Charity Promotes Covert Surveillance App For Suicide Prevention

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 30, 2014 @10:32AM 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.

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Um by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-30 10:36 · 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