More depressing details on common browsers:
and Android has a definite “best-before” date:
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More on Clearview AI. US-focused, but Australia is probably not much different.
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Providers of cloud services to government are now to “self-regulate”.
Government data is our data!
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The Australian Information Commissioner is taking Facebook to the Federal Court over privacy breaches relating to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
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I spent the weekend at Rutherglen Vic and used my US issued charge card a few times. A few ‘terminals’ asked if I wanted my receipt emailed not printed. First one I ticked yes and expected to have to enter the address but voila, moments later received the emailed receipt. I did not provide any details to the merchant or terminal but considered it might have been linked to the weekend event registration system.
Closer to home I used the card again, and once more a terminal asked if I wanted an email receipt and received one. No possible connection I can ID except the card+issuer. No way that was linked to the event. The receipts included the line item purchases not just the totals. Privacy? A service?
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Perhaps not the explanation, but an option. I used Square once at a provider because that is what they use, and they could not print a receipt so sent it as an SMS. The next time I used Square at an unrelated business, Square knew where to send the receipt. It only took seconds.
Interesting? Where does the user enter into any agreement with Square to share that data across the Square Universe? So it appears that once you provide a mobile or email contact for a purchase that detail is free to be recycled. Is there a loop hole in our privacy and data protection legislation?
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That officially terrifies me. We all know how well self-regulation works, and when it is applied to information about me there should be clear laws and strong watchdogs. Even many US states are starting to regulate online information - are we behind the world’s most capitalist and business-friendly country?
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I thought we were the most capitalistic libertarian business-friendly country, especially but not limited to during coalition governments. The US has historically regulated businesses while we have either ignored similar measures or followed along by 5~15 years.
Surprise: We are only 5th and the US 7th as being ‘open for business’ according to
although every leader board has different leaders
(AU - 9, US - 17)
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There is something wrong with the maths in that article. Australia has a GDP of $1.4 trillion in and a population of 25 million. That results in a GDP per capita of $56,000 - not the stated $52,379. They got the US per capita GDP wrong as well, if one uses the published figures - although that one is closer to a rounding error. This doesn’t matter, of course, as the rankings seem to have no relationship with the published numbers.
On the bright side, the US News article does at least have a page discussing its methodology - but not the data (which came from a survey!).
The Forbes list does not state its criteria at all. Regardless, neither list is indicating ‘open for business’, especially when one lists Japan in third place and the other has the United Kingdom in first! The US News does identify ‘open for business’ as one of its attributes, making up 11.08% of the final score. Forbes offers to send a spreadsheet - once it has your email address - for an undisclosed price. It is not clear whether the spreadsheet will show how it arrived at its rankings.
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True the messages are inexact, but my point was not that the we ‘follow’ the US re topic, but the US ‘follows’ us (is not as laissez faire in my context) in giving business open slather. The ‘open for business’ terminology re this topic is really ‘open to business doing whatever’. A simplistic isolated example is that the US started requiring miners to remediate their mines around the 1960’s and started funds to cover bankruptcies. When did we? Check the legalities for product safety - varied and complex there but there are many; what are ours?
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One thing to note - facial recognition for identification purposes already has “alive detection” so that you can’t just enter Peter Dutton’s drivers licence number to the porn web site and present a picture of him that you downloaded from the internet. That could mean that government surveillance in your house will need to be streaming video, not just still images.
They must think we are idiots. Unfortunately they are right, in the main.
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From the US and sounds like a lunatic conspiracy, but how many of the dots can you connect for Australia?
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It’s not either-or though. It’s not a question of whether one or the other poses the greater threat because they are both threats and the threats combine together. I would expect that the surveillance state will be a longer-lasting threat however.
Another article linking the coronavirus with the surveillance state: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-18/israel-enables-spy-services-to-track-coronavirus-patients/12066256
I have a few comments on that:
- It may well be that it is in society’s interests to use retained metadata to track coronavirus carriers.
- It is not clear that this couldn’t be done with the consent of the person involved. That is, I am not aware of any cases where a person has coronavirus but declines to agree to the government’s using retained metadata to help the person remember all the places that he or she has been in the last few weeks (in this case).
- The point is that when metadata retention (and all other horror legislation) was introduced into Australia we were told / we were assured that it would only be used for serious crimes like terrorism and pedophiles.
- Critics of the legislation suggested that inevitably there would be mission creep i.e. that inevitably the retained metadata would be used for other purposes.
- It would seem that in at least some countries that is already true. Is it true in Australia? Who knows? The law acts to prevent anyone knowing when and how much the surveillance state is being used.
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Google is probably the greatest risk to privacy for most of us. Here’s a bloke who’s trying to de-Google his life.
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Looks loke he is really confused.
September 2019 to March 2020 = 2.5 years?
Did we all hear this on the ABC Q&A last night (23 March 20)?
After a viewer called in to condemn what he considered to be lax control measures at Australian international airports, Singapore’s response was discussed.
There, the Government is tracking the movement of potential cases using a smartphone app with Bluetooth functionality.
Macdonald asked Professor Kelly: “Why is tracking and apps not something you already have at your disposal?”
Not something many of us might want to encourage, however if enough of us forget why we need to be overly cautious and observe isolation and hygiene and …
It might open a gate and take it off the hinges?
I’m undecided about the need.
The consequences?
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The article says
I first started De-Googling my life back in September 2017
No, but it has to be sucky.
Bluetooth functionality? I can’t see Bluetooth being much good for this. Lost in translation?
Smartphone app? Assumes that you have a smartphone and that it will run the government’s designated tracking app.
However they can already somewhat track any phone (smart or otherwise, app or otherwise), as commented by me in Secrecy, privacy, security, intrusion - #213 by PhilT above.
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The world may be grinding to a halt due to COVID-19 but the dark heart of the Heim Affairs Department beats on.
Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (International Production Orders) Bill 2020
They were probably hoping to sneak this one through while news coverage is approximately 99.9% COVID-19, and people are distracted.
I’m not a lawyer (so take with grain of salt) but this looks to me like “extradition of your data”. So, as with extradition of your person, it would be prudent for you to have an understanding of which countries (will in the future) have a “designated international agreement”, bilateral or multilateral, to extradite your data - and to locate your data accordingly.
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There are reports that partisans in numerous countries are doing all sorts of nefarious things while attention is on COVID-19. Compared to some excesses I read about tucked into otherwise unrelated legislation going through US governments at the moment this is fairly benign, not that it is.
It is how government work, worldwide, and they get elected and re-elected regardless. Argh!
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Unsurprisingly, it’s carefully worded to suggest otherwise. The zinger is in paragraph 6 of the explanatory memorandum:
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