Slashdot Mirror
Charity Promotes Covert Surveillance App For Suicide Prevention
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.
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
How is this invading privacy? Don't I already have access to this data? All I am doing is searching it.
The information scraped from public twitter feeds is not in any way "personal information".
The DPA prevents you from collecting personal information for longer than necessary, or for using it for a purpose other than that for which it was provided. It places no limits on what you can do with published information.
This app analyses published information (yes, tweeting is publishing, that's well enough established now) about which the DPA has nothing to say.
There is no privacy concern - if you don't want people analysing what you tweet, don't tweet it!
What an absolute fucking horseshit abortion of a non-story. VoiceOfDoom must be some kind of utter cunt moron to have submitted it.
...says the nerd behind the computer judging other nerds. We know how society behaves. Many of us work with them on a daily basis. This is why we hide in our rooms at night while they are all out drinking.
0/10. Your trolling is just too obvious, and why you're always at -1.
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.
-Styopa
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...
Yes, I think I'll accept the judgement of a random AC on this, rather than that of a long established charity specialising in helping the depressed and suicidal. After all, how the hell would they know what depressed and suicidal people are likely to tweet?
Shyeah.
Perhaps some suffer in silence; perhaps some of those who tweet are attention seekers. Perhaps some who tweet really need help. Including some of the attention seekers. And even if they aren't actually planning to jump off a bridge people don't usually attention seek for no reason.
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 because these are tweets that are still available.
JAGga.me ----> Producing video games addressing emotional health and wellness issues affecting teens.
I respectfully disagree. I'm "truly depressed"(not a Scotsman) and responsible enough to my friends and family to keep them up to date on my mental health. My social media accounts NEVER get any posts from me, but I was having a hard time recently and there were several red flag posts to anyone paying attention. Nobody picked up on those red flags and I got the help I needed by other means. Would this app have helped someone who was more vulnerable than myself? Possibly.^1 -Which is probably why someone grieving from the loss of a loved one found peace in dedicating time and resources in it's creation. I'm sorry they weren't able to save the person they cared about. They were probably wonderful people, and maybe that death will have some meaning as a result of this app.
1) "INB4 trolls try to push me over the edge."
(Seriously: get a hobby! I know misery loves company but have some dignity and self-respect.)
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You'll be lucky if nobody reports you for this. In most 1st world countries posts like yours are all it takes to declare you mentally incompetent and take away your freedom. It's sort of a catch 22 which prevents people who need help from seeking it out for fear of losing control of their lives.
"Fencing around the law", or Gezeirah, is an old concept, and one well understood by the framers of the US constitution. "What might happen" was what they worried about most with regard to rights and freedoms. Protecting them by making government have to jump multiple hurdles before enacting new law was just one way they set this up.
Yes, I think I'll accept the judgement of a random AC on this, rather than that of a long established charity specialising in helping the depressed and suicidal. After all, how the hell would they know what depressed and suicidal people are likely to tweet?
No matter how specialized they are, an app is not going to be able to automatically detect this sort of thing. Even humans have difficulty doing that.
This isn't even at the level of soft science; this is just complete nonsense.
:
Stick around for a couple of days
What a scandal if I died
Yeah I'm gonna kill myself
Get a little headline news
I'd like to see what the papers say
On the state of teenage blues
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 think they're trying it, under the theory of "it's worth a shot, and it might save even a few people". I don't think anyone involved expects perfection.
I don't think it will work, either, but I won't unreasonably malign the motives of the people who are at least trying.
I don't question their motives. But I care more about results than motives.
The author of TFA also forgot about the other scenario involving a malicious user and a false negative. Malicious user calls 911, says the Samaritans' antisuicide app alerted him to a "friend" in need. Victim gets SWATted and malicious user has plausible deniability.
If you're a good Samaritan (pun intended), you live in a world in which there are few malicious actors. As for the rest of us from the Internet, we're just a wee bit more jaded than that. The Samaritans mean well, but they've created an attractive nuisance that is likely to cause more harm than good.
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.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
posting on slashdot is enough to have a person declared mentally incompetent and take away their freedom? who knew?
was this always the case, or only post-beta?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
This is great. I wonder if the same technology could be adapted to flag up other potential subjects such as sexual deviants or religious fanatics. This could be a major contributor to our collective safety.
Where did that happen?
But it's not the authorities doing this, it's a friend that has been alerted.
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, who also live thousands of miles away and don't know me well enough for me to be in any way involved in any kind of productive intervention or words. We are not friends, we are not really acquaintances, I just follow them because they sometimes tweet interesting technical stuff and they seem like interesting people. This might kinda work for people who follow geographically close friends, maybe a school or university where you follow lots of people you actually know by sight, and have a decent chance of seeing. I am just not convinced that many people use twitter like that, and are going to be able to usefully support a friend with a problem that they wouldn't notice some other way.
"If every word you posted on /. were tracked and analyzed"
Um, every word you post on /. IS tracked and analyzed. What do you think Slashdot/Google/etc does with your posts? I am really surprised that people are so ignorant of what goes on in the web.
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
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The chin of course. Balls are gross.
It's so depressing, how nobody has any privacy anymore. Government is spying on us, corporations are spying on us, foreign nations are spying on us. This is no way to live. I mean if one more entity starts spying on me maybe I should just go and kill myself.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways