Time we switched off these i spies
As Facebook admits it grabbed personal data from 87m users..
Forty years ago, Johnny Rotten uttered the immortal line, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” at the Sex Pistols’ final gig in San Francisco. That was known as The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle.
Now, again in California, where his HQ is based, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg faces accusations of being involved in the Greatest Personal Data Swindle of all time.
It is claimed that not only has Facebook cheated governments out of billions in taxes, it now looks like it allowed its platform to be used to abuse democratic processes around the world, including in the US presidential election and Brexit referendum.
Complicated personal datacollection rules that nobody reads or understands left many Facebook users trusting that their personal data was safe.
However, that trust has been betrayed and it is time for regulators such as the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office to act – and to be given increased powers to do so. They need to ask other questions, too, such as does every phone app we download really need access to all of our contacts, messages, location and photos?
With the huge rise in the sales of smart home devices that listen to our conversations at home, we urgently need new rules to protect our personal data.
Existing rules mean the ICO must give seven days’ notice of its intention to swoop to search offices of those they suspect of wrongdoing. This has to change.
Imagine the uproar if it took the police seven days to obtain a warrant to search a house or office where they suspected stolen goods were stored.
In 2013, the founder of the worldwide web Tim Berners-Lee warned that increased surveillance posed a threat to the very future of our democracy and that regulators need to do more to protect internet users’ privacy. How right he was.
Social-media platforms, such as Facebook, have revolutionised how we communicate and interact. Power comes with responsibility, but Facebook has failed in its responsibility to adequately protect our data.
Christopher Wylie, a data scientist and former employee of Cambridge Analytica, turned whistleblower, recently told MPs on the House of Commons’ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee that personal data collected from Facebook was used to target voters and may even have influenced elections.
Wylie explained it was collected via a “personality quiz” and used to build a “psychological profile” of voters who were then targeted with specific messages in an attempt to influence them.
While the personality quiz was completed by “only” 280,000 people, it has now been revealed Facebook’s data-sharing rules meant the researcher was able to grab full sets of personal data (photos, likes, status updates etc) from an estimated 87 million users, including one million Brits.
So, if you were friends with anyone on Facebook who took the quiz, then your personal details were quite possibly also taken.
There are no allegations Facebook broke any rules. In the past, it has been accused of making it very difficult for users to understand how and who it shares personal information with. In 2010, Facebook’s “privacy policy” was a staggering 6,000 words.
Later attempts to “simplify” privacy settings saw users confronted with a bewildering 170 separate options that also confused many users. This complexity meant we simply trusted Facebook with our personal data. It looks like this trust was abused.
Regulators are fully aware privacy polices are timeconsuming and difficult to read, packed with vague legal language that is impossible to understand. In fact, researchers have estimated that based on average internet use, you would need to spend 40 minutes every day just reading privacy policies, never mind understanding what they actually mean.
Sneaky T&Cs mean that even if we don’t what an app to record all of our personal data, we have to adjust these setting on every device we access the service from.
And auto updates to apps reset privacy settings and require users to reconfigure all their devices.
A number of recent reports from data protection regulators in both the EU and US, have highlighted two key areas where data rules need to be improved.
Firstly, we need to improve transparency. This would give us a better understanding of what data is collected about us and how it is used.
Secondly, we need much better control over our data, including the power to demand that tech giants delete our personal data when we want it deleted.
For years, UK taxpayers have had to stomach the likes of Facebook, Google and Apple using clever accountants to reduce the amount of tax they pay in the UK.
Perhaps we were too trusting that all tech companies would follow Google’s old slogan of “don’t be evil”. That trust has been shattered in recent weeks.
Facebook, in particular, is further in the spotlight after a leaked internal memo from 2016 outlined the company’s commitment to growth at seemingly any cost. Former vice-president Andrew Bosworth sent a message to employees saying anything that allowed Facebook to connect more people was good – even if, “someone dies in a terrorist attack” coordinated on the social media giant’s platform.
Now calls for more regulation are even coming from within the technology sector. The data-harvesting scandal saw Apple chief Tim Cook say data rules allowing anyone to know, “every intimate detail from your life” simply should not exist.
He describes the situation as “dire” for users and he believes that “some well-crafted regulation is necessary”. When you hear the bosses of tech giants such as Apple calling for more regulation, you know you have a big problem.
We need laws in place that protect our proud democracy. This can and must be done – and with great urgency.