February 2015

Facebook’s privacy policy breaches European law, report finds

A report commissioned by the Belgian privacy commission has found that Facebook is acting in violation of European law, despite updating its privacy policy. Conducted by the Centre of Interdisciplinary Law and ICT at the University of Leuven in Belgium, the report claimed that Facebook’s privacy policy update in January had only expanded older policy and practices, and found that it still violates European consumer protection law.

“Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities contains a number of provisions which do not comply with the Unfair Contract Terms Directive. These violations were already present in 2013, and they are set to persist in 2015,” wrote the authors. "Facebook places too much burden on its users. Users are expected to navigate Facebook’s complex web of settings in search of possible opt-outs,” wrote the authors. “Facebook’s default settings related to behavioural profiling or Social Ads, for example, are particularly problematic.” The report also points out that there is no way to stop Facebook from collecting location information on users via its smartphone app other than to stop location access on the smartphone at the level of the mobile operating system.

Preparing to Debate NSA Surveillance and Online Commercial Tracking

[Commentary] In 2014, President Barack Obama delivered a speech describing the Administration’s response to the policy and legal issues from the Edward Snowden revelations. In early February 2015, the Administration announced a batch of new reforms. Overall, I believe there has been far more progress than most people realize. I am pretty confident that Stanford lawyer and technologist Jonathan Mayer will disagree when we “debate” at the International Association of Privacy Professionals Global Privacy Summit on March 5.

To help lay the groundwork for an upcoming “debate,” it is useful to highlight some of the good news on surveillance reform since the Snowden revelations. There has been positive reform in areas concerning Section 215 of the program, Prism, increased transparency, White House oversight of the intelligence community, treatment of non-US persons, funding increases, and National Secuirty Letters.

[Peter Swire is the Nancy J. and Lawrence P. Huang Professor in the Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology]

Yahoo Executive Confronts NSA Director Over 'Backdoors'

In one of the most public confrontations of a top US intelligence official by Silicon Valley in recent years, a senior Yahoo official peppered the National Security Agency director, Admiral Mike Rogers. The exchange came during a question and answer session at a daylong summit on cybersecurity hosted by the think tank New America.

The tense exchange began when Alex Stambos, Yahoo's chief information-security officer, asked Director Rogers if Yahoo should acquiesce to requests from Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, France and other countries to build a "backdoor" in some of their systems that would allow the countries to spy on certain users. Stamos was trying to argue that if Yahoo gave the NSA access to this information, other countries could try and compel the company to provide the same access to data. NSA Director Rogers said he believed that it “is achievable” to create a legal framework that allows the NSA to access encrypted information without upending corporate security programs. He declined to provide more details.

NSA chief takes sides in encryption battle

The head of the National Security Agency is echoing the Obama Administration’s call for some kind of legal mechanism to force companies like Apple and Google to leave holes in people’s digital protections. NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers -- a cryptology expert who led the Navy’s cyber efforts -- said that he shares concerns about automatic encryption tools that prevent the government from gaining access to phones and other devices, despite fears about technical “backdoors” that could be used by foreign hackers as well as police.

“’Backdoor’ is not the context I would use,” he said. “When I hear the phrase “backdoor” I think ‘This is kind of shady, why wouldn’t you want to go in the front door?’” “My view is we can create a legal framework for how we do this,” he added, that respects companies’ desires to protect their users while allowing his agency and others to access data that might help to solve crimes or stop terrorist attacks. “I hope we can get past this [mentality that] either it's all encryption or nothing.”

Secrecy around police surveillance equipment proves a case’s undoing

The case against Tadrae McKenzie looked like an easy win for prosecutors. He and two buddies robbed a small-time pot dealer of $130 worth of weed using BB guns. Under Florida law, that was robbery with a deadly weapon, with a sentence of at least four years in prison. But before trial, his defense team detected investigators’ use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device -- a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay -- to the attorneys. Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain.

McKenzie’s case is emblematic of the growing, but hidden, use by local law enforcement of a sophisticated surveillance technology borrowed from the national security world. It shows how a gag order imposed by the FBI -- on grounds that discussing the device’s operation would compromise its effectiveness -- has left judges, the public and criminal defendants in the dark on how the tool works. That secrecy, in turn, has hindered debate over whether the StingRay’s use respects Americans’ civil liberties. “It’s a terrible violation of our constitutional rights,” asserted Elaine Harper, McKenzie’s grandmother, who raised the young man. “People need to know -- the public needs to know -- what’s going on.”

These Radio Hosts Are Some of the Most Powerful Republicans You've Never Heard Of

Since 2011, when he took over the drive-time WHO slot in Des Moines (IA), Simon Conway has acted as a gatekeeper for political candidates. He’s not the only one in Iowa. Jan Mickelson, who hosts the morning block, gets his own time with would-be senators and presidents. Steve Deace, who used to host Conway’s block, now broadcasts a syndicated show with less meddling and many of the same guests.

Iowa’s Republican caucus-goers have an outsized influence on who becomes the party’s presidential nominee. Iowa’s radio talkers have the same power, just in greater quantity, spread among fewer people. They can’t be handled with precious walk-and-talk interviews or soundbites, like the national press. They can’t be blown off like newspaper editorial boards; Republican voters are more than three times as likely to trust their talk radio hosts than to trust their local fishwrap.

Google Wallet will soon come pre-installed on Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile Android phones

Google has inked a distribution deal with the biggest wireless carriers in the US to get the Google Wallet payments app pre-installed on their phones. At the same time, Google is buying technology from Softcard, the mobile payments app backed by the same carriers. The deal will see Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and AT&T pre-install Google Wallet on their Android phones in the US later in 2015.

Google Wallet allows shoppers to tap their phones to pay at checkout in some brick-and-mortar stores in much the same way Apple Pay does. The move also involves Google buying some intellectual property from Softcard, formerly known as ISIS. It doesn’t appear that any Softcard employees are joining Google as part of the deal.

The Attention-Deficit-Disorder Economy

[Commentary] I went back to the text of a speech "Growing Fast and Slow" given by Andrew Haldane, the Chief Economist at the Bank of England, that is causing a bit of a stir across the pond. What caught the attention of British reporters wasn’t Haldane’s discussion of neoclassical growth theory, or the role of education in the industrial revolution, but a bit about the rise of the Internet, and how it may be hindering material progress.

The main issue is a neurological one, Haldane suggests. Technological advances, and the ubiquity of always-on media, may be undermining one of the key psychological prerequisites for economic growth: patience, and the willingness to put off current gratification for future gains. Rather than promoting thrift and deep thoughts, technology may now be crunching attention spans and accentuating “short-termism,” which Haldane identifies as an increasingly pervasive force in many areas of contemporary society, from reading habits (he mentions Twitter), to sports, to finance.

In response to this suggestive line of reasoning, of course, there are counterarguments that can be made. If people are getting more impatient, and this is leading to less saving, shouldn’t long-term interest rates be going up rather than falling to historic lows, as they have done in the past decade? The rise of short-termism in financial markets and labor markets may reflect political and institutional developments, such as deregulation and the rise of shareholder activism. Perhaps attention spans aren’t getting shorter at all, but are merely being refocussed on digital, rather than analog, objects.

Tech’s Power to Mobilize Masses Comes at a Cost, Diana Aviv Says

Technology’s power to rapidly mobilize swarms of individuals for social causes -- bypassing traditional institutions like religious organizations and established charities -- poses significant new problems for the nonprofit world, said Diana Aviv, chief executive of Independent Sector. "When their particular interest has been fulfilled or their passion has diminished, whichever one comes first, they disband and there is no social capital that’s built," Aviv said.

It is one of a number of major challenges facing nonprofits, gleaned from more than a year of Independent Sector-led research, detailed by Aviv. The research is a 15-year view into the future, Aviv said, with changes coming so fast that nonprofits ignore them at their peril. Independent Sector is hitting the road to share the findings and solicit additional input from its members and others at a series of meetings across the country in the coming months. The first is scheduled for March 24 in New York City.

Net neutrality: What it is, and why it matters

Federal regulators are about to vote on a bold new plan to institute network neutrality. But despite the profound impact that the process may have on the future of the Internet, poll after poll shows that most Americans still don’t know what net neutrality is, or what the Federal Communications Commission is planning to do. On Feb 26, the FCC will vote to institute the toughest net neutrality rules the US has ever seen.

The rules would reverse a 2002 decision to regulate high-speed broadband Internet connections as an “information service” and instead call it a “telecommunications service” similar to phone lines, over which it has more authority. The rules will apply to people’s access to the Internet over both wired Internet connections and wirelessly through their phones and tablets. They will also give the FCC the power to monitor how Web traffic is handed off between companies on the back end of the Internet -- a technical process that was at the center of heated disputes between Netflix and various Web providers in 2014.

Benton

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