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Privacy Technology

Charity Promotes Covert Surveillance App For Suicide Prevention 74

Posted by samzenpus from the keeping-an-eye-on-things dept.
VoiceOfDoom writes Major UK charity The Samaritans have launched an app titled "Samaritans Radar", in an attempt to help Twitter users identify when their friends are in crisis and in need of support. Unfortunately the privacy implications appear not to have been thought through — installing the app allows it to monitor the Twitter feeds of all of your followers, searching for particular phrases or words which might indicate they are in distress. The app then sends you an email suggesting you contact your follower to offer your help. Opportunities for misuse by online harassers are at the forefront of the concerns that have been raised, in addition; there is strong evidence to suggest that this use of personal information is illegal, being in contravention of UK Data Protection law.
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Charity Promotes Covert Surveillance App For Suicide Prevention More

Charity Promotes Covert Surveillance App For Suicide Prevention

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  • Um (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30, 2014 @06:36PM (#48274069)

    So it auto searches your twitter friends' twitter feeds (stuff they've posted for the world to see) and people think this is a privacy violation? How he fuck is this different than wget-ing and grep-ing your friends' feed?

    Yawn. Manufactured and/or Idiot's Outrage

    • You can have a private twitter feed, can't you? This would also search any private feeds you have access to.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

        Yes, you can. You can create a Twitter feed and then set it up so that only people you've explicitly allowed to follow you can see your Tweets.

        • Re:Um (Score:4, Insightful)

          by julesh ( 229690 ) on Thursday October 30, 2014 @11:41PM (#48275529)

          Yes, you can. You can create a Twitter feed and then set it up so that only people you've explicitly allowed to follow you can see your Tweets.

          Right, but as this only looks at the feeds that are visible to the user who is using it, and only shares information about those feeds with that user, what's the problem?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

            As I understand it, the issue is this. I make a Twitter account. (I dunno why I want to call them "feeds.") I mark it private, which means that only people I allow to follow me can see it. Then, someone else downloads this app which then shares my private Twitter feed to the app makers without my permission.

            So let's say Alice makes a Twitter account, and marks it private. She allows Bob to follow her. Bob then downloads this app, which can then see her tweets as she's allowed Bob to see them. Alice is willi

            • Leaving aside that TFA says nothing about that, Bob presumably is otherwise incapable of retweeting, or using ^C/^V, or using a pencil & paper, or going to the pub and talking to Charlie...

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It actually states that it only looks at public tweets.

    • It depends on how the app works.

      Does it work like an old-style program that performs some computation and does something, or is it a 'cloud'-based app, i.e. it sends all the raw data off to some server somewhere?

      Given that it is said to send an email instead of just display a notification, I suspect the latter, in which case you're sending those potentially 'followers only' tweets off to a third party.

    • So it auto searches your twitter friends' twitter feeds (stuff they've posted for the world to see) and people think this is a privacy violation? How he fuck is this different than wget-ing and grep-ing your friends' feed?

      Yawn. Manufactured and/or Idiot's Outrage

      Exactly.

      If anything, people who are sharing their problems on twitter are broadcasting them in an attempt to get help. They may just be looking for attention or they may genuinely need help, but either way, having an app scan the feed and flag it doesn't violate their privacy.

      • So it auto searches your twitter friends' twitter feeds (stuff they've posted for the world to see) and people think this is a privacy violation? How he fuck is this different than wget-ing and grep-ing your friends' feed?

        Yawn. Manufactured and/or Idiot's Outrage

        Exactly.

        If anything, people who are sharing their problems on twitter are broadcasting them in an attempt to get help. They may just be looking for attention or they may genuinely need help, but either way, having an app scan the feed and flag it doesn't violate their privacy.

        I wonder if the app misses someone who ends up offing themselves, and the app doesn't flag them, will the app writers will be held responsible?

    • Re:Um (Score:5, Informative)

      by julesh ( 229690 ) on Friday October 31, 2014 @12:36AM (#48275685)

      Right. Also: not illegal. The Samaritans are processing the data on behalf of the registered users of their app, not for themselves. The users determine what data is to be processed, and request the specific way in which it will be processed. Therefore, under the definitions from the Data Protection Act, the user is the data controller ("a person who (either alone or jointly or in common with other persons) determines the purposes for which and the manner in which any personal data are, or are to be, processed"). The Samaritans are acting as a data processor ("any person who processes the data on behalf of the data controller").

      The act is quite clear throughout that it is the data contr-oller[1], not the data processor, who must comply with the various restrictions as to how data may be used. The users, as long as they are using the app only for the purposes for which The Samaritans describe it as having been designed, are exempt from the provisions of the Data Protection Act, because the data is "processed by an individual only for the purposes of that individual's personal, family or household affairs".

      However, even if this were not the case, here is the principle that TFA interprets as stating that the processing performed should not be permitted: "Personal data shall not be processed unless at least one of the conditions in Schedule 2 is met, and in the case of sensitive personal data, at least one of the conditions in Schedule 3 is also met."

      Unfortunately for this argument, schedule 2 allows processing that is "necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject," which appears to me to be the case here. And, while the data in question is considered sensitive, schedule 3 allows processing which "is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or another person, in a case where the data controller cannot reasonably be expected to obtain the consent of the data subject", which also appears to me to be true. It also allows processing of data that "has been made public as a result of steps deliberately taken by the data subject."

      So, even were we to hold that The Samaritans are the data controller for the data used by the app, it seems they are entitled to perform this processing.

      [1] It seems that slashdot believes the data protection act to be lame, and won't let me post accurate quotes from it. It appears especially to dislike the word that starts "cont" and ends "roller" for some reason I don't quite understand, but unfortunately that word is used very frequently in the text, so I can't really avoid it.

    • How he fuck is this different than wget-ing and grep-ing your friends' feed?

      If I ask you: "how was the movie?" and you answered "1001011100111001...", how the f*ck is this different from downloading a torrent?

      The difference is: what the judge thinks of it.

  • Huh? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How is this invading privacy? Don't I already have access to this data? All I am doing is searching it.

  • Not personal information... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The information scraped from public twitter feeds is not in any way "personal information".

    • not all twitter feeds are "public", and this would scrape data from any feeds that you have access to.

      • and this would scrape data from any feeds that you have access to.

        Still not seeing an issue here.

        • It's a third party that the person with the private feed didn't authorize, reading their tweets.

          Also whether or not they retain the information, and what they do with it if they do.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            It's a third party that the person with the private feed didn't authorize, reading their tweets.
            Also whether or not they retain the information, and what they do with it if they do.

            Doesn't matter.

            Just because you marked the tweet as private and only viewable to a few, is still viewable to all.

            THERE IS NO PRIVACY SETTINGS. Once you post, even if it's "friends only", it is still public.

            Because anyone who sees it is free to screenshot it (how many tweets have been deleted only to live on in screenshots?), copy

        • and this would scrape data from any feeds that you have access to.

          Still not seeing an issue here.

          I think the issue becomes that in certain jobs, you don't have that job any more if you are considered a suicide risk, or will even be investigated, or lose clearance if people wonder "why" you might be depressed.

          In similar fashion, I worked with a guy who was contstantly saying stuff like "someone ought to kill that son-of-a-bitch". He was harmless, and I convinced him to stop. But that was a different age, today, he would probably be swatted.

          So this just makes one more thing that we would be foolish

  • Um... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Threni ( 635302 ) on Thursday October 30, 2014 @06:58PM (#48274213)

    Surely even in the UK it's not illegal to follow other people's tweets?

  • Either we want absolute liberty and privacy, OR we want a nanny-state, where we're watched, coddled, and protected from all possible harm. The moment you concede 'higher motives' to surveillance, then you have allowed the camel into the tent. You might think it's just his nose today, but tomorrow someone will say "but .... terrorism" and a little more surveillance is ok. And "but...children" and a little more is ok.

    You *can't* have both.

    The road to hell is paved with "good" intentions.

    • Either we want absolute liberty and privacy, OR we want a nanny-state, where we're watched, coddled, and protected from all possible harm.

      Slippery slope fallacy FTW!

    • Either we want absolute liberty and privacy, OR we want a nanny-state, where we're watched, coddled, and protected from all possible harm.

      That's a false dichotomy. Especially since absolute privacy and libery have pretty much never existed for the almost total majority of humanity. nor nanny states.

      This isn't to say that analyzing posts for potential suicidal tendencies is a good thing - I think it is completely evil, and will only serve to encourage online analysis of everything we might post.

      Just as an example germane to this topic, I have an online track record of believing a person should be able to check out if they don't have much p

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mvdwege ( 243851 )

      Either we want absolute liberty and privacy, OR we want a nanny-state,

      Since such a thing as absolute liberty and privacy is impossible, we must be living in a nanny state, watched, coddled and protected from all possible harm.

      <Looks around> Hmm. I'm not seeing that. Perhaps you should work on your debating skills and not employ such easily dismissed false dichotomies?

      • Either we want absolute liberty and privacy, OR we want a nanny-state,

        Hmm. I'm not seeing that. Perhaps you should work on your debating skills and not employ such easily dismissed false dichotomies?

        Congratulations, you just attacked a straw man. Desire vs. conclusion. HTH.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mvdwege ( 243851 )

          Aside from the fact that my snark attacked a desire vs. a conclusion, do you have any other reason to call it a strawman but for an obviously personal one (you've been whining at me for a couple of posts now)?

          It is still a false dichotomy. No amount of nitpicking changes the fact that the very logic of his statement is fallacious.

      • Sorry, no.

        Think of 'rights' and 'freedoms' being a continuum. You want to be somewhere in that continuum.

        If you live in a society of absolute freedom, you no longer have, for example, the 'right to be secure in one's person.' Somebody else in your society is at absolute freedom to assault or kill you.

        If, on the other hand, you live in a society of 'absolute rights,' you are not allowed to do anything that society hasn't expressly allowed.

        So you want to be somewhere in the middle. If you want 'privacy,' t

  • Monitors those you follow not those who follow you (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jratcliffe ( 208809 ) on Thursday October 30, 2014 @07:06PM (#48274279)

    According to TFA, the software monitors the twitter feeds of people you follow, not people who follow you.

    Not clear what's viewed as so oppressive about this - it doesn't gather any information you're not already getting, it just highlights certain tweets that you might otherwise miss.

    The linked article makes the claim that a stalker could use it to identify when someone is vulnerable, and push them over the edge. I suppose that's a risk, but I'd imagine that someone who's focused enough on someone to actually want them dead would be willing to actually watch their tweets manually...

    • This app isn't going to help much. People have posted that they were going to kill themselves, over 1000 people replied egging them on. What else could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately we'll find out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

        That's actually a crime in the UK. Encouraging suicide or self harm can land you in jail.

        As for the app, the idea is to give you early warning signs before they get to that point. It's a kind of expert system I suppose, providing the "expertise" of the Samaritans in recognizing words and phrases that hint at people being extremely depressed. I have no idea how well it works, but I can tell you that most people have little idea what severe depression is like or how people with it behave (fortunately for them

    • According to TFA, the software monitors the twitter feeds of people you follow, not people who follow you.

      Not clear what's viewed as so oppressive about this - it doesn't gather any information you're not already getting, it just highlights certain tweets that you might otherwise miss..

      Because people shouldn't be tracked and analyzed in this manner? If every workd you posted on /. were tracked and analyzed, and the authorities showed up at your doorstep because they thought you were suicidal, or an anarchist, or some kookoo religious sect, you think that would be cool?

      All this is going to do is put a lot of teenagers in therapy, and keep them out of a lot of careers.

      • But it's not the authorities doing this, it's a friend that has been alerted.

        • But it's not the authorities doing this, it's a friend that has been alerted.

          You darn well better hope it is a friend.

          Besides, what is the friend then supposed to do?

          hint: alert the authorities

  • Nothing about this app has privacy implications:
    • the data that the app reads is otherwise available to the app user
    • the app applies some level of expert-system analysis to identify potentially life-threatening issues
    • the app then alerts the app user about the potential problem
    • the app user is directed to the potentially troubling tweets for review

    The charity behind the app has now added the ability to opt-out of the above. Of course there's nothing to prevent another app / service to do all of the above b

    • "ability to opt-out"

      For who? For me the twitter user whose friend thinks I need 'monitoring'? So now I have to know about and proactively opt out of any and all potential monitoring apps?

      Oh wait...I already do that. By not using twitter.

      • Oh wait...I already do that. By not using twitter.

        Exactly. That's why this is not a privacy problem.

        • My point was, if I was a Twitter user, why/how am I supposed to opt-put of some random app? Indeed ALL random apps.
          If some follower of mine decides to use this, why do *I* need to opt out? Or even know about this thing.
        • Oh, and your sig is particularly poignant here.

          "JAGga.me ----> Producing video games addressing emotional health and wellness issues affecting teens."

  • The privacy thing is utterly overblown, it is a tool for users to pick out interesting bits of the tweet streams they have access to, on criteria in this instance relating to depression. It could equally look for other sentiments and trends, analysing data available to you isn't a violation of anything in particular. It also isn't a particularly good idea. I know right now who would trigger it off for me. It would keep bleeping at several people I follow who are chronically depressed and possibly suicidal,

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