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Apple And Tesla Among Tech Giants Being Sued Over The Deaths And Injuries Of Child Cobalt Miners In DRC
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 7, 2022

April 7, 2022

https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2019/12/17/apple-and-tesla-among-t… Apple And Tesla Among Tech Giants Being Sued Over The Deaths And Injuries Of Child Cobalt Miners In DRC Isabel Togoho <https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/> (messaggio spedito in movimento - scusate la brevità e gli eventuali refusi)

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Europe Is Building a Huge International Facial Recognition System | WIRED
by Alberto Cammozzo April 7, 2022

April 7, 2022

<https://www.wired.com/story/europe-police-facial-recognition-prum/> Lawmakers advance proposals to let police forces across the EU link their photo databases—which include millions of pictures of people’s faces. For the past 15 years, police forces searching for criminals in Europe have been able to share fingerprints, DNA data, and details of vehicle owners with each other. If officials in France suspect someone they are looking for is in Spain, they can ask Spanish authorities to check fingerprints against their database. Now European lawmakers are set to include millions of photos of people’s faces in this system—and allow facial recognition to be used on an unprecedented scale. The expansion of facial recognition across Europe is included in wider plans to “modernize” policing across the continent, and it comes under the Prüm II data-sharing proposals. The details were first announced in December, but criticism from European data regulators has gotten louder in recent weeks, as the full impact of the plans have been understood. “What you are creating is the most extensive biometric surveillance infrastructure that I think we will ever have seen in the world,” says Ella Jakubowska, a policy adviser at the civil rights NGO European Digital Rights (EDRi). Documents obtained by EDRi under freedom of information laws and shared with WIRED reveal how nations pushed for facial recognition to be included in the international policing agreement. The first iteration of Prüm was signed by seven European countries—Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Austria—back in 2005 and allows nations to share data to tackle international crime. Since Prüm was introduced, take-up by Europe's 27 countries has been mixed. Prüm II plans to significantly expand the amount of information that can be shared, potentially including photos and information from driving licenses. The proposals from the European Commission also say police will have greater “automated” access to information that’s shared. Lawmakers say this means police across Europe will be able to cooperate closely, and the European law enforcement agency Europol will have a “stronger role.” The inclusion of facial images and the ability to run facial recognition algorithms against them are among the biggest planned changes in Prüm II. Facial recognition technology has faced significant pushback in recent years as police forces have increasingly adopted it, and it has misidentified people and derailed lives. Dozens of cities in the US have gone as far as banning police forces from using the technology. The EU is debating a ban on the police use of facial recognition in public places as part of its AI Act. However, Prüm II allows the use of retrospective facial recognition. This means police forces can compare still images from CCTV cameras, photos from social media, or those on a victim’s phone against mug shots held on a police database. The technology is different from live facial recognition systems, which are often connected to cameras in public spaces; these have faced the most criticism. The European proposals allow a nation to compare a photo against the databases of other countries and find out if there are matches—essentially creating one of the largest facial recognition systems in existence. One document obtained by EDRi says the number of potential matches could range from between 10 and 100 faces, although this figure needs to be finalized by politicians. A European Commission spokesperson says that a human will review the potential matches and decide if any of them are correct, before any further action is taken. “In a significant number of cases, a facial image of a suspect is available,” France’s interior minister said in the documents. It claimed to have solved burglary and child sexual abuse cases using its facial recongition system. The Prüm II documents, dated from April 2021, when the plans were first being discussed, show the huge number of face photos that countries hold. Hungary has 30 million photos, Italy 17 million, France 6 million, and Germany 5.5 million, the documents show. These images can include suspects, those convicted of crimes, asylum seekers, and “unidentified dead bodies,” and they come from multiple sources in each country. Jakubowska says that while criticism of facial recognition systems has mostly focused on real-time systems, those that identify people at a later date are still problematic. “When you are applying facial recognition to footage or images retrospectively, sometimes the harms can be even greater, because of the capacity to look back at, say, a protest from three years ago, or to see who I met five years ago, because I'm now a political opponent,” she says. “Only facial images of suspects or convicted criminals can be exchanged,” the European Commission spokesperson says, citing a guide on how the system will work. “There will be no matching of facial images to the general population.” Pictures of people’s faces shouldn’t be combined in one giant central database, the official proposal says, but police forces will be linked together through a “central router.” This router won’t store any data, the European Commission spokesperson says, adding that it will “only act as a message broker” between nations. This decentralized approach makes Prüm II more straightforward: Police wanting to compare fingerprints under the current system must connect to other police forces individually. Under the new infrastructure, countries only need one connection to the central router and it will be easier to “add additional data categories to the system,” the documents obtained by EDRi say. The European data protection superviser (EDPS), who oversees how EU bodies use data under GDPR, has criticized the planned expansion of Prüm, which could take several years. “Automated searching of facial images is not limited only to serious crimes but could be carried out for the prevention, detection, and investigation of any criminal offenses, even a petty one,” Wojciech Wiewiórowski, the EDPS, said in early March. Wiewiórowski said more safeguards should be written into the proposals to make sure people’s privacy rights are protected. The European Commission spokesperson says the body has taken “good note” of the EDPS opinion and the thoughts will be taken into account as the European Parliament and Council discuss the legislation. See What’s Next in Tech With the Fast Forward Newsletter From artificial intelligence and self-driving cars to transformed cities and new startups, sign up for the latest news. During the development of the plans, Slovenia has been one key country pushing for the expansion—including asking for people’s driving license data to be included. Domen Savič, the CEO of Slovenian digital rights group Državljan D, says there are significant concerns about the differences between police databases and who is included. “I haven't heard enough to be convinced that all of this data gathered by individual police forces is sanitized in the same way,'' Savič says. Police databases are often poorly put together. In July 2021, police in the Netherlands deleted 218,000 photos it wrongly included in its facial recognition database. In the UK, more than a thousand young Black men were removed from a “gangs database” in February 2021. “You could have databases that have completely different backgrounds in terms of how this data was collected, where it was sourced, how it was exchanged, and who approved what,” Savič says. Slovenia has already faced similar problems. “And this could lead to misidentification.” One of the biggest problems for Jakubowska is how Prüm II could normalize the use of facial recognition by police forces across Europe. “What really concerns us is how much this Prüm II proposal could incentivize the creation of facial image databases and the application of algorithms to these databases to perform facial recognition,” she says. The EU will pay for the cost of connecting databases to Prüm II, the proposal says, and this includes the cost of creating new national facial images databases. Sixty years after being invented, facial recognition is still just getting started.

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Google magic
by Daniele Imbruglia April 6, 2022

April 6, 2022

"Google has announced the latest in a sequence of upgrades to its popular online learning platform Google Classroom, and it’s all about injecting more artificial intelligence into schools." https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2022/03/17/google-magic/ -- dr. Daniele Imbruglia Ricercatore in Diritto privato Dipartimento di Diritto ed economia delle attività produttive Facoltà di Economia - Università di Roma "La Sapienza" Via del Castro Laurenziano, 9 - 00161 Roma RM https://uniroma1.academia.edu/DanieleImbruglia

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Fwd: Invito tavola rotonda 21 aprile all'Università su protezione dati e transizione digitale presentazione del corso in materia di protezione dei dati personali Università degli Studi di Torino
by Mauro Alovisio April 6, 2022

April 6, 2022

Gent.me/mi ho il piacere di segnalare il prossimo giovedì 21 aprile alle ore 18 presso l'aula Magna del Campus Luigi Einaudi la tavola rotonda ad oggetto:*"La protezione dei dati personali e la transizione digitale: le sfide attuali e future" *con Prof. Francesco Pizzetti, prof. Sergio Foà, tra i relatori la prof. Barbara Gagliardi, avv. laura Marengo (Unioni Industriali), l'avv. Simona Gabbri (ordine avvocati di Torino) , la dott.ssa Paola Zambon (ordine dei commercialisti). Durante la tavola rotonda sarà presentata la * quarta edizione del corso di perfezionamento in materia di protezione dei dati personali dell'Università degli studi di Torino (*direttori prof. Francesco Pizzetti e prof. Sergio Foà). Tra le novità di quest'anno: la transizione digitale, l' Intelligenza artificiale,la sanità digitale, le testimonianze aziendali di DPO di importanti società (FCA, Ferrero) dell' Unione Industriale, un approfondimento su analisi dei rischi e data breach con il Garante per la protezione dei dati personali e un approccio interdisciplinare : *pre-iscrizioni dal 7 al 26 aprile 2022.* Il corso aperto a tutte le lauree si terrà in presenza ed * è stato inserito nei corsi universitari del Protocollo Brunetta per la valorizzazione delle competenze dei dipendenti pubblici con relativo contributo* * Segnalo che è in corso anche l' accreditamento per la formazione obbligatoria degli avvocati. * per informazioni: https://www.giurisprudenza.unito.it/go/dpo Estendete a chi ritenete interessati Grazie per l'attenzione L'occasione è lieta per inviare i più cordiali saluti Mauro Alovisio

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Twitter Edits You
by Alberto Cammozzo April 6, 2022

April 6, 2022

Un po' tecnico. <http://www.kevinmarks.com/twittereditsyou.html> With all the fuss about Twitter’s promised edit button, and how they might design it, we’re missing a disturbing development — Twitter is using its embedded javascript to edit other people's sites. When a site embeds a tweet like this: we are working on an edit button — Twitter (@Twitter) April 1, 2022 <https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1509951255388504066?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> the code looks like this: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p lang="en" dir="ltr">we are working on an edit button</p> — Twitter (@Twitter) <a href="https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1509951255388504066?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2022</a> </blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> That |widgets.js| script looks for blockquotes with the |class="twitter-tweet"| on, and replaces them with a Twitter branded iframe to confirm that it is a real tweet (and encourage you to click through to Twitter). [...] Until recently, if the tweet or account had been deleted, then Twitter would leave the blockquote alone, so the embedded text would still show, but without Twitter’s validation. [...] PS: Musk nel board mi ha convinto a lasciare Twitter, cosa che meditavo da diverso tempo.

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Smart toilets for monitoring COVID-19 surges: passive diagnostics and public health | npj Digital Medicine
by Alberto Cammozzo April 6, 2022

April 6, 2022

<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00582-0> [...] As shown in Fig. 1 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00582-0#Fig1>, a public health strategy is proposed for infectious disease surveillance using toilets fitted with a stool collection and analysis system that performs fully automated and passive diagnostics. A smart toilet platform, namely “_Co_rona_v_irus: _I_ntegrated _D_iagnostic (COV-ID) toilet” would consist of a mountable bidet-style attachment equipped with modules for automated faecal sample collection and processing, faecal RNA isolation and detection with in situ ultrafast nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT), and effective sanitisation methods. COV-ID toilets can be installed in highly trafficked, public areas ranging from shopping malls and sporting arenas to schools and hospitals. While a person sits down to use the toilet, they can scan a Quick Response (QR) code to consent to COVID-19 stool testing. If permitted, the COV-ID toilet will detect defecation events and automatically sample and test the stool for COVID-19. Test results are reported in minutes—to the individual’s smartphone, if desired, and to an anonymized tracing system. The individual with a positive result will be provided with information to determine quarantine protocols and further confirmatory testing. The tracing system can be linked to the existing Bluetooth^® contact tracing systems implemented by Apple^12 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00582-0#ref-CR12> and Google^13 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00582-0#ref-CR13> for COVID-19 exposure notifications. A network of COV-ID toilets could also augment and refine maps of COVID-19 prevalence, and provide more real-time information to guide decisions about travel. The same testing principles can also be applied to other infectious diseases with faecal–oral transmission, such as norovirus or bacteria related to gastroenteritis like Shigella, to help prevent and control outbreaks in real time. The prerequisites for successful deployment of COV-ID toilets in diverse communities are: (1) A fast turn-around time, ideally within 15 min from sample-to-answer. In this regard, ultrafast NAAT are preferred to shortening the turn-around time of conventional NAAT methods (e.g. PCR) from a couple of hours down to 8–15 min^14 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00582-0#ref-CR14>,15 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00582-0#ref-CR15>,16 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00582-0#ref-CR16>,17 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00582-0#ref-CR17> . In addition, multiplexed and parallel runs of COVID-19 detection in the system can ensure immediate toilet availability to other users. (2) Full automation from sample acquisition to signal generation must be performed in the background in order not to interfere with normal human behaviour on the toilet. This automation will maintain high user compliance and lower human intervention. (3) To provide a hygienic environment and eliminate cross-contamination between tests, rigorous sanitation/sterilisation (e.g. ultraviolet steriliser) has to be performed on the analytical devices and on the surface of the toilet. (4) As an Internet of Things (IoT) device, the COV-ID toilet should be securely connected to a centralised network, which enables active communication with users and intra-network surveillance. (5) While the user may elect to provide identifying information such as a cell phone number in order to receive their own test results, the results must be de-identified prior to upload to the tracing network in order to maintain the user’s privacy. Other important biological/clinical data can be obtained by the COV-ID toilet. Body temperature and oxygen saturation, which are known to be critical parameters of COVID-19 infection, can be obtained by integrating temperature and photoplethysmography sensors into the toilet seat^18 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00582-0#ref-CR18> . Stool morphology analysis can identify diarrhoea, which is a potential symptom of COVID-19. This feature can be easily adopted from a previous smart toilet study with deep learning and computer vision^19 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00582-0#ref-CR19>,20 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00582-0#ref-CR20> . By collecting other supplementary data (temperature, oxygen saturation, and stool morphology) in tandem with COVID-19 stool testing, the COV-ID toilet may enable comprehensive profiling of COVID-19 infection. [...]

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Corte Ue: il diritto dell’Unione osta alla conservazione generalizzata e indifferenziata, a titolo preventivo, dei dati di traffico e localizzazione nelle comunicazioni elettroniche, per la lotta ai reati gravi (Sent C-140/20)
by Marco Ciurcina April 6, 2022

April 6, 2022

La Corte conferma che il diritto dell’Unione osta alla conservazione generalizzata e indifferenziata, per finalità di lotta ai reati gravi, dei dati relativi al traffico e dei dati relativi all’ubicazione riguardanti le comunicazioni elettroniche Un giudice nazionale non può limitare nel tempo gli effetti della declaratoria d’invalidità di una normativa nazionale che prevede tale conservazione (Sentenza nella causa C-140/20 Commissioner of the Garda Síochána e a.) https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2022-04/ cp220058it.pdf

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"Leaked: New Amazon Worker Chat App Would Ban Words Like “Union,” “Restrooms,” “Pay Raise,” and “Plantation”"
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 5, 2022

April 5, 2022

*Leaked: New Amazon Worker Chat App Would Ban Words Like “Union,” “Restrooms,” “Pay Raise,” and “Plantation”** * /Also: “Grievance,” “slave labor,” “This is dumb,” “living wage,” “diversity,” “vaccine,” and others.// / Ken Klippenstein April 4 2022, 9:27 p.m. _Amazon will block_ and flag employee posts on a planned internal messaging app that contain keywords pertaining to labor unions, according to internal company documents reviewed by The Intercept. An automatic word monitor would also block a variety of terms that could represent potential critiques of Amazon’s working conditions, like “slave labor,” “prison,” and “plantation,” as well as “restrooms” — presumably related to reports of Amazon employees relieving themselves in bottles <https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottles-union/> to meet punishing quotas. “Our teams are always thinking about new ways to help employees engage with each other,” said Amazon spokesperson Barbara M. Agrait. “This particular program has not been approved yet and may change significantly or even never launch at all.” In November 2021, Amazon convened a high-level meeting in which top executives discussed plans to create an internal social media program that would let employees recognize co-workers’ performance with posts called “Shout-Outs,” according to a source with direct knowledge. [...] continua qui: https://theintercept.com/2022/04/04/amazon-union-living-wage-restrooms-chat…

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150° Mercoledì di Nexa | 13 Aprile 2022 | Modalità Telematica
by Nexa Media April 5, 2022

April 5, 2022

Gentilissimi, vi segnaliamo che il 150° Mercoledì di Nexa, /*"Il concetto di mente estesa"*/, con ospite *Alfredo Paternoster* (Università degli Studi di Bergamo), si svolgerà *mercoledì 13 aprile, dalle ore 18.00 alle ore 20.00*, in modalità telematica, utilizzando la piattaforma di videoconferenza BigBlueButton. Il Prof. Paternoster presenterà il modello della mente estesa (MME), introducendo il concetto all'interno del contesto in cui è stato proposto, per discutere quindi alcuni degli argomenti a favore e contro. Concluderà, infine, esponendo un moderato scetticismo sulla cogenza di tale nozione, pur riconoscendone la rilevanza epistemologica. Sarà possibile partecipare al seminario connettendosi al seguente indirizzo: https://didattica.polito.it/VClass/NexaEvent Di seguito maggiori dettagli sull'incontro: Nexa Center for Internet and Society Newsletter Se non visualizzi correttamente questo messaggio clicca qui <https://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-150> NEXA 150° Mercoledì di Nexa Mercoledì 13 aprile 2022, ore 18.00 - 20.00 Politecnico di Torino https://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-150 Il concetto di mente estesa Speaker Prof. Alfredo Paternoster (Università di Bergamo) This event will be webcast live: https://nexa.polito.it/nexa-hangout-on-air L'INCONTRO SI SVOLGERÀ IN MODALITÀ TELEMATICA UTILIZZANDO IL SOFTWARE DI CONFERENCE CALL *BIGBLUEBUTTON*. Per partecipare all'incontro: https://didattica.polito.it/VClass/NexaEvent Il cosiddetto *modello della mente estesa (MME)*, introdotto da Andy Clark e David Chalmers in un breve articolo del 1998, è una delle idee recenti più dirompenti per la riflessione sulla natura della mente e su come possiamo studiarla, e ha sollevato un dibattito molto acceso, travalicando l’ambito filosofico. Per un verso l’idea di mente estesa scardina una intuizione di origine cartesiana ben radicata nel senso comune, quella per cui la mente coincide con l’interiorità; per l’altro MME sembra essere molto in sintonia con gli sviluppi più recenti delle *scienze cognitive* e dell’*intelligenza artificiale* e con l’idea di *coevoluzione tra biologia e cultura*. In questa presentazione si introdurrà quindi il concetto di mente estesa, chiarendo il contesto in cui è stata proposta, e verranno discussi alcuni degli argomenti a favore e contro. Si concluderà esponendo un moderato scetticismo sulla cogenza di tale nozione, riconoscendone tuttavia la rilevanza epistemologica. BIOGRAFIA - e informazioni supplementari [mercoledì150] *Alfredo PATERNOSTER* è professore ordinario di Filosofia e Teoria dei linguaggi nell’Università di Bergamo, dove insegna filosofia del linguaggio e filosofia della mente e delle scienze cognitive. I suoi interessi di ricerca vertono principalmente sulla comprensione linguistica, la percezione, la coscienza, i fondamenti epistemologici delle scienze cognitive. Le sue monografie più recenti sono /“Comprendere il linguaggio”/, con Fabrizio Calzavarini (Bologna 2020), e /“The Self and its Defences”/, con Michele Di Francesco e Massimo Marraffa (London 2017). *Letture consigliate e link utili:* * Clark A., Chalmers D., /The Extended Mind/, “Analysis”, 1998, disponibile qui <https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/concepts/clark.html> * Di Francesco M., Piredda G., /La mente estesa. Un bilancio critico/, in “Sistemi intelligenti”, 1/2012 * Legrenzi P., Milano G., /Quanto si estende e protende la mente umana? Poco e molto/, in “Sistemi intelligenti”, 1/2012 * Paglieri F., /Estendere la volontà: si può fare?/, in “Sistemi intelligenti”, 1/2012 Che cosa sono il Centro Nexa e i cicli di incontri “Mercoledì di Nexa” e “Nexa Lunch Seminar” <https://www.facebook.com/nexa.center/> <https://twitter.com/nexacenter> <https://www.youtube.com/user/NexaCenter> <https://www.instagram.com/nexa_center/> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/3054864/admin/> #UNIBG <https://twitter.com/UniBergamo> #nexawednesday <https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nexawednesday&src=typd> Il Centro Nexa su Internet & Società del Politecnico di Torino (Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica) dal 2006 è un centro di ricerca indipendente e interdisciplinare che, in collaborazione con l'Università di Torino, studia Internet (e più in generale le Tecnologie digitali) e i suoi rapporti con la società. Maggiori informazioni all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/about. Durante i “*Mercoledì di Nexa*”, che si tengono *ogni 2° mercoledì del mese* alle *ore 18 in punto*, il Centro Nexa su Internet e Società apre le sue porte non solo agli esperti e a tutti coloro i quali lavorano con Internet, ma anche a semplici appassionati e cittadini. Il ciclo di incontri intende approfondire, con un linguaggio preciso ma accessibile, i temi legati alla Rete: motori di ricerca, Creative Commons, social networks, open source/software libero, neutralità della rete, libertà di espressione, privacy, file sharing, big e open data, smart cities e molto altro. Al centro di quasi tutti gli incontri un ospite pronto a dialogare con i direttori del Centro Nexa, il Prof. Juan Carlos De Martin del Politecnico di Torino e il Prof. Marco Ricolfi dell'Università di Torino, nonché lo staff e i Fellows del Centro Nexa. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa, incluso un elenco di tutti i “Mercoledì” passati, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi. Si segnala inoltre che dal maggio 2012 *ogni 4° mercoledì* del mese *dalle ore 13 alle ore 14* il Centro Nexa organizza anche i "*Nexa Lunch Seminar*". Una lista di tutti i “Lunch Seminar” passati è disponibile all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/lunch-seminars. See our events calendar <http://nexa.polito.it/events> if you're curious about future luncheons, discussions, lectures, and conferences not listed in this email. Our events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Responsabile Comunicazione Centro Nexa su Internet & Società: *Anita Botta*, tel: +39 011 090 7219, Mob: +39 347 131 3903, anita.botta(a)polito.it. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa e i Nexa Lunch Seminar, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/events. Weekly Events Newsletter. Sign up <http://nexa.polito.it/mailing-lists> to receive this newsletter if this email was forwarded to you. To manage your subscription preferences, please click here <https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa>. Connect & get involved: Jobs, internships, and more <http://nexa.polito.it/get-involved>. Cordiali saluti, -- Anita Botta Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino – DAUIN Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino web: https://nexa.polito.it/ mail: anita.botta(a)polito.it tel: 011 090 7219

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How can US law enforcement agencies access your data? Let’s count the ways | Apple | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo April 5, 2022

April 5, 2022

<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/04/us-law-enforcement-agenc…> A brazen hack that exposed consumer data collected by Apple and the Facebook-parent company Meta has raised fresh questions about how secure our data is in the hands of tech companies and how easily law enforcement can get hold of the information big tech collects. It was revealed last week that hackers obtained the information of some Apple and Meta users by forging an emergency legal request, one of several mechanisms by which law enforcement agencies can request or demand that tech companies hand over data such as location and subscriber information. Facebook demands LAPD end social media surveillance and use of fake accounts Lawmakers and privacy advocates argued the forgery was a warning sign that the system is in need of reform. “No one wants tech companies to refuse legitimate emergency requests,” but the current system has “clear weaknesses”, Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement following the hack. A review of the myriad ways tech companies share consumer data with law enforcement agencies reveals that it’s often fairly straightforward for such bodies to get their hands on consumer data. “[Your data is] pretty much all available to the government in one form or another,” said Jennifer Lynch, the surveillance litigation director at the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “One of the real challenges with technology these days is that it is next to impossible to figure out exactly all the data that companies are collecting on us and to exert any kind of control over what happens to that data,” added Lynch. An emergency legal request, like the one the hackers forged, for instance, doesn’t require a subpoena or warrant, unlike many other legal requests. It’s supposed to be reserved for exceptional situations: Apple considers legal requests an “emergency” if “it relates to circumstance(s) involving imminent and serious threat(s) to: 1) the life/safety of individual(s); 2) the security of a State; 3) the security of critical infrastructure/installation”. But, as the hackers have shown, it can be easily exploited. Apple and Meta did not respond to a request for comment. Here are some of the main ways law enforcement can get hold of your data. Accessing your device Perhaps the most obvious way law enforcement can get your data is by accessing your physical device. Police can subpoena your device or get a search warrant to go through your phones. If your phone is locked or you only use encrypted messaging apps, police can use mobile device forensic tools to break the encryption or bypass your lock screens if they are armed with a warrant. In February 2021, a US appeals court ruled that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can freely search your devices without a warrant at the borders. The move created “a massive loophole to target anyone traveling into or out of the US”, said Albert Fox Cahn, the founder of the privacy advocacy firm Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. Law enforcement requests If you scan privacy policies of your most used apps you’ll probably find a clause or two that says something along the lines of “we don’t share your user data ever unless it’s in response to a law enforcement request”. That means police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the FBI and other law enforcement agencies can get your user data directly from tech companies through various forms of legal requests, without having to search your device. Sometimes, they can get it just by asking for it. Google, for example, received more than 39,000 requests for user information between July and December 2020, according to the company’s most recent transparency report. Google handed over user info in response to more than 80% of those requests, affecting the accounts of more than 89,000 users. In many cases these requests come with gag orders, meaning the company cannot notify users that their information has been requested for six months or more. Sometimes it will be years before a user finds out their information has been handed over to law enforcement. There are a handful of different types of law enforcement requests, some more sweeping than others and some carrying more legal weight. Three types of legal requests in particular have recently sparked concern among activists and experts: geofence warrants, keyword search warrants and administrative subpoenas. A keyword search warrant allows law enforcement to access the information of anyone who searched for certain terms or keywords within a certain time period. A geofence warrant allows law enforcement agencies to seek the device information of all the users who were at a certain place at a certain time. Google, the only company that currently discloses the number of geofence warrants it receives, said it fielded a little under 3,000 in the last quarter of 2020. Both types of warrants, privacy experts say, are over-broad and thus violate the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches. While many warrants typically seek the information of a single person or group of people who are suspected of a crime, geofence and keyword search warrants work backwards and cast a wide net hoping to narrow down a list of suspects. It’s not unlike cell-tower dumps, for which law enforcement agencies ask cellphone companies for the information of all people who were connected to a cell tower in the vicinity of a crime scene at the time the crime was suspected to have occurred. A federal judge in Virginia recently ruled that local authorities violated the constitution when using a geofence warrant to investigate a 2019 robbery, setting a precedent that attorneys representing people caught up in these types of searches could use to receive remedies for being falsely suspected or accused of a crime. Administrative subpoenas carry less legal weight than other requests: law enforcement agencies don’t need a judge to sign off on them but they also aren’t self-enforcing. The only way the agencies can force a company to hand over the data demanded in the request is by taking them to court after they refuse to comply. Still, companies will often comply with the request even though it is not a court-ordered subpoena. Some experts have expressed concern of the use of this type of request by Ice, which has requested user data from tech companies like Google, fearing the agency is using them to expand its surveillance on US citizens. An Ice official previously said the agency does not often send administrative subpoenas to tech companies for non-criminal purposes. In a press release, Ice said it “uses statutorily-authorized immigration subpoenas to obtain information as part of investigations regarding potential removable aliens”. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Data brokers There is an entire industry of companies and firms that buy and sell your data for a profit. The shadowy network of data brokers operates fairly under the radar but often provides easy access to user data such as your location and purchase history to other entities, including law enforcement. Data brokers can collect your personal data from a handful of different sources, such as your social media profiles, public records and other commercial sources or companies. Some data brokers integrate directly into apps to hoover up information like location and purchase history. These brokers, which can include some telecommunications companies and credit reporting agencies, then sell that raw data, or inferences and analysis based on that data,to other companies and government agencies. It’s not always clear whether a data broker has collected or sold your information. In fact, recently data broker X Mode, whose customers include military contractors, was exposed for buying location data from the Muslim prayer app Muslim Pro without the knowledge of users of the app. Surveillance tech companies Law enforcement agencies also contract with surveillance tech companies like Clearview AI and Voyager, which scrape your information from the internet and social media and feed it into their own algorithms. Consumer tech companies you may interact with on a daily basis also provide services to police. Amazon’s smart doorbell Ring, for instance, gives some police special access to their Neighbors social network and makes it easy for the police to monitor and request Ring footage from consumers. Contracts between tech companies and law enforcement agencies have become more frequent as the tech industry seeks out new avenues of growth, experts say. Because many of the spaces tech is already in have clear dominant players, law enforcement contracts have become an appealing growth strategy because of the seemingly endless supply of funding for agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and local police. Data-sharing There’s also quite a bit of inter-agency data sharing happening at the local, state and federal levels of government. While it might seem unsurprising that law enforcement agencies share information, you might be surprised to learn that an entity like the DMV shares information with agencies like Ice. That data-sharing is made easier by services from companies like Palantir, which creates a centralized network of digital records which include “chronic offenders” and other people deemed of interest that can be easily accessed by the company’s law enforcement partners at all levels – from many local police departments to the FBI.

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