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Spanish Football League Defends Phone 'Spying' (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Spanish football league La Liga has defended the privacy policy of its app after admitting it was accessing the microphone and GPS of Android users. It said it had been trying to track down venues illegally broadcasting matches, by matching audio data and phone location. The app, downloaded more than 10 million times on the Google Play Store, has been criticised by fans. La Liga said it wanted to "protect clubs and their fans from fraud." The broadcasting of football matches in public places without a paid licence cost the game an estimated 150 million euros ($177m) a year, it said. The new function was enabled on Friday, 8 June.
I love when people pretend that the full, purchase price of "pirated" material is what they "lost" due to piracy, as if every single person WOULD have paid, and paid full price, if they couldn't "pirate" it. Sure, you can make whatever argument you like about the importance of paying creators, intellectual property rights, and so on, but the idea that every single person who watched or listened WOULD have paid, and COULD have, had "piracy" not been an option is absurd. A better estimate might be the same proportion of the general population that paid, as a percentage of the total. If 25% of the people paid to watch something, it's a fair guess that the loses due to those who watched (or listened, or read, or played, etc.,) amount to that same percent of the total who watched, so if out of 100 million people, 25 million paid, and 1 million people watched but didn't pay, they didn't lose 1 million times whatever they would have paid, they MAYBE lost about 250,000 times that.
Unless of course, MOST people watched or listened, etc., and didn't pay, in which case, sure... that might throw off the numbers. Because SURELY there are plenty who would be willing to watch if it were free, (and when they can find a way to watch for free, they do,) but who wouldn't PAY to watch, and if they couldn't watch for free, they simply wouldn't watch. But the people complaining about this are almost certainly acting as if they can safely operate on the assumption that ALL the people who watched for free, WOULD have paid, to inflate the numbers to try to wring every last penny or... Europenny, or whatever, in this case, because like any other for-profit business, they don't care about anything but the money, which on balance, is fine, I suppose, but when they and their owners have millions and billions of Eurodollars or whatever, it's hard to muster a lot of sympathy when a group of poors huddles over a single radio or TV, and watch without "paying" for it. The legalistic interpretation that leaves no room for anything but market forces and uses political power and state violence to enforce rules that benefit them is not really something I can cheer for.
This may have been asked before, but isn't this a form of an illegal wiretap? I do not think an EULA would cover domestic or international spying by a corporation even with support of police.
Huge privacy violation if nothing else. With the EU's strict privacy laws, if listening in on your users randomly is not illegal, it sure ought to be. I hope La Liga gets punished where it hurts, with massive fines.
This really isn't OK. I don't like apps like Facebook, but what La Liga is doing listening in on a microphone to me is a way worse violation of privacy. I hope La Liga gets kicked in the nuts over this, make an example of them.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I hope La Liga gets kicked in the nuts over this, make an example of them.
You had me until right there.
NO.
Applying the law differently to particular, usually more financially liable, parties in order to "make an example of them" only perverts justice. If the law does not scare violators, strengthen the law.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Well, nothing to worry about except identity theft, fraud, burglary, car theft, extortion, the physical safety of yourself and your family, misinterpretation of innocent data by governments, employers, insurers and other financial services...
But sure, nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Right. Good luck with that.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Just don't do illegal shit and you have nothing to worry about.
If you're inside a venue that does "illegal shit", you are not liable, and you are not "doing illegal shit". Yet, you justify the invasion of privacy as "nothing to worry about". You, good sir, are a moron.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
problem solved.
It is not that simple. You will not install it if you don't want to be spied. But if someone next to you do have that app installed in their phone, its microphone will record you anyway.
Data plan on biggest Spanish carrier is 15 Euro for 1.5 GB. Or 1 Euro per 100 MB. That's probably about the size of the sound samples which would need to be transmitted back each month.
(10 million devices) * (1 Euro/mo) * (12 months/year) = 120 million Euros a year.
So the value of the data bandwidth they stole to do this monitoring is probably within an order of magnitude of the purported losses due to piracy. If they want to pay you to run this app to help their anti-piracy monitoring, that's not a problem. But secretly eavesdropping and stealing bandwidth is unethical if not downright illegal.
Surely this must violate the terms of the European GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). I can't see it being legal to harvest personal information to speculatively trawl through for whatever ends.
Android Permissions says use Microphone.
The EULA even says:
3. USE OF THE MICROPHONE
LaLiga will enable the microphone of your device, solely if you accept by checking the box enabled for this purpose or the pop-up window emerging in the APP, to find out if you are watching football matches. This information shall be employed to detect fraud in unauthorized public establishments.
4. USE OF GEO-POSITIONING
LaLiga can be aware of your location using geo-positioning on your mobile device only if you agree to the box enabled for this purpose, and the window emerging on the APP. This information shall be used to guide you to the stadium and to detect fraud in unauthorized public establishments.
Proves that people just click "OK".