Instagram has in just one month as a result of all the bad publicity over its new terms of service, according to a story in the International Business Times. That is a stunning report—perhaps the most surprising indication of mass rebellion over an online policy issue since the defeat of SOPA. Perhaps I am overly conditioned to thinking that these kinds of seemingly obscure issues about the distribution of power on the internet—privacy, openness, intellectual property, etc.—are the provenance of geeks and policy nerds and reporters looking for stories. But losing half their daily users in one month? I think that’s a reminder that for all the assaults on our privacy by internet advertisers and others, people do still want and demand a sense of control when it comes to their online lives. Especially when it comes to services that people have made a part of their daily existence—which they feel they have a relationship with. Many privacy and other internet issues seem abstract and removed, and may not trigger a passionate backlash, but sometimes (as with this story, SOPA, and ) they do.
“There were so many innovations on this plane that it is hard to fathom how it got approved so quickly.” That was the comment of an aviation consultant on the troubles faced by Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner in this Guardian on how the plane was a “nightmare waiting to happen.” It’s funny to hear rapid innovation framed as a negative in that way—but on reflection it makes sense. A modern jetliner, with more than 2 million parts, is a highly complex piece of machinery. Other highly complex things often require a period of “seasoning” and very extensive testing by very large numbers of people—software, for example. Another highly complex thing, of course, is our legal system, which has evolved slowly over time, tempered by experience and slowly seasoned through years of common-law evolution. And as with jetliners, the rapid pace of innovation—particularly innovation in surveillance technologies—is overstraining the system’s ability to digest that innovation, to integrate it with our values.
I’ve written several times about the interesting—and fast-changing—boundary between humans and machines. For example, how when one is dealing with a customer-service agent who has no discretion, one is really dealing with a computer program that happens to have a human interface. Or a fake human interface. I’ve also argued that when it comes to privacy, it makes no difference whether one is dealing with a human or a machine. The latest wrinkle on this front comes from Twitter, which has (via this ) that it is building what it calls a “real-time human computation engine” to help it identify the meaning behind new trending search queries and use that understanding to serve ads. Twitter’s systems automatically identify popular new queries and send them to human beings who answer questions about them—they, unlike a computer, being able to parse what a tag such as #bindersfullofwomen or #bigbird likely refers to in that day’s news. Then, Twitter’s automatic systems, having been informed by the humans that these queries are related to politics, use that knowledge to serve relevant ads. It’s fascinating to think how such hybrid human-computer systems for creating meaning out of data could evolve—and how, in many applications, they will make the computer-human distinction even less relevant when it comes to privacy.
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Privacy & Technology
ACLU Applauds Arizona Supreme Court Historic Decision That Police Need a Warrant to Access DNAACLU Applauds Arizona Supreme Court Historic Decision That Police Need a Warrant to Access DNA
PHOENIX — In a 7-0 decision, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that a warrant is required to extract and analyze people’s DNA, saying that a person’s limited consent to a search of biological material for a specific purpose—in this case, a blood alcohol test for a DUI arrest—does not overcome that requirement. The ACLU and the ACLU of Arizona filed a friend-of-the-court brief in State v. Mitcham, arguing the government cannot genetically test biological material it already has in its possession—whether that’s blood taken from newborns to test for diseases or swabs collected from sexual assault survivors—to investigate the donors for a crime without first obtaining a warrant. In the decision, the court wrote that “in reaching this conclusion, we emphatically reject the State’s position that it was free to analyze Mitcham’s blood in any way it pleased simply because the State lawfully possessed the blood vials.” “Government analysis of our DNA can expose detailed information about our identity, appearance, family relationships, medical conditions, and more. We don’t consent to sharing all of that information each time we involuntarily shed our DNA or consent to a blood draw. The government’s argument in this case was a privacy nightmare,” said Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “We are greatly heartened by the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to preserve the privacy of our sensitive genetic information.” In 2015, during a DUI arrest, the defendant in this case consented to the government collecting a sample of his blood solely to test it for blood-alcohol content, and was advised that the sample would be destroyed after 90 days. Instead, law enforcement held on to this sample for three years, at which point it used it for a completely different purpose—to extract and analyze his DNA, without a warrant or consent—while investigating another crime. Had the court accepted the government’s rationale here, all of us who consent to a biological sample collection, at any point in time, for any purpose, to any government entity, could have been subject to a warrantless DNA search after the fact. “Our DNA can reveal so much about us that our genetic privacy must be protected,” said Jared Keenan, legal director of ACLU of Arizona. “The Court’s decision is vital to protecting the strong constitutional rights that keep all Arizonans’ information safe from warrantless searches and unconstitutional intrusion.” -
News & CommentaryDec 2024
Privacy & Technology
Face Recognition Threatens to Replace Tickets, ID at Sports Events – and BeyondFace Recognition Threatens to Replace Tickets, ID at Sports Events – and Beyond
You shouldn't participate in face recognition ticketing schemes. -
MississippiJul 2024
Free Speech
Privacy & Technology
NetChoice v. FitchNetChoice v. Fitch
Whether a law that mandates age verification for all users of social media services violates the First Amendment. -
News & CommentaryDec 2024
Privacy & Technology
AI Generated Police Reports Raise Concerns Around Transparency, BiasAI Generated Police Reports Raise Concerns Around Transparency, Bias
AI-generated police reports threaten to exacerbate existing problems in law enforcement, and to create new ones.