It was a perfect service: sorting your mail and not just removing all spam for you, but also unsubscribing you from all of that spam garbage going forward. It kept your inbox perfectly clean. But behind the curtains, it also sold your inbox to the highest bidder.
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.
Bose Corp spies on its wireless headphone customers by using an app that tracks the music, podcasts and other audio they listen to, and violates their privacy rights by selling the information without permission, a lawsuit charged.
The Pornhub announcement comes at an auspicious time. Congress this week affirmed the power of cable providers to sell user data, while as of a few weeks ago more than half the web had officially embraced HTTPS. Encryption doesn’t solve your ISP woes altogether—they’ll still know that you were on Pornhub—but it does make it much harder to know what exactly you’re looking at while you’re there.
Wired: The World’s Biggest Porn Site Goes All-In on Encryption »
In our latest dissection of season 6 of Homeland, I joined Pearse on Porkins Policy Radio to discuss the latest few episodes. With the revelation that Dar Adal has been running a sock puppet click farm to manipulate US public opinion, Homeland has dragged this season right up to date. It is no longer a series about spies pursuing terrorists, but about how deep politics is conducted and the increasingly important role of big data.
Source : Paul Jorion, François Leclerc, 23-03-2017
A quoi cela sert-il d’y aller par quatre chemins ? Annonçons-le, nous prenons celui d’être dépossédés de nos données, de perdre le droit à toute vie privée dont nous avons déjà un avant-goût ! Au sein du monde des objets connectés qui nous est annoncé, notre destin est d’être scrutés sous toutes les coutures.
Tom Secker returns for the second installment of our discussion on the sixth season of Homeland. We begin with a quick recap of the past several episodes before diving into the big themes going on this season. Tom and I begin by focusing on the character of Dar Adal and the notion that he represents a faction of the now infamous deep state. We talk about the mysterious private intelligence firm that Adal is using for assassinations, false flag bombings, and information operations.
Putting the interests of Internet providers over Internet users, Congress today voted to erase landmark broadband privacy protections. If the bill is signed into law, companies like Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon will have free rein to hijack your searches, sell your data, and hammer you with unwanted advertisements. Worst yet, consumers will now have to pay a privacy tax by relying on VPNs to safeguard their information. That is a poor substitute for legal protections.
