… Amazon and Google, the leading sellers of such devices, say the assistants record and process audio only after users trigger them by pushing a button or uttering a phrase like “Hey, Alexa” or “O.K., Google.” But each company has filed patent applications, many of them still under consideration, that […] Read more »
How people feel about what companies do with their data is just as important as what they know about it
It’s been an exciting week for those of us interested in what companies do with people’s data. The revelation that Cambridge Analytica got its hands on 50 million people’s Facebook data and that Facebook, at least until 2015, made this possible, enabling apps to access not only user data but […] Read more »
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: let this be the high-water mark for impunity
The last few days represent more than just the most recent and inevitable controversy emanating from Facebook’s beleaguered offices. The scandal over Cambridge Analytica’s participation in electoral manipulation and gross breaches of privacy have resonated more widely with users than the earlier allegations about fake news and Russian connections. On […] Read more »
How Democracy Can Survive Big Data
Only a few years ago, the idea that for-profit companies and foreign agents could use powerful data technologies to disrupt American democracy would have seemed laughable to most, a plotline from a Cold War espionage movie. … The heart of Cambridge Analytica’s power is an enormous information warehouse — as […] Read more »
Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
In 2014, Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling company that would later provide services for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, reached out with a request on Amazon’s “Mechanical Turk” platform, an online marketplace where people around the world contract with others to perform various tasks. Cambridge Analytica was looking for people who […] Read more »
Why Democrats And Republicans Did A Sudden 180 On The FBI
President Trump is weighing allowing the release of the second of two memos addressing allegations of improper conduct by the FBI. The latest classified memo, drafted by Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, allegedly defends the agency in a rebuttal to a memo that was […] Read more »