Raw Meat Large scale automation of decision making systems integrated with operational systems, now commonly called “AI”, has been in use for several years now on the servers of Big Tech, and the effects are now being felt everywhere. Disruptions of Industries and Governments are occurring by the encroachment of integrated decision making systems. Amazon Cloud Services for example. Assumptions from even 1 or 2 years ago are no longer true.

There is a temptation to single out Apple as the worst violator, because Apple has messaged effectively that it was more private and secure. Apple users should not feel singled out. Google, and all the Tech Giants are guilty of exactly the same, just to varying degrees. Perhaps Google should be given a point for explicitly stating that they co-own all your content.

Emerging Patterns

  1. Software systems are growing beyond the ability of the creators to understand them
  2. Critical decision making has been handed off to software throughout industry and government. It’s so cheap, it’s irresistible.
  3. Governments are outsourcing responsibility to cheap all-in-one solutions. Reduces the need for personnel. You only need policy makers and people running a ticket system help desk.
  4. Privacy no longer exists online.

Vulnerabilities in mobile apps exposed Hyundai and Genesis car models to remote attacks that allowed unlocking and starting the vehicles.

Lawsuit accuses Apple of violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act. The problem was spotted by independent researchers, who found that the Apple App Store sends the company exhaustive information about nearly everything a user does in the app, despite the privacy setting “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether”. The researchers ran additional tests on other iPhone apps, including Apple Music, Apple TV, Books, and Stocks and found that the problem persists across most of Apple’s suite of built-in iPhone apps.

Apple Limits iPhone File-Sharing Tool Used for Protests in China Apple puts 10-minute cap on receiving files in AirDrop. This change is made in China, but will eventually expand globally. [Bloomberg, paywalled]

TikTok claims it doesn’t geo locate individual people. That’s great, right? What they didn’t say was that the parent company ByteDance, takes the data and can geo locate specific individuals. TikTok Parent ByteDance Planned To Use TikTok To Monitor The Physical Location Of Specific American Citizens. Other media reporting on this issue: Buzzfeed, in depth article at The Guardian.

Crypto Bro Loses 94% of his value in 1 day Seriously? How did “they” put a value on his assets? [Coindesk] It is pretty fair to say that cryptocurrency is deeply embedded with social media hype. What is very clear is that very few are redeeming their cryptos for USD or any hard currency. We are seeing a world economic contraction and historically it’s always the most speculative investments that are sold first, so there is significant pressure to sell crypto holdings. Aggressive trading strategies employed by Binance exposed extreme weakness in their competitor. The risk has rippled thoughout the industry triggering a wave of bankruptcies, account freeze policies, and non withdrawal policies. The CEO of Binance is begging for government regulation to protect his estimated fortune.

Apple is very smooth at the game lying while telling the truth. Occupying a dominant market position allows them the luxury of saying “Apple doesn’t share your data”. In March 2022, the App Store offered more than one million gaming apps and 3.79 million non-gaming apps for an approximate total of FIVE MILLION apps. So when you install an app it asks you to give permission to access different aspects of your phone. So for instance, “Allow access to files?”, “Allow access to phonebook?”, etc. If you want the app, you have to Accept. You just gave a third party, the software developer, access to your phone data. So did Apple share your data? No. You did. Apple TOS in legal terms

Uber Want more ads in places you didn’t want to see them? Take Uber.

TikTok FCC Commissioner says US government should ban TikTok.

Privacy breaches, financial malfeasance in the cryptocurrency world, and data malfeasance are now so common that they are reported daily by reputable fact-checked news agencies. In the West we read stories about how China is implementing as Social Credit score and nearly everything you do must be done through WeChat. That’s unthinkable in the West. Unfortunately, it is thinkable in the West, and it appears to be happening under the cover of financial systems. Read the TOS and list of partners of any FinTech company, and a pattern emerges: they all use the same back end services. That centralization of information has informally created the functional equivalent of a Social Credit score, here in the West. This next story about the Washington D.C. municipal government outsourcing decision making to automated systems is a good example.

Washington D.C. outsources critical governmental decisions to automated decision-making systems in areas such as public benefits, healthcare, policing, and housing. As a result, District residents are surveilled, screened, and scored every day. Because of weak government transparency laws, opaque procurement processes, the power and influence of tech vendors, and the decline in local journalism, it has been difficult to uncover the details of how many automated decision-making systems are used in government programs. 

Spyware on Samsung Phones. Google says it has evidence that a commercial surveillance vendor was exploiting three zero-day security vulnerabilities found in in Samsung’s custom-built software, were used together as part of an exploit chain to target Samsung phones running Android. The chained vulnerabilities allow an attacker to gain kernel read and write privileges as the root user, and ultimately expose a device’s data.

New stories unclassified

With privacy breaches occurring daily, it is nearly impossible to keep up. Here are links to late breaking privacy related stories.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/exclusive-least-1-billion-client-funds-missing-failed-crypto-firm-ftx-sources-2022-11-12/

https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/11/10/23450349/amazon-advertising-everywhere-prime-sponsored-products?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Apple Surveillance Lawsuit – 2022.11

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/14/apple-class-action-user-tracking-allegations/

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/21/apple-device-analytics-identifying-user/

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/device-analytics/