The MyData Weekly Digest is a weekly English newsletter from OwnYourData dedicated to reporting within the people-centric approach to personal data management.
Read the “best of” news here or sign up for the MyData Weekly Digest to receive weekly updates.
News
9 July 2021
[Simple] Everyone should decide how their digital data are used — not just tech companies
Smartphones, sensors and consumer habits reveal much about society. Too few people have a say in how these data are created and used. #privacy #self-determination #society
[Simple] How Underground Fiber Optics Spy on Humans Moving Above
Vibrations from cars and pedestrians create unique signals in cables. Now scientists have used the trick to show how Covid-19 brought life to a halt. #communication #coronavirus
[Simple] Wanted: rules for pandemic data access that everyone can trust
In the wake of COVID, a pandemic treaty could be a way to agree on data access before the next emergency strikes. #community #data-sharing #health-data
[Intermediate] Privacy-Focused Tech Companies Call for Ban on Targeted Advertising
DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi, Protonmail and others say “businesses can thrive without privacy-invasive practices” and advertising can be done without spying on users. #ads #privacy
[Intermediate] Building a data team at a mid-stage startup
A story of a new data team leader successfully growing the team and building a data-first culture in a medium-sized technology company: depicting the initial state of the company with data in many different places, frustrated ML researchers who can’t get their research into production, and confusion over what the data team is actually for – some of the experiences you might relate to. #culture #startup
[Advanced] European Parliament approved ePrivacy Derogation
The European Parliament approved the ePrivacy Derogation, allowing providers of e-mail and messaging services to automatically search all personal messages containing material depicting child sex abuse and report suspected cases to the police. The European Pirates Delegation in the Greens/EFA group strongly condemns this automated mass surveillance, which effectively means the end of privacy in digital correspondence. Pirate Party MEPs plan to take legal action. Patrick Breyer (German Pirate Party Member of the European Parliament): “This harms children rather than protecting them” #eu #mydata4children #privacy #surveillance
[Simple] COVID ‘vaccine passports’ won’t be needed for essential services in Canada
Quebec will require its citizens to carry a “vaccine passport” as of Sept. 1 that would serve to exclude those who have not received two doses. Health Minister Christian Dubé stressed the passports would only be mandated in regions that experience outbreaks and would not be needed to access essential services. #canada #coronavirus #health-passport
2 July 2021
[Intermediate] Golden Age of Surveillance
Police makes 112,000 data requests in 6 months: When U.S. law enforcement officials need to cast a wide net for information, they’re increasingly turning to the vast digital ponds of personal data created by Big Tech companies via the devices and online services that have hooked billions of people around the world. #surveillance #us
[Advanced] Health Passes and the Design of an Ecosystem of Ecosystems
Ever since the Covid pandemic started in 2020, various groups have seen verifiable credentials as a means for providing a secure, privacy-respecting system for health and travel data sharing. This post explores the ecosystem of ecosystems that is emerging as hundreds of organizations around the world rise to the challenge of implementing a globally interoperable system that also respects individual choice and privacy. #coronavirus #health-passport #ssi #verifiable-credentials
[Simple] Fired by Bot at Amazon
Contract drivers say algorithms terminate them by email — even when they have done nothing wrong: Stephen Normandin spent almost four years racing around Phoenix delivering packages as a contract driver for Amazon.com. Then one day, he received an automated email. The algorithms tracking him had decided he wasn’t doing his job properly. #amazon #gig-economy #job
[Intermediate] Data flows and the Digital Decade
A new study commissioned by DIGITALEUROPE and conducted by Frontier Economics shows that our policy decisions on international data transfers now will have significant effects on growth and jobs across the whole European economy by 2030, impacting Europe’s Digital Decade goals: The EU can be €2 trillion better off by 2030 if we secure cross-border data transfers. #data-economy #eu #future
[Intermediate] LinkedIn Breach Reportedly Exposes Data of 92% of Users, Including Inferred Salaries
A second massive LinkedIn breach reportedly exposes the data of 700M users, which is more than 92% of the total 756M users. The database is for sale on the dark web, with records including phone numbers, physical addresses, geolocation data, and inferred salaries. #data-breach #linkedin
[Simple] EU Privacy Watchdogs Seek AI Biometrics and Facial Recognition Ban in Public Spaces
Two of the European Union’s leading independent data protection watchdogs, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), are jointly calling for a widespread ban on the use of AI-driven biometric identification in public places. More than just a facial recognition ban, the proposal calls for automated systems recognizing “gait, fingerprints, DNA, voice, keystrokes and other biometric or behavioral signals” to be kept out of all of the EU’s publicly accessible spaces. #eu #facial-recognition
[Simple] The US finally has centralized medical data
Covid exposed the fragmented reality of US health records. Now an effort to bring together data from millions of patients starting to show results. #health-data #us
[Simple] The Internet Is Rotting
It turns out that link rot and content drift are endemic to the web, which is both unsurprising and shockingly risky for a library that has “billions of books and no central filing system.” Imagine if libraries didn’t exist and there was only a “sharing economy” for physical books: People could register what books they happened to have at home, and then others who wanted them could visit and peruse them. It’s no surprise that such a system could fall out of date, with books no longer where they were advertised to be — especially if someone reported a book being in someone else’s home in 2015, and then an interested reader saw that 2015 report in 2021 and tried to visit the original home mentioned as holding it. That’s what we have right now on the web. #internet #society
[Intermediate] Vestager Warns Apple Against Using Privacy, Security To Limit Competition
Europe’s tech chief Margrethe Vestager on Friday warned iPhone maker Apple against using privacy and security concerns to fend off competition on its App Store, reasons CEO Tim Cook gave for not allowing users to install software from outside the Store. #apple #competition #eu #privacy
…
Tools
OwnYourSwarm
Today I finished up a tool that you can use to export your complete history from Foursquare and publish the checkins to your website. #location-data
