{"id":4182,"date":"2023-01-17T21:32:14","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T21:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2023\/01\/17\/privacy-news-january-17\/"},"modified":"2023-01-17T21:32:14","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T21:32:14","slug":"privacy-news-january-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2023\/01\/17\/privacy-news-january-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Privacy News: January 17"},"content":{"rendered":"

Algorithms of oppression (re)producing racism, pushing back on AI hype, a new approach to try to make GDPR’s protections real, state privacy legislation … and more!<\/p>\n

When Black Death Goes Viral: How Algorithms of Oppression (Re)Produce Racism and Racial Trauma<\/a><\/h3>\n

Dr. Tiera Chant\u00e8 Tanksley on SAGE Perspectives Blog (perspectivesblog.sagepub.com)<\/p>\n

“Concerned about how seeing images of Black people dead and dying would affect young social media users, I conducted a study to understand how digitally mediated traumas were impacting Black girls\u2019 mental and emotional wellness. \u00a0As I completed interviews with nearly 20 Black girls (ages 18-24) across the US and Canada, my initial fears were quickly confirmed: Black girls reported unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, fear and chronic stress from encountering Black death online. The most common phrases participants used were \u201ctraumatizing,\u201d \u201cexhausting\u201d and \u201cPTSD.\u201d Many of the girls endured mental, emotional and physiological effects, including insomnia, migraines, nausea, prolonged \u201cnumbness\u201d and dissociation…. Mental health concerns directly affected schooling experiences, with many girls too overwhelmed, triggered or physically exhausted to fully engage in academics following high profile police killings.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Algorithms Allegedly Penalized Black Renters. The US Government Is Watching<\/a><\/h3>\n

Khari Johnson on WIRED (wired.com)<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice has warned SafeRent, a provider of tenant-screening software, that its tenant-screening algorithms must comply with fair housing law. SafeRent claims that they’re exempt from the law because their discrimintory algorithms only advise landlords and don\u2019t make decisions, but DOJ’s Kristen Clarke isn’t having any of that<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cHousing providers and tenant screening companies that use algorithms and data to screen tenants are not absolved from liability when their practices disproportionately deny people of color access to fair housing opportunities.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stop feeding the hype and start resisting<\/a><\/h3>\n

Iris van Rooij on Iris van Rooij (irisvanrooijcogsci.com)<\/p>\n

As van Rooij points out, it\u2019s almost as if academics are eager to do the PR work<\/a> for OpenAI (the company that created ChatGPT). \u00a0Why?<\/p>\n

“As Tamar Sharon, professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy and co-director of iHub<\/a> at the Radboud University, notes in the Dutch newspaper NRC1<\/a><\/sup>: \u201cthe ideals of OpenAI are not credible\u201d, the company is \u201cfounded by millionaires based on their ideology of Effective Altruism, EA\u201d and while they talk about making \u201cbeneficial AI\u201d, so far this type of tech is realised by exploiting cheap labour of underpaid workers and the push to make Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, larger and larger creates a \u201cgigantic ecological footprint\u201d with implications for \u201cour planet that are far from beneficial for humankind\u201d….<\/p>\n

Please join me in resisting and start helping to curb the hype.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Will Europe\u2019s Privacy Bill of Rights Ever Truly Be Enforced?<\/a><\/h3>\n

Julia Angwin on The Markup (themarkup.org)<\/p>\n

As Angwin says, the GDPR is essentially a privacy bill of rights. <\/p>\n

Amid rising commercial surveillance, it offered EU residents some essential rights<\/a> over their data\u2014including the right to see their data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to specific uses, and to not have data used about their sex, health, religion, political identity, and other sensitive topics….<\/p>\n

But many of the rights have been nearly impossible to exercise because legal challenges based on the law have often languished at the Irish Data Protection Commission, which handles most GDPR complaints against Big Tech.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Angwin talks with Tanya O\u2019Carroll, co-founder and former director of Amnesty Tech, who’s trying to going around the Irish regulator by filing a lawsuit in a U.K. court<\/a> against Meta for violating the GDPR,<\/p>\n

Mastodon and the Fediverse<\/h2>\n

How you could build a search that the fediverse would welcome<\/a><\/h3>\n

Anil Dash (anildash.com)<\/p>\n

Mastodon doesn’t have full-text search. \u00a0This is a hassle from a user interface perspective, and as people check out Mastodon and other compatible fediverse software as alternatives to Twitter, there have been several recent attempts to implement search<\/a> … all of which have gone down in flames after intense community pushback. \u00a0As Dash says<\/p>\n

[S]earch is also a signifier to those who pioneered and established the current era of the fediverse, symbolizing the extractive and exploitative hypergrowth systems that often ruined the positivity and promise of the human web.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the issues with all of the previous search proposals is that they’re opt-out based: posts get indexed for search unless people say they shouldn’t. \u00a0Dash suggests a consent-based, opt-in approach, which is much better aligned with the fediverse’s values \u2013 and with trends in privacy law.<\/p>\n

Facial recognition<\/h2>\n

Lawyers Barred by Madison Square Garden Found a Way Back In<\/a><\/h3>\n

Kashmir Hill on th New York Times \u00a0(nytimes.com)<\/p>\n

MSG Entertainment resorted to facial recognition technology to kick out legal foes, but some have undermined the ban using a law passed to protect theater critics in 1941.<\/p>\n

Does the European Parliament use Facial Recognition Technology?<\/a><\/h3>\n

Kris Shrishak on Irish Council for Civil Liberties (iccl.ie)<\/p>\n

ICCL has received documents that indicate the European Parliament requested for CCTV cameras with facial recognition capability.<\/p>\n

State privacy legislation<\/h2>\n

Privacy in the City that Never Sleeps: New NY Privacy Bill<\/a><\/h4>\n

Odia Kagan on linkedin.com<\/p>\n

New York’s S 365<\/a> is the latest versiof of the New York Privacy Act. \u00a0It follows GDPR’s terminology (controllers, processors, and personal data), and takes a similar approaches to California when it comes to deidentiied data, sale of data, and sensitive data. \u00a0It also has requirements for automated decision making. \u00a0It’ll be interesting to see how far it gets this session.<\/p>\n

South Carolina earns mid-pack scores for online privacy laws<\/a><\/h4>\n

T.A. DeFeo The Center Square (thecentersquare.com)<\/p>\n

South Carolina ranked in the middle of the pack nationwide for its laws governing online privacy. \u00a0The Palmetto State scored 5.5 out of 25 points in a new analysis from Comparitech, a website focused on cyber security and online privacy. According to Rebecca Moody, head of data research at Comparitech, <\/p>\n

\u201cIts score stems from data disposal laws which cover companies and government entities, legislation to protect K-12 student information, a shield law to protect journalists, and an insurance data security law. It also scores half a point thanks to its protections for genetic testing when it comes to insurance quotes and coverage.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Virginia\u2019s Data Privacy Law Just Went Into Effect \u2013 What You Should Know.<\/a><\/h4>\n

Melody McAnally on JD Supra (jdsupra.com)<\/p>\n

On January 1, 2023, Virginia\u2019s Consumer Data Protection Act (\u201cVirginia Privacy Law\u201d) went into effect. \u00a0Here’s what you need to know.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

And …<\/h2>\n

Wikipedia needs different safety rules, says foundation<\/a><\/h4>\n

Chris VallanceTechnology reporter on BBC News (bbc.co.uk)<\/p>\n

The Online Safety Bill shouldn\u2019t treat community-run sites like big tech firms its foundation says.<\/p>\n

US obtains exclusion of NGOs from drafting AI treaty<\/a><\/h4>\n

Luca Bertuzzi on EURACTIV (euractiv.com)<\/p>\n

Civil society organisations have been excluded from the drafting process of the first international treaty on Artificial Intelligence based on a request of the US to avoid countries\u2019 positions becoming public.<\/p>\n

AI and privacy: Experts worry users may have already \u2018traded a lot\u2019 for services <\/a><\/h4>\n

Irelyne Lavery on Global News (globalnews.ca)<\/p>\n

With individual data being largely unregulated, AI companies are walking a fine line with the privacy of consumers, according to one expert.<\/p>\n