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Charity Promotes Covert Surveillance App For Suicide Prevention

Posted by samzenpus on 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.

5 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:Um by julesh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

  2. No, it's not illegal. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    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.

  3. Um... by Threni · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  4. Monitors those you follow not those who follow you by jratcliffe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...