Online privacy

The influence network led by billionaire Charles Koch is watching a growing push to regulate Big Tech firms with alarm. Officials, scholars, and donors with links to the network expressed unease with the idea that sweeping regulation will solve tech's problems — like platforms that facilitate the spread of malicious content or privacy practices that outrage users — and worried lawmakers aren't being precise enough.

When it comes to your digital profile, the data you choose to share is just the tip of an iceberg. The first layer is the one you do control. The second layer is made of behavioral observations. The third layer is composed of interpretations of the first and second.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning to integrate the underlying infrastructure of Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, allowing users to message each other between apps, but some lawmakers, regulators, and security experts are already beginning to question whether the benefits outweigh the consequences. “Good for encryption but bad for competition and privacy,” tweeted Seante Communciations Subcommittee Ranking Member Brian Schatz (D-HI). Sen Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said, “Facebook and Google’s dominance over data has already harmed consumers and the economy.

Earlier this month we examined how partisan division at the Federal Communications Commission impedes progress towards closing the digital divide. Now, we review another big telecom policy story from 2018: the democratic harms of “Big Tech”. In 2018, we got a better, but more disturbing, understanding of the size and influence of large technology companies (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft), and particularly how social media platforms affect our democratic discourse and elections.

Fifteen years ago, I realized you could find almost anything on the internet—music, books, information—except the thing that matters most: people. So I built a service people could use to connect and learn about each other. I’ve heard many questions about our business model, so I want to explain the principles of how we operate. I believe everyone should have a voice and be able to connect. If we’re committed to serving everyone, then we need a service that is affordable to everyone.

Leaders of Japan, South Africa, China and Germany issued a series of calls for global oversight of the tech sector, in a clear signal of growing international interest in seizing greater regulatory supervision of an industry led by the United States. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan said his country would use its chairmanship of the Group of 20 nations to push forward a new international system for the oversight of how data is used.

Earlier in Jan it was reported how T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint were selling cell phone users’ location data that ultimately ended up in the hands of bounty hunters and people unauthorized to handle it. That data trickled down from the telecommunications giants through a complex network of middlemen and data brokers. One of those third parties was Zumigo, a company that gets location data access directly from the telecom companies and then sells it for a profit.

A Q&A with Shoshana Zuboff, author of "The Age of Surveillance Capital".