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I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

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Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#211

Post by josefx »

nr2x wrote: post #203
kube-system wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academic research has a well established and formal set of ethics rules. These rules are not as established or strict for other professions.

specifically, deception studies are really hard to get approved - and for good reason. looks like this wasn't properly reviewed.

"Hard to get approved" my ass. The attacks on the Linux code review process with real harm code and zero safeguards against successfully hijacking a production kernel got approved and the review board even reaffirmed its decision when confronted about it, as far as I remember by claiming that the study wasn't focused medical issues. Did this study focus on medical issues? If not then at least one review board out there would rubber stamp it.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#212

Post by jeroenhd »

On the one hand, I think this research is done with bad ethics. Proper science requires consent of the people involved in experiments. An organisation like this should know better. I think that's the reason this research needs to stop and go back to the drawing board.

On the other hand, anyone in California could send such an email legitimately. If you're offended by the contents of the email rather than by the research itself, I have bad news for you: the text itself is perfectly fine. Someone can, and should be able to, exercise their rights regarding data collection. That goes for Big Tech which these laws are aimed at, but also for any other party our there collecting data. If you're afraid of someone exercising their digital rights, you should probably not host anything public.

The real problem here is not the research itself and not even the laws the research is about, but about the litigious nature of some countries. Bad research happens, turning this research attempt into a spam campaign. Everyone gets spam, it's not a reason for panic. It's only a problem when you think any email you receive can actually be the basis of a life-altering lawsuit.

If you are someone who got spooked by such an email, I can't help but think you might not want to publicly host anything. Attaching any kind of data collection to the web has come with legal implications for years now, even before the GDPR was a thing. This time it was a malevolent researcher; next time it might be someone who demands that their IP be purged from your logs. Look at this shoddy research as a training exercise, and consider if you're prepared when a real version of this email comes in, before it's too late to do anything about it!

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#213

Post by andylynch »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #48

A lot of people mocking the author or others for being scared and worried are basically blaming the victim here, and I would like them to stop. The nature of legal practices in the USA is such that the answers to "Are you totally in the clear legally?" and "Will you lose significant amounts of money proving in random courts that you are in the clear legally?" are often both yes. As a result, any researchers who send…

Yes I don’t quite understand the need for deception here. I guess they were trying to blind the responses. If I were on the receiving end, I’d be wary too but on the flip side a simple email from the researchers to ask with a link to the study website would be fine.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#215

Post by kelnos »

charcircuit wrote: post #140
pdonis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking someone questions about their compliance with a law is not the same as asking someone questions about an innocuous subject.

If I ask if your site complies with COPPA, that's not a threat that I'm going to sue you.

Maybe you know that, but I don't.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#216

Post by ehsankia »

silisili wrote: post #179

I'm so confused by the comments here. Californian consumers regularly, and rightly IMO, laud the CCPA. Then when on the receiving side, view it as a threat and freak out. Note: I'm ignoring the whole lying aspect for now, because it isn't pertinent to my argument. So it sounds like it's good for consumers, and a nightmare for producers. Seems the crux of the problem is the law itself.

I must've read the phrase "thinly veiled threat" at least a dozen time in this thread, yet honestly don't understand where the threat was.

Maybe the last sentence where they put a deadline on it, but that part was strange anyways since they explicitly said this is NOT a CCPA request, so that deadline doesn't even apply to this email.

The person seems to just be asking questions about the process and came off to me more as curious than threatening. Whatever veil there was most definitely was not thin in my opinion.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#217

Post by weeks »

eigenvalue wrote: post #177
throawayblahads wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: Some grammar, and minor clause clarification in second-to-last paragraph. Yes, frequently. And throwaway. About once a week, I pick an account in my LastPass collection, and initiate the following process: 1. Initiate a CCPA data request using a form or email, and I always include language about the timeline. I am not a lawyer, I'm just a person. 2. Then, once I have the data, I delete the account. I'm trying t…

Even if what you are doing is "legal" it seems abusive as hell to me, especially if it is ever targeted at a smaller company or person like in the OP's case. Why are being so difficult? Why don't you find something more useful to do with your time instead of making others jump through idiotic hoops out of some misplaced sense of justice?

“Buy, receive, or sell the personal information of 50,000 or more California residents”

If a business engages this type of activity, they need to have a scalable process for providing California residents with their data.

Describing a California law passed by a majority of voters as “idiotic hoops” is a miss.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#218

Post by malwarebytess »

watwut wrote: post #182
dcow wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on your ethical framework doesn't it? People lie all the time for good reasons. Are those actions unethical? Further, I am struggling to see who was harmed here or how there was any ill intent. On top of that, the results of this study seem like they would be enlightening. It seems like society should want this experiment to be able to take place. Certainly a western liberal understanding of ethics…

The formal ethics of research on humans requires informed consent of participants. You can take framework of sales or management where lie is just being smart, but it is not applicable here.

it's not research on humans as such. it was intended to be research on organizations, websites large enough to be subject to the law.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#219

Post by hatsunearu »

watwut wrote: post #182
dcow wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on your ethical framework doesn't it? People lie all the time for good reasons. Are those actions unethical? Further, I am struggling to see who was harmed here or how there was any ill intent. On top of that, the results of this study seem like they would be enlightening. It seems like society should want this experiment to be able to take place. Certainly a western liberal understanding of ethics…

The formal ethics of research on humans requires informed consent of participants. You can take framework of sales or management where lie is just being smart, but it is not applicable here.

Deception is allowed, but should be scrutinized carefully to determine if it is necessary. In this case, it was not necessary. The researcher could have easily just said "we want to know if you are compliant with CCPA for the purpose of doing this research, could you tell us your policy please"

https://research.oregonstate.edu/irb/research-involving-dece...

quotes:

a) Psychologists do not conduct a study involving deception unless they have determined that the use of deceptive techniques is justified by the study's significant prospective scientific, educational or applied value and that effective nondeceptive alternative procedures are not feasible.

b) Psychologists do not deceive prospective participants about research that is reasonably expected to cause physical pain or severe emotional distress.

c) Psychologists explain any deception that is an integral feature of the design and conduct of an experiment to participants as early as is feasible, preferably at the conclusion of their participation, but no later than at the conclusion of the data collection, and permit participants to withdraw their data.

a) -- Hell no

b) -- I can give the benefit of the doubt that they didn't foresee small website owners getting panic attacks from this threat, but their non-empathetic tone in that apology write up is appalling

c) -- Hell no

The more I think about this the more I'm furious that a supposedly top tier institution like Princeton approved all of this and the "researchers" seems to have 0 fucks to give on ethical experiment design.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#220

Post by mattbee »

walrus01 wrote: post #71
0cVlTeIATBs wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specifically is there to fear from an email like this? For one the sender opens by admitting they are not protected by the CCPA, and a quick reading about this law shows it does not apply to an individual's personal blog. If a Russian were able to file suit in California, wouldn't the defendant have a chance early on to ask a judge to dismiss it? I'm trying to sound naive because I want some gory details.

> If a Russian were able to file suit in California, wouldn't the defendant have a chance early on to ask a judge to dismiss it? a particularly foolish or over-confident defendent might represent themselves, but otherwise, I would not budget less than $2000-3000 to hire a lawyer to draft and file a response to statement of claim and show up in court to attempt to get it dismissed before it gets started.

From a British perspective this sound like madness. We have a tradition of referring baseless legal threats to the precedent of Arkell v Pressdram.
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