keep track of who attends services and other events by matching reference photos provided by new congregants to images captured on cameras within the church. Greenshpan claimed that an added benefit is to enable churches to identify criminals and sex offenders by adding…
Content type: Examples
In 2016, rising awareness of the profits pharmaceutical and other medical companies make from personal data such as DNA samples and cell lines led to the rise of a "biorights" movement to ensure that patients retain greater control over their contributions. A federal complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of four people against Myriad Genetics Laboratories, a Utah-based company, asked the US Department of Health and Human Services to make sure patients retain access to…
Content type: Examples
In 2016, researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory developed a new device that uses wireless signals that measure heartbeats by bouncing off a person's body. The researchers claim that this system is 87% accurate in recognising joy, pleasure, sadness, or anger based on the heart rate after first measuring how the individual's body reacts in various emotional states. Unlike a medical electrocardiogram, it does not require a sensor to be attached to the person's…