Ungood signs for digital freedom

Android snooping and Uber’s 57m-user data theft were overshadowed by dangerous changes to Net neutrality

Of the revelations last week of corporate malfeasance, which was the most damaging? Was it that Propublica found Google’s Android operating system tracks its users despite them opting out of such tracking, and after a factory reset of the phone? Or was it Uber exposed for failing to reveal a hack that exposed 57m people’s details last year?

In the case of Uber it is another self-inflicted crisis from a company that keeps scoring own goals. Not only is it unethical not to reveal such an attack, it is illegal in many US states.

Even more worrying is the dumbfounding decision by the US regulator, the FCC, to roll back the “Net neutrality” that has so far defined the freedom of traffic on the Internet. This decision is going to have the most farreaching effects on the Internet and how we all access it. It has the potential to be very bad for free speech.

Simply put, all Internet service providers (ISPS) must treat data and traffic as equal, be it streaming video (very-bandwidth-intensive); text-based news website browsing; or even Facebook or Twitter feeds. If the new regulations go ahead, ISPS and telecom companies will be able to decide who pays for better bandwidth, arguably forcing the likes of Youtube, Netflix, Facebook and Amazon to pay more so their content gets prioritised into socalled fast lanes. On the face of it, with Netflix and Youtube consuming an estimated half of all Internet traffic through their video offerings, it seems financially prudent for the ISPS. But their focus is profitability, not freedom of speech or access to information.

What about nonprofit, activist organisations doing great work through the Internet? They can’t afford business-class access. How this new model could potentially suppress freedom of speech is an ongoing debate.

It is “doubleplus ungood”, as it would be said in 1984, George

Orwell’s novel that depicted so much of our surveillance existence. And nothing confirms this more than discovering that Google is tracking its mobile users through Android.

Android is a big deal because it’s by far the largest mobile operating system, and the potential not just for abuse, but manipulation and snooping, is enormous. Its knowing everywhere we go is creepy, especially because permission was denied.

Google’s original mantra was “don’t be evil”. Now the software monolith with a monopoly in search and mobile operating systems snoops on its own customers by tracking their whereabouts without their permission.

Wikipedia says their famous motto was suggested by “Google employee Paul Buchheit . . . in early 2000. Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he ‘wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out,’ adding that the slogan was ‘also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent’.”

Et tu, Google?

The potential not just for abuse, but manipulation and snooping, is enormous