Laura’s Lens

Written by Rose Eveleth on Vox.

“[T]he assertion that technology companies can’t possibly be shaped or restrained with the public’s interest in mind is to argue that they are fundamentally different from any other industry. They’re not.”

…

“There’s a growing chasm between how everyday users feel about the technology around them and how companies decide what to make. And yet, these companies say they have our best interests in mind. We can’t go back, they say. We can’t stop the “natural evolution of technology.” But the “natural evolution of technology” was never a thing to begin with, and it’s time to question what “progress” actually means.”

Read ‘The biggest lie tech people tell themselves — and the rest of us’ on the Vox site.

Written by Anna Devlin on The Guardian.

“Out in the wider world, anonymity is no longer guaranteed. Facial recognition gives police and companies the means of identifying and tracking people of interest, while others are free to go about their business. The real question is: who gets that privilege?”

Read ‘‘We are hurtling towards a surveillance state’: the rise of facial recognition technology’ on the The Guardian site.

Written by Michael Grothaus on Fast Company.

“Seventeen dollars for a smartphone sounds like a great deal, especially for people living in poverty who can barely afford rent.

But there’s a problem: low-cost smartphones are privacy nightmares.”

“The MYA2 also has apps that can’t be updated or deleted, and those apps contain multiple security and privacy flaws. One of those pre-installed apps that can’t be removed, Facebook Lite, gets default permission to track everywhere you go, upload all your contacts, and read your phone’s calendar.”

“While companies like Apple are to be lauded for prioritizing privacy protections, people around the world should not be reliant on tech giants building privacy safeguards for only a population that can afford it.”

Read ‘Cheap smartphones have a disturbing secret’ on the Fast Company site.

Written by McKenzie Funk on The New York Times Magazine.

“For decades, the overriding objective of American business and government has been to remove friction from the tracking system, by linking networks, by speeding connections, by eliminating barriers. But friction is the only thing that has ever made privacy, let alone obscurity, possible. If there’s no friction, if we can all be profiled instantly and intimately, then there’s nothing to stop any of our neighbors from being targeted — nothing, that is, except our priorities.”

A long, sickening, read.

Read ‘How ICE Picks Its Targets in the Surveillance Age’ on the The New York Times Magazine site.

Written by Natasha Lomas on TechCrunch.

“Europe’s top court has ruled that pre-checked consent boxes for dropping cookies are not legally valid.

Consent must be obtained prior to storing or accessing non-essential cookies, such as tracking cookies for targeted advertising. Consent cannot be implied or assumed.”

“Sites that have relied upon opting EU users into ad-tracking cookies in the hopes they’ll just click okay to make the cookie banner go away are in for a rude awakening.”

Read ‘Europe’s top court says active consent is needed for tracking cookies’ on the TechCrunch site.

Written by Sarah Olson on Medium.

“Perhaps it’s easier to separate the scientist from his science when you’re not, and never will be, affected personally by misogyny and sexism.”

“Unfortunately, many women in STEM are adversely affected by misogynists and sexists when those men are highly regarded and respected within the scientific community. After all, sexual harassment isn’t really about sex — it’s about power.”

“[W]hat’s worth more, the contributions of a lone male genius who assaults and harasses and discriminates against women, or the contributions of a large scientific community unhindered by a misogynistic and unsafe environment?”

The same goes for the tech community… and also for the racist and white supremacist ideologies held within.

Read ‘Sorry, But Male Geniuses Are Replaceable’ on the Medium site.

Written by Ben Tarnoff on The Guardian.

“We are often sold a similar bill of goods: big tech companies talk incessantly about how ‘AI’ and digitization will bring a better future. In the present tense, however, putting computers everywhere is bad for most people. It enables advertisers, employers and cops to exercise more control over us – in addition to helping heat the planet.”

“Training models isn’t the only way [machine learning] contributes to the cooking of our planet. It has also stimulated a hunger for data that is probably the single biggest driver of the digitization of everything. Corporations and governments now have an incentive to acquire as much data as possible, because that data, with the help of [machine learning], might yield valuable patterns. It might tell them who to fire, who to arrest, when to perform maintenance on a machine or how to promote a new product.”

Read ‘To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution’ on the The Guardian site.

Written by Elizabeth Joh on Slate.

“Neighborhoods armed with Ring videos, Flock readers, and NextDoor posts have the power to create networked engines of suspicion, sometimes ill-founded or erroneous, that may embolden residents to take actions they should not.”

Read ‘The Rise of Networked Vigilante Surveillance’ on the Slate site.

Written by Privacy International on Privacy International.

“Feeling anxious? Got lucky last night? Having some health issues? Tell Maya and they’ll let Facebook and others know (oh, and they’ll share your diary too!)”

There is a reason why advertisers are so interested in your mood; understanding when a person is in a vulnerable state of mind means you can strategically target them. Knowing when a teenager is feeling low means an advertiser might try and sell them a food supplement that is supposed to make them feel strong and focused. Understanding people’s mood is an entry point for manipulating them. And that is all the more worrying in an age when Facebook is having so much impact on our democracies, as the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed. Indeed, it is not just advertisers that will want to know how we feel; as elections approach, political parties may want to know if we feel anxious, stressed or excited so that they can adapt their narratives accordingly.

Read ‘No Body's Business But Mine: How Menstruation Apps Are Sharing Your Data’ on the Privacy International site.

Written by Nicole Chi on Are We Europe.

“[E]ven if not lawless, historically, borders have been vulnerable places for human rights—particularly the right to privacy—as border guards extend government intrusion into our private lives with the authority of upholding national security. Now, data collection and artificial intelligence are threatening to turn borders into an underregulated free-for-all.”

Read ‘At the Border of Europe's Surveillance State’ on the Are We Europe site.