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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.

7 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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      It actually states that it only looks at public tweets.

    2. 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?

    3. Re:Um by julesh · · Score: 4, Informative

      Right. Also: not illegal. The Samaritans are processing the data on behalf of the registered users of their app, not for themselves. The users determine what data is to be processed, and request the specific way in which it will be processed. Therefore, under the definitions from the Data Protection Act, the user is the data controller ("a person who (either alone or jointly or in common with other persons) determines the purposes for which and the manner in which any personal data are, or are to be, processed"). The Samaritans are acting as a data processor ("any person who processes the data on behalf of the data controller").

      The act is quite clear throughout that it is the data contr-oller[1], not the data processor, who must comply with the various restrictions as to how data may be used. The users, as long as they are using the app only for the purposes for which The Samaritans describe it as having been designed, are exempt from the provisions of the Data Protection Act, because the data is "processed by an individual only for the purposes of that individual's personal, family or household affairs".

      However, even if this were not the case, here is the principle that TFA interprets as stating that the processing performed should not be permitted: "Personal data shall not be processed unless at least one of the conditions in Schedule 2 is met, and in the case of sensitive personal data, at least one of the conditions in Schedule 3 is also met."

      Unfortunately for this argument, schedule 2 allows processing that is "necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject," which appears to me to be the case here. And, while the data in question is considered sensitive, schedule 3 allows processing which "is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or another person, in a case where the data controller cannot reasonably be expected to obtain the consent of the data subject", which also appears to me to be true. It also allows processing of data that "has been made public as a result of steps deliberately taken by the data subject."

      So, even were we to hold that The Samaritans are the data controller for the data used by the app, it seems they are entitled to perform this processing.

      [1] It seems that slashdot believes the data protection act to be lame, and won't let me post accurate quotes from it. It appears especially to dislike the word that starts "cont" and ends "roller" for some reason I don't quite understand, but unfortunately that word is used very frequently in the text, so I can't really avoid it.

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

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

  3. 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...

  4. Re:I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself by davester666 · · Score: 3, Funny

    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?

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