As advertised by Apple. The company introduced a feature called “App tracking transparency”, that defaults to “do not allow tracking” as of version 14.5, that was released earlier this year. The feature allows device-owners to control which apps can track user behaviour across multiple websites.
Reality is more complex, as always, but it’s still a great ad.
From the “Daily Dystopia Department”: Protect your images from abuse by KI. Headlines that’d be absolutely unthinkable only a decade ago don’t seem to be shocking in the year of the pandemic, 2021.
Signal, the company offering secure and private messaging, tried to advertise on Facebook. Naturally, the company tried to drive their value in privacy. They chose to point out the implications Facebook’s businesmodel has for these values.
When Apple introduced labels in their app store to indicate which data an app would link to user information it created transparency for many. Only Google seemed to stop on moving forward and did not publish new versions of its apps. Until recently. Now that they are updated, DuckDuckGo, a search engine advocating privacy in the digital age, calls out the abundant use of personal data.
Palantir is an US based company specialising in Big Data, with a very particular focus on decision making for governental and corporate situations. The companies products have inspiring names like Gotham or Metropolis and have sparked ethicalcontroversies, when it comes to their usage. In particular these two products provides capabilities to military and police, paving the way to what is referred to predictive policing. The company now is a founding member of Europe’s Gaia-X program, which Evgeny Morozov points out, is not compatible with European data sovereignty ideas.
Der Mitteilung des Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi) zu Folge haben heute je 11 deutsche und französische Gründungsmitglieder die notariellen Unterlagen zur Gründung einer “Association internationale sans but lucratif“, kurz AISBL, unterzeichnet. Es handelt sich dabei um eine “Vereinigung ohne Gewinnerzielungsabsicht”, einer belgischen Gesellschaftsform, die dem deutschen gemeinnützigen Verein vergleichbar ist. Sitz der Vereinigung wird Brüssel sein.
Die juristische Geburt des Konzeptes GAIA-X stellt einen großen Schritt nach vorne für europäische Dateninfrastruktur dar.
Bruce Schneier, well known cryptologist and security researcher, has a few thoughts on corona tracing apps on his blog. Spoiler: he doesn’t like the idea.
His article is revolving around efficiency much more than privacy, concluding that such apps won’t work in the first place.
Kurze Durchsage von Peter Schaar zur Telefonortung wegen Corona: Handy-Ortung war demzufolge keine Idee der wissenschaftlichen Beratungskommission für die Corona-Pandemie. Es war die gesellschaftliche Situation, die es der Politik ermöglicht hat, einen lang gehegten Wunsch umzusetzen. Peter Schaar war übrigens von 2003 bis 2013 Bundesbeauftragter für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit (BfDI).
Update: Ulrich Kelber, der amtierende Bundesdatenschutzbeauftragte, sieht das wohl ähnlich.
‘We’ve created a privacy industry’ was a statement you could often hear when Europe introduced General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the German implementation DatenSchutz GrundVerOrdnung (DSGVO). Already back in 2016 first predictions arrived, that GDPR will boost European software industry and give them a uniqueselling point. After the regulation became effective in Europe May 25th 2018(!), after a 2 years transition period, perceived only complaints happened. Affected data controllers and processors cited the difficulties implementing these regulations. A BitKom funded survey even indicates the regulation is hurting the European market.
Now, around 1.5years later, the industry seems to have settled on the regulation and business continues as usual. Subjectively perceived, privacy is indeed still an obstacle to decision makers in the market. Even politicians keep on imploring data to be the new oil, demanding a data driven economy and to weakend the underlying ideas of european data protection acts. Meanwhile, the opportunity has moved along. Californian Start-Ups discovered this niche and turn privacy it into value:
Privacy-focused technology companies are offering a variety of services, from personal data scrubbing to business-focused software meant to help companies comply with the law.