Guardian, The

Internet service providers that restrict online access to adult content or block ads could be breaking European Union guidelines on network neutrality even if customers opt in. ISPs Sky, BT and TalkTalk already block access to adult sites following pressure from the government, as do mobile operators such as O2. Mobile operator Three has also recently run a trial of ad blocking that asked users to opt in. EU regulations only allow providers to block content for three reasons: to comply with a member state’s laws, to manage levels of traffic across a network, or for security.

Blocking adult content falls into a grey area, with no clear legal framework in UK legislation, and providers have relied on providing the ability to opt in to protect themselves from falling foul of the rules. However, an update to guidelines issued by EU body Berec says that even if a person indicates they want certain content to be blocked, it should be done on their device, rather than at a network level.

[Commentary] It is the strangely conspiratorial truth of the surveillance society we inhabit that there are unknown entities gathering our data for unknown purposes. Companies and governments dip into the data streams of our lives in increasingly innovative ways, tracking what we do, who we know and where we go. The methods and purposes of data collection keep expanding, with seemingly no end or limit in sight. These range from irritating infringements, including WhatsApp sharing your name and phone number with Facebook so businesses can advertise to you, or a startup that uses your phone’s battery status as a “fingerprint” to track you online, to major intrusions such as Baltimore (MD) police secretly using aerial surveillance systems to continuously watch and record the city. Or like the data brokers that create massive personalized profiles about each of us, which are then sold and used to circumvent consumer protections meant to limit predatory and discriminatory practices. These instances of data harvesting are connected by a shared compulsion – a data imperative – that drives many corporations and governments. This imperative demands the extraction of all data, from all sources, in whatever ways possible. It has created an arms race for data, fueling the impulse to create surveillance technologies that infiltrate all aspects of life and society. And the reason for creating these massive reserves of data is the value it can or might generate.

In the Gilded Age 2.0, a laissez-faire attitude toward data has encouraged a new class of robber barons to arise. Rather than allow them to unscrupulously take, trade and hoard our data, we must reclaim their ill-gotten gains and reign in the data imperative.

[Commentary] The phone in your pocket gives you powers that were hard to imagine even five years ago. It can talk to you, listen, and give sensible answers to questions. It knows your fingerprint and recognises your face and those of all your friends. It can buy almost anything, sell almost anything, bring you all the news you want, as well as almost all the books, films and music you might want to look at. What’s more, it will even allow you to talk to your friends and to communicate with almost anyone. The problem is that these powers are not yours – at least they don’t belong to you alone. They belong to whoever controls the phone and can be used to serve their purposes as well as yours. Repressive governments and criminal gangs are all contending to break into phones today, and this kind of hacking will increasingly become the preferred route into all of the computer networks that we use – the ones we don’t call “phones”.

Beyond rogue nation states there is an unpleasant and insufficiently regulated market of legal firms that specialise in finding security vulnerabilities and selling them to the highest legal bidder, which normally means oppressive regimes; then there is a second tier of entirely illegal operators who sell tools to criminal gangs. Little of this is used for spying (though there is a market among jealous and abusive men for software that will enable to them to track their partners, one reason why some women’s shelters are reluctant to allow smartphones inside). Much more damage is done by “ransomware”, which encrypts and in effect steals all of a user’s data, to be released only on payment. Such assaults are becoming increasingly common. This is a global problem now. Since almost every country will want these powers for its own security services, if for no one else, what is developing is something like an international arms trade. International efforts to police it are urgently needed and the companies that sell us these powerful phones must also be pressed to live up to their responsibilities to keep them safe so that their power is not easily turned against their owners.

A consortium of activist groups has sent an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg asking him to implement an “anti-censorship policy” at Facebook in its dealings with law enforcement officials in the wake of the death of Baltimore woman Korryn Gaines. Gaines, killed just after her Facebook Live video stream of her confrontation with police officers was turned off, was being served an arrest warrant after failing to appear in court for a traffic violation.

She was shot dead by police and her five-year-old son, whom she was holding at the time, was wounded. The archived video from the stream was briefly unavailable as well, in what Facebook called “a technical glitch”. Police officers said they had asked Facebook to turn off Gaines’s video stream. The signatories of the letter say they don’t buy the “glitch” story. “If your company agrees to censor people’s accounts at the request of police – thereby allowing the police to control what the public sees on Facebook – then it is part of the problem,” they wrote.

Among the organizations represented in the letter are Color of Change, a political advocacy group that focuses on the rights of African Americans, Demand Progress, MoveOn.org, and Free Press.

The bulk collection of personal data by British spy agencies is vital in preventing terrorist attacks, an independent review of draft security legislation has found.

David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, concluded that laws giving MI5, MI6 and GCHQ the right to gather large volumes of data from members of the public had a “clear operational purpose”. The findings were welcomed by the prime minister, Theresa May, but will be criticised by human rights and privacy campaigners in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations.

[Commentary] Imagine if it would have more of an impact for Palestine to be recognised as a sovereign country by Google than by the UN. It’s a suggestion that’s caught fire – a five-month-old online petition demanding Palestine be labeled and bordered in Google Maps has gained more than 250,000 signatures just over the past few days. The issue is far more nuanced than the instantaneous outrage about Google “wiping Palestine from the map” would suggest. Google has never actually labeled the country, which isn’t officially recognised by the US or much of the west. The swiftness of the backlash, though, is not just about the wish for justice on behalf of an occupied people, but about the belief – now punctured – that our technology is neutral, that it presents an unbiased, infallible version of the world.

Countries that have popular, well-funded public service broadcasters encounter less rightwing extremism and corruption and have more press freedom, a report from the European Broadcasting Union has found.

For the first time, an analysis has been done of the contribution of public service media, such as the BBC, to democracy and society. The report shows the impact strong publicly funded television and radio has had on voter turnout, control of corruption and press freedom. The report says that in “countries where public service media funding … is higher there tends to be more press freedom” and where they have a higher market share “there also tends to be a higher voter turnout”. It also says there is a strong correlation between how much of a country’s market its public service broadcaster has and the “demand for rightwing extremism” and “control of corruption”. “These correlations are especially interesting given the current public debates about low participation in elections, corruption and the rise of far right politics across Europe,” said EBU head of media intelligence service Roberto Suárez Candel, who conducted the research.

San Francisco (CA) has voted against a proposal known as the “tech tax” which would have forced the area’s biggest technology firms to fund initiatives to provide affordable housing and tackle the city’s homeless problem. The tax, which would have been on the ballot in the city in November, would have imposed a 1.5% payroll levy on technology companies that generate more than $1 million in revenues a year, including Uber, Google, Twitter and Airbnb. It was proposed in June by supervisors Eric Mar, Aaron Peskin and David Campos. Supporters said the measure would have raised an estimated $140m every year, which would have been used to build affordable housing and shelters for homeless people. But it failed after it was rejected by the budget committee of the board of San Francisco’s supervisors.

“As a city, I don’t think we should subscribe to the politics of Donald Trump and the Republicans that they are saying certain people are not welcome here in San Francisco,” said Mark Farrell, one of two who voted to block the measure in the three-person committee, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Partly because of the technology boom, San Francisco has become one of the most unequal cities in the US, with its share of homes worth more than $1 million growing from 19.6% in 2012 to 57.4% in 2016. That has caused friction between the city’s richest residents and its poorest, as the city which is the locus of America’s most booming industry struggles to cope with the hundreds of people living in tented encampments on its streets.

Facebook has signed up almost half the countries in Africa – a combined population of 635 million – to its free Internet service in a controversial move to corner the market in one of the world’s biggest mobile data growth regions. Facebook’s co-founder and chairman, Mark Zuckerberg, has made it clear that he wants to connect the whole world to the Internet, describing access as a basic human right. His Free Basics initiative, in which mobile users are able to access the site free of data charges, is available in 42 countries, more than half of them in Africa.

But digital campaigners and Internet freedom advocates argue that Facebook’s expansion is a thinly veiled marketing ploy that could end up undermining, rather than enhancing, mass efforts to get millions more people connected. “Even if people are hungry, we shouldn’t be giving them half a loaf,” says Gbenga Sesan, whose organisation Paradigm Initiative Nigeria helps young people living in poverty get online. “It’s difficult for me to argue against free Internet,” he says. But he added that it is problematic to give people only part access to the Internet, especially if they believe what they have is full access.

Facebook must provide refunds for purchases made in apps and games by children should they or their parents request it, a California court has ruled.

The decision means that hundreds of thousands of people across the US could legally claim back money from the social network. It’s the culmination of a class action lawsuit brought against the social network in February 2012 by two children and their parents over purchases of the discontinued virtual currency Facebook Credits, now known as Facebook Payments, made using the parents’ credit cards. The currency was designed as a site-wide form of payment for virtual goods within games like Farmville and Bejeweled.