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There should be scare quotes around Privacy Advocacy Groups. All of the listed think tanks are for sale. EPIC, an actual privacy advocacy group, is not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Privacy_Information...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the data is truly anonymized (and that's a big if), would you still have an issue? Could you share which government is doing this? It is very troubling. Edit: thank you all for good responses, I wasn't aware of the risks of de-anonymization but I will do more research into this.
_Can_ any large dataset actually be anonymised effectively? I'm not yet convinced it can be done in a way that can't trivially be reversed by anyone combining it with other datasets. And if it can't be anonymised, then it probably shouldn't be saleable.
See https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.02201 for the main paper from the Census.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the data is truly anonymized (and that's a big if), would you still have an issue? Could you share which government is doing this? It is very troubling. Edit: thank you all for good responses, I wasn't aware of the risks of de-anonymization but I will do more research into this.
_Can_ any large dataset actually be anonymised effectively? I'm not yet convinced it can be done in a way that can't trivially be reversed by anyone combining it with other datasets. And if it can't be anonymised, then it probably shouldn't be saleable.
For example, if they're tracking all instances of various ailments seen by some doctor in some time period. Suppose you are the only person of a given age and gender with that ailment, so that bucket would one entry for anonymous you. Fine. But then suppose the aggregating party begins to buy and correlate against credit card and location records that place you at the doctor's office in that time frame, bingo, they have a match to tie all three data.
Butcher is donating money to the farmer to raise the animals !
There should be scare quotes around Privacy Advocacy Groups. All of the listed think tanks are for sale. EPIC, an actual privacy advocacy group, is not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Privacy_Information...
How do you know EPIC isn’t for sale? They don’t disclose who their donors are.
The EFF, popular with many tech workers, also falls into the latter group. They've started to pivot post all the privacy scandals of the past few years, but in general they've taken positions that align with the tech industry. There's a reason why they've been preoccupied with government surveillance but have been silent (until recently) about corporate surveillance.
The actual title, "Facebook, Google Fund Nonprofits Shaping Federal Privacy Debate" is much clearer
Hopefully dang can update the title here as well.
This quote from the article highlights the problem at hand: > Organizations like the Center for Democracy and Technology, which received at least $960,000 from [Google and Facebook] in 2018, are often quoted in the media as unbiased third parties and influence how policy is developed in Washington as such, despite receiving the tech company funding. > The group supports allowing tech giants to sell user data to third…
The problem with this theory is that it doesn't align with facts. Google and most of the other major tech companies don't actually sell user data. They collect it to use internally. The biggest companies who actually do that are the ISPs, but that doesn't really fit the same narrative, and I doubt they donate a lot to privacy groups. The reason a lot of privacy groups don't try to restrict selling user data is a comb…
Overall, isn't your last point also the source of problems? If the whole idea is to be able to exert regulatory control, to protect users, over companies that seem to have a huge share on decision-making in this space due to their unmatched wealth, how is their parting with a minuscule portion of their wealth so they can potentially influence a decision made on the topic of restricting them, solve any problems in the first place? It seems like a stretch to suggest that privacy advocacy groups need money from tech giants to support themselves.
I agree that every organization needs the money but the problem at hand is that every organization should not ideally depend on tech company donations because they have amassed the largest sums. Since this is the problem these laws are trying to address in the first place, I am not sure taking donations from tech giants would solve the problem, even if it doesn't exacerbate it (assuming for a moment that the tech giants are actually being a force of good here).
This quote from the article highlights the problem at hand: > Organizations like the Center for Democracy and Technology, which received at least $960,000 from [Google and Facebook] in 2018, are often quoted in the media as unbiased third parties and influence how policy is developed in Washington as such, despite receiving the tech company funding. > The group supports allowing tech giants to sell user data to third…
The problem with this theory is that it doesn't align with facts. Google and most of the other major tech companies don't actually sell user data. They collect it to use internally. The biggest companies who actually do that are the ISPs, but that doesn't really fit the same narrative, and I doubt they donate a lot to privacy groups. The reason a lot of privacy groups don't try to restrict selling user data is a comb…
This is a classic case of zooming in too far with your politics. You can maybe make this argument if you put blinders on and only consider the next best option in this exact political system, but really this is a paradigmatic example of Google & Facebook attempting both regulatory capture & crowding out organizations who would authentically advocate for users rather than gigantic corporations.
If you wake up every morning and choose the least evil of the options directly in front of you without once thinking of the bigger picture, you go to some truly bad places.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you know EPIC isn’t for sale? They don’t disclose who their donors are.
Because I'm aware of their history and the positions they've taken on privacy issues. They've always been the actual pro-privacy group, unlike the others which represent tech industry interests. The EFF, popular with many tech workers, also falls into the latter group. They've started to pivot post all the privacy scandals of the past few years, but in general they've taken positions that align with the tech industry…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not exactly the same thing, but the following is happening now, in Spain. Citizens can opt-out by either turning off their phones or putting them in airplane mode during the dates mentioned. "Spain’s National Statistical Institute (INE) plans to track the movements of millions of Spanish citizen’s cellphones to conduct a ‘sociological study’, El Pais and EFE reported. The INE will analyze user’s movements between Nov…
Wait what - you can opt out of having any phone or mobile data service for a week? What on earth are they going to learn? People go to work, people go shopping?