August 17, 2013 at 11:14 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The End of Privacy: Tragically Comical Edition
August 19, 2013 at 2:56 am
The snoop bins look to me like crossing the line into illegality if you consider the ICO's Data Protection Technical Guidance: Determining what is personal data.
Even if you argue that MAC addresses are somehow never linkable back to individuals (which they will be at some level), other sources, like closed-circuit television cameras, will be able to identify those people passing the bins, assigning a MAC address to some, given enough samples. Note you don't need an individual's name to identify them, distinguishing physical characteristics count under the guide (page 6).
Anyway, what's the value to Marketeers if you can't identify individuals?
However, I also hope that London's recycling bins are not full of "cigarette ends and discarded sandwiches", unless they can recycle them too :unsure:
August 19, 2013 at 6:39 am
Big data is a dangerous part of this equation. Even when data appears to be anonymized, bringing multiple sources together can defeat that.
In a recent issue of Technology Review there was a long article about big data's role in the last US election. (It's not a party specific issue, but the article centered on the Obama camp because they had a much larger data operation this election).
You may think that your presidental vote is confidential, but the analysts are quite certain that they had identified virtually every voter who voted for Obama in '08 by amalgamating vast quantities of demographic data. On particular thing they did was purchase anonymized user info from cable companies and used external data to match those users to actual addresses and phone numbers. It got scientifically down to the point where the particular phone message one got from the phone bank was based on things like what show you watch and what was on your Tivo (you thought that was private?)
I don't know how we can stop this juggernaut, but it's out there.
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
August 19, 2013 at 6:45 am
Yeah that was an amusing one but the important part missed is that this is not a story of creeping invasion of privacy but of creeping invasion of privacy being stopped in its tracks. It only became widely known when the Council for the City of London (where this initiative was started up) have ordered these devices to be removed.
August 19, 2013 at 6:48 am
amisrahi (8/19/2013)
Yeah that was an amusing one but the important part missed is that this is not a story of creeping invasion of privacy but of creeping invasion of privacy being stopped in its tracks. It only became widely known when the Council for the City of London (where this initiative was started up) have ordered these devices to be removed.
The same City of London that has CCTV cameras all over the place? License plate readers that permanently amalgamate and store location/time infor? And is probably running their own MAC skimming operation?
Do as I say, not as I do. The government does not tolerate competition.
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
August 19, 2013 at 6:51 am
@amisrahi Almost - the story broke about a day before the removal was ordered, when the press releases for the bins were circulated. The more populist reporting like the BBC picked up on it at the point at which the bins were removed.
I think this is a classic case of asking forgiveness in place of asking permission and, given that this is the company's entire business model, this will be back in another form before too long. The City of London Corporation is a lot more controlling than other London boroughs - I wouldn't be surprised if it migrates before too long.
August 19, 2013 at 9:39 am
This is getting to be like a Frederick Pohl story I read a looong time ago where, if I remember correctly, everything about you was known and advertising was particularly effective - if you got hit by an advert, you were a junkie for that product from then on.
Glad I don't have a mobile 'phone or tablet with SIM, at least that's one way they won't get me.
August 19, 2013 at 10:37 am
@dave-3 C: Agreed. So long forgiveness is granted in the form of an absence of sanctions, private companies will push those boundaries till the point they become meaningless. Still, unless the point of the article is that other western regimes would have punished them harshly for it, the implied headline shouldn't be:
"The UK - Island haven of the snoopers.",
rather, "The UK: Where companies like to test the rules (just like everywhere else)."
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