"iSpy with my little eye: Apple’s u-turn on privacy sets a precedent and threatens everyone’s security"

Image credit: Electronic Frontier Foundation (CC BY 3.0 US)

"Apple has just announced significant changes to their privacy settings for messaging and cloud services: first, it will scan all images sent by child accounts; second, it will scan all photos as they are being uploaded to iCloud. 

With these changes, Apple is threatening everyone’s privacy, security and confidentiality...

EDRi [[European Digital Rights] and other civil society groups have been warning of the risks of these proposed technological ‘solutions’. 

Despite the laudable goal to protect children, these changes in fact introduce measures that make everyone less safe by creating a ‘backdoor’ into our private lives. 

With Apple blessing these privacy-invasive technologies and the adoption of the recent interim CSAM legislation, we are deeply concerned that these practices will be normalised and promoted further by other companies and by policy-makers. We call on Apple to abandon these proposed changes and to step up against corporate and government surveillance."

Read more here.

"Captured" -- My latest article for Catalonia Today magazine

[A surveillance camera in Barcelona. MANEL LLADÓ.]

 “I’m the only foreigner in the Catalan government,” Italian, Francesca Bria used to sometimes say when introducing herself to a public audience. 

In the two years leading up to the pandemic, her team’s work on “digital sovereignty” for people living in the Catalan capital might prove to be as important as others' efforts on political sovereignty.

A Financial Times article gave her the cringe-inducing title “Barcelona’s Robin Hood of Data” but Bria’s official job name was CTO (Chief Technology Officer) for the city. 

Along with Amsterdam, under Bria's’ charge, Barcelona was one of the two big cities that ran a pilot program titled DECODE that aimed to “provide tools that put individuals in control of whether they keep their personal data private or share it for the public good.” It was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme.

Invited to take up this position by Mayor Ada Colau, the legal framework her team produced might just have helped prevent the mistakes of other European cities and countries where the rights of citizens are fast being snatched by corporations operating hand in hand with governments and their agencies.

Recent government attempts to authorise drone surveillance by police in France were only barely defeated by public pressure. 

Their use for the so-called public good in the fight against terrorism and to ensure national security came out of the usual conservative arguments that don’t admit that new technology can violate basic human rights. 

With conservatives, the ends always justify the means, except when it hurts the most financially well off in society.

Echoing the history of especially the last 4 years in Catalonia, independent consultant and curator Marta Arniani Marta Arniani (who has worked in the same EU circles as Francesca Bria) said to me, "There have been cases of police beatings and if it’s a case of an individual citizen’s voice against the police, we know where power lies. That’s why it’s very important to [be able] to film the police. This is valid for France, for Catalonia, for Europe. It’s a matter of making these systems accountable. People who work in civil rights, lawyers for example, should be able to access which algorithms and surveillance tools are utilised, for instance through public registries. As emerged in my research for Digital Future Society on the gender dimension of digital welfare , the digitalisation of public services is mostly subcontracted to private companies: there is little know-how and social impact evaluation inside the public bodies, and no oversight from independent observers. Digitalisation should be an occasion to review the bias encoded in our public systems through centuries, so that they can be more inclusive; instead, the dominant solutionist approach is leading to automating inequalities. That's the title of a very good book, by the way!"

I very much share experts like Marta's concerns. Police and private drones are already flying with minimal legal restrictions in Barcelona but late last year the Spanish government approved the use of flying air taxis in Barcelona (and Santiago de Compostela; curiously both places being major foreign tourist destinations.)

My first question with this and every proposed legal or technological change is, ”Does it benefit the average person in any way? If not, then who does it benefit and who does it disadvantage?” Expensive helicopter rides only benefit those who can afford them and cause noise and visual pollution for everyone else.

The same basic question needs to be asked about new technology, including “biometric” facial recognition cameras. In my opinion, the answer is similar: the richest 1% (or 5%) of the population are those who gain from it. As usual.

[A version of this article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2021.]

Images from the Stasi secret police files (of then East Germany)

Simon Menner

While conducting research on surveillance, I realized that the public has very limited access to images   showing the act of surveillance from the perspective of the surveillant. What actually is it that the Orwellian “Big Brother” gets to see when he is watching us?

For over two and a half years, I applied this question to materials from the former East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, which had become publicly available after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Stasi was one of the most effective surveillance apparatuses ever. The quantity and breadth of the images I was able to unearth was surprising: images documenting Stasi agents being trained in hand signals, or perfecting the art of disguise; Polaroids taken during clandestine searches of people’s homes, to ensure everything could be put back where it belonged; photographs made by Stasi spies photographing other spies.

Many of the images shown here might appear absurd or even funny to us. But it is important not to lose sight of the original intentions behind these pictures—photographic records of the repression exerted by the state to subdue its own citizens. The banality of some of these pictures makes them even more repulsive. Many of the images are open to wide interpretation and could feed or confirm the suspicions of the Stasi agents viewing them. For example, the photograph of a Siemens coffeemaker: Is this West German consumer product evidence of contacts with Western agents? Or merely a present from relatives? The difference can mean years in prison, demonstrating one of the fundamental problems and limitations inherent to any and all forms of surveillance.

Presenting most of these pictures can be a double-edged sword. Many represent an undue intrusion into people’s private lives. Does reproducing them repeat the intrusion and renew injustices committed years ago? I grappled with this difficult issue and concluded that the pictures should be presented because they make an important contribution to discussions about state-sanctioned surveillance systems.

—Simon Menner, November 2014

For fascinating and disturbing photo exhibition click here.






[Source and creator: Open Society Foundations. (Creative Commons license rules.)]