Facebook collects a wide range of private data from developers
wsj.com
wsj.com
Then local, state, and federal requirements are lacking. "Privacy" is taking a new meaning in today's world than what it would have been understood to mean previously. Yes, I think the scope of the concept of privacy needs to expand to match the expanding capabilities of all actors to violate it. We could have more privacy by living like Ted Kaczynski but that's not conducive to participating in today's society.
Try to imagine the most personal and private thing about a person, what would it be? Their medical and biological information, of course! In the future we'll be able to look at 3d renders of our body systems, see real-time health statistics, and be able to discover our ailments near instantaneously.
Now, who else should have this data? In my opinion, only the doctor. Definitely not the government, and definitely not my neighbors. Possibly some businesses for product development. Possibly medical researchers, for educational advancement.
Point of information: "the government" should not be regarded as a monolithic entity unless it actually behaves as such. As a Brit, my medical records are held by the nationalised health service, but this doesn't mean that random cabinet ministers or police can go leafing through them on a whim.
For me, they're held with https://nhsnss.org/how-nss-works/ ; quite a lot of England actually has them held by a private company, Serco.
(edit: should probably add another distinction between "illegal" and "doesn't happen at all")
I value your idea about language, and sometimes I use 'government' in general terms. In your example however, I believe given the opportunity, scumbag ministers and police would indeed look into people's medical records, and would indeed abuse this information.
As an American, I'm constantly upset with our government's abuses, especially by our police and their access to otherwise private info.
More on confidentiality: https://www.gponline.com/confidentiality-when-gps-disclose-i...
Yet.
Edit: I thought we were talking about America.
> obligation by contract to protect that information, even from the government
Contract never trumps statute anywhere.
The 4th Amendment to privacy trumps statues everywhere (i.e. neither the feds nor state can just legislate their ability to read private company data). The contract between the customer and the org. should prevent the org. from just handing it over willingly.
Now, does this mean no company will take the government to court to protect their user data? Maybe not, but the list of companies that I can think of which will do that is vanishingly small. And let's not forget that the AT&T NSA spying case was dismissed by the appeals court, and was not accepted by review in the supreme court. Do you think the outcome would be any different next time?
The problem is that if there is no way to effectively "petition a redress of grievances" (to borrow a phrase) about some constitutional violations, what is the point of that clause of the constitution? If you have legal protections of your rights, you must also have a court system that is willing to actually hold the government to account over violations of your rights -- and my impression of the US (as an outsider) is that this is not the case for 4th amendment violations.
I think we need need term limits in Congress, so the same stale minds can't dominate forever. Also I think states should start flexing their 10th amendment rights to show the feds that they care about their rights (state legalization of drugs, prostitution for example).
In general our court system is fairly good at upholding constitutional rights. It's not uncommon for a trial to be thrown out because some evidence was collected without a warrant, for example. However you're right that certain events question the viability of upholding our rights against a tyrannically government. That of course is why the 2nd amendment exists.
Fuck that! Seriously. Why do people keep wanting to put data on the blockchain? All that does is make the data public. Sure, it can't be decrypted __now__, but do you want to take the risk that it will always be encrypted? Even if you update the security of the entire chain the previous blocks are still decryptable (and we repeat the with same problem).
We don't need a fully audit-able system this type of data. There are advantages to centralized data systems and I would even take a decentralized approach over a BC method. Unless you can give a very compelling reason why the data needs to be audit-able through the entire history.
Presumely, usage by the business would be open-ended and very openly for the gain of the company first.
Meanwhile, a government agency were (at least in theory) bound by publicly available purposes and regulations.
Out of curiosity, why would you trust the private company more than a government agency?
I understand your point though and definitely agree with your on the sensitivity of the data.
Put simply, I personally don't trust the American government at the federal level, and it's hard to find reasons why anyone should. People who restrain criticisms of the feds often like to pretend that all they need to do to prevent corruption is get into office any make the changes we want. Unfortunately that's extremely naive and huge waste of effort, especially when Congress has no term limits. I believe the only way to reign in federal abuse is by taking its power away.
My point here is that the government has a long track record for abuse at the highest degree, quite literally, and giving them my most personal and private data is terrifying. The problem is that we can't change governments on a whim, thus if we have a crappy one, we have to deal with it. In a free market however, if a corporation is caught with abuses, we can bury them in court and move to a competitor.
Not everyone is addicted, but rather Facebook has become arguably necessary because of its network effect.
Facebook has become the de facto standard of communication in some institutions. For example, in some universities, important notices on due dates or class cancellations is done solely through Facebook. One may be very heavily pressured to use it.
By the way, I don't have a Facebook account.
If you pick the former, then I'll assume that you're naive to the abuses in our government. If you pick the latter, then I'm going to leave and be productive somewhere else, because you're never going to get it.
Far more industry leading companies (much less companies as a whole) have rose and fall in power, changed their goals/products/management/etc in the past 5/15/50/etc years than governments. Turnover is far higher in corporation management positions than congresses and parliaments, and further, there is no law saying that I have to buy any specific good from a company, whereas I don't get a choice in which government I pay to build the the roads or police where I have established my life.
> A few seconds after the app finished measuring my pulse, I saw it pop up in the network traffic headed to Facebook: \"heartrate\":56,\"
What Facebook endpoint lets the app developer accept arbitrary customer data? What does Facebook do with that data? Do they tie it to the user?
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-events/
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...
Who are those people that think it is a good idea to send your medical details (the article also mentions "Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker", which apparently sends whether you may be ovulating to Facebook) to a third-party, let alone Facebook?
(Actually, at least for Android apps there is a answer to who these people are... and there are quite a lot of them: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/trackers/66/)
It's increasingly obvious that iOS and Android need to restrict network connectivity of apps because it's being seriously abused.
Unfortunately this problem is escalating because too few people give a damn about their own privacy, drowning out the voices who do care, deeply, about this issue.
A proper user configurable firewall is the obvious answer, but perhaps also adding limits that an app can only phone home to the domain that the app was signed with.
I feel that both Apple and Google are deliberately perpetuating this problem for financial gain, and should be held accountable as well.
Edit: grammar
If they don't have the available resources/capabilities to build or self host an analytics platform, do they really need that data analyzed?
Have their users explicitly allowed them to send such data to Facebook? Why not use a company that has a better record in respecting peoples' privacy. No wonder why things like GDPR exist!
They are not completely absolved of blame because they should be monitoring for personal data (somehow), but the app developers should be to blame more using this data without users' knowledge.
Now if Facebook were to use this data for their own purposes, we'd have (another) real scandal on our hands.
Facebook's claim about not wanting the data is contradicted by actions. They chose to make their SDK send[1] analytics signals on library init before the user could have even been presented with a request for consent. They chose to have their analytics SDK send[2] everything to Facebook by default, requiring developers to go out of their way to disable the spyware (including somehow discovering that this step is needed).
> Now if Facebook were to use this data for their own purposes,
What would Bayesian analysis say about that question given a history with multiple events where FB et al were using the all of data they received however they want? Facebook lost the benefit of the doubt a long time ago, and it will take a lot of work to rebuild their reputation.
[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_...
[2] Ibid.
Not that I'm defending FB, but your attempt to lend credence to your statement with a smart sounding approach was undercut by selecting a superficial and biased prior.
Rubbish. If they didn't want the data, they wouldn't build & offer developers a first class analytics package for free, including analytics that don't require explicitly setting events (though not going as far as showing screen recording, which was the moral outrage of last week).
Having said that, When the screen recording thing broke, I wondered how long it would take for it to shift to analytics in general, especially those offered by Apple competitors. I'm no fan of FB, but given the consistent rhythm of the fb-scandal newscycle, and that all these scandals somehow end up with Apple wearing a white hat, I'm really starting to wonder what kind of offensive PR dark arts may be behind it.
Here is a question to consider. If Facebook doesn't do this and all other companies do and use that data for optimization and measurement purposes, won't FB unilaterally lose out? The solution is either no one does it or everyone does it. There is no in between.
Why do you assume anyone has? Even if some do, why should the ones that don't have to answer to your assumptions?
When a thief gets caught, and they say "why don't you care about the other thieves?", nobody honors that with an answer.
Hey, you could even use something positive as example, e.g. that someone says something nice about X doesn't justify the assumption that they wouldn't also appreciate similar qualities in or achievements by Y. Criticism or praise, the principle is the same.
This is the classic race to the bottom, and it's not a valid defence in my excuse.
Of course, there is the stock reply about half way through the article from app Move's owner, Realtor.com:
>“we strictly adhere to all local, state and federal requirements,” and that its privacy policy “clearly states how user information is collected and shared.” The policy says the app collects a variety of information, including content in which users are interested, and may share it with third parties. It doesn’t mention Facebook.
Fortunately, there has been recognition and action taken against the collection/usage of this sort of third-party information, albeit in Germany.[0]
>There is currently no way to stop the company from collecting the information in the first place, or using it for other purposes, such as detecting fake accounts. Germany’s top antitrust enforcer earlier this month ordered Facebook to stop using that data at all without permission, a ruling Facebook is appealing.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-orders-facebook-to-stop...
Also many ad-blockers that could filter app traffic were nuked from the App Store. I wish there was a way to firewall network traffic in the same way it is possible on other systems.
For example, the kindle app contacts graph.facebook.com.
I really really wish apple would allow a true firewall
It also makes it more likely that Apple will crack down on third party SDKs, something I've been posting about a lot here.
The price of a publicly listed property for sale is my most intimate secret? Even if I were to buy it, the sale price would be a matter of public record that anyone could look up.