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Google's Sidewalk Labs Plans To Sell Location Data On Millions of Cellphones (theintercept.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the potential-privacy-concerns dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: Most of the data collected by urban planners is messy, complex, and difficult to represent. It looks nothing like the smooth graphs and clean charts of city life in urban simulator games like "SimCity." A new initiative from Sidewalk Labs, the city-building subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, has set out to change that. The program, known as Replica, offers planning agencies the ability to model an entire city's patterns of movement. Like "SimCity," Replica's "user-friendly" tool deploys statistical simulations to give a comprehensive view of how, when, and where people travel in urban areas. It's an appealing prospect for planners making critical decisions about transportation and land use. In recent months, transportation authorities in Kansas City, Portland, and the Chicago area have signed up to glean its insights. The only catch: They're not completely sure where the data is coming from.

Typical urban planners rely on processes like surveys and trip counters that are often time-consuming, labor-intensive, and outdated. Replica, instead, uses real-time mobile location data. As Nick Bowden of Sidewalk Labs has explained, "Replica provides a full set of baseline travel measures that are very difficult to gather and maintain today, including the total number of people on a highway or local street network, what mode they're using (car, transit, bike, or foot), and their trip purpose (commuting to work, going shopping, heading to school)." To make these measurements, the program gathers and de-identifies the location of cellphone users, which it obtains from unspecified third-party vendors. It then models this anonymized data in simulations -- creating a synthetic population that faithfully replicates a city's real-world patterns but that "obscures the real-world travel habits of individual people," as Bowden told The Intercept. The program comes at a time of growing unease with how tech companies use and share our personal data -- and raises new questions about Google's encroachment on the physical world.

58 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Billions by aglider · · Score: 1

    If they'll do that, it will be for billions.

    --
    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
    1. Re:Billions by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 1

      If they'll do that, it will be for billions.

      One million billion cellphones!

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  2. What else would you expect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This is Google, once they collected your data, they WILL sell it.

    If you believe otherwise, I have a nice bridge to sell you.

    1. Re:What else would you expect? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      TFA makes it sound sinister, but this is exactly what people signed up for. When turn on your new Android phone for the first time it asks if you want to turn on location history and gives you the privacy policy, which states that anonymized data may be used to build tools like this.

      Also note that they don't sell your data, that would make it worthless. They provide a GUI that lets city planners visualize it, similar to how advertisers can select certain interest groups to show ads to but can't access the underlying data used to assign people to those groups. Google isn't about to give away it's USP.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:What else would you expect? by sh00z · · Score: 2

      Precisely. In my mind, this is the cost of Waze providing real-time traffic, construction and police reports. Of course, I turn the app off when I'm not actively using it.

    3. Re:What else would you expect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Also note that they don't sell your data, that would make it worthless."

      I wish people would stop saying stuff like this. The distinction between selling the raw data wholesale and selling access to tools to analyze the raw data is meaningless in terms of privacy.

      Keep in mind that if a project is sufficiently interesting, Google can acquire the company so as to grant the individuals in the project direct access to the raw data.

    4. Re:What else would you expect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Google already gives it away to the US Government.

    5. Re:What else would you expect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      TFA makes it sound sinister, but this is exactly what people signed up for. When turn on your new Android phone for the first time it asks if you want to turn on location history and gives you the privacy policy, which states that anonymized data may be used to build tools like this.

      Yes, well, we've pretty much been hearing that Google is going to collect your location data even if you disable it and say you don't want that.

      So, my bad news for Google employees is my terms of service say that continuing to track me after I opt out means I have the right to stab any and all employees of that company ... hey, they signed up for it, right?

      So, let's do the world a favor, and start stabbing Google employees at every chance we get.

      The closer to the C-level the better, because at this point Google the company has gone full on asshole.

      Remember kids, stab early, and stab often.

  3. Look what we have here by fortythirteen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sidewalk Labs explains that Replica’s data is purchased from telecommunications companies and companies that aggregate mobile location data from different apps.

    But I thought AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile stated that they'll no longer sell location data...

    1. Re: Look what we have here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Even if it did matter it still would not matter because no professional data firm would put PII at risk anyway and would always keep data in the proper hands. Of course, feel free to keep preaching otherwise to yourself if you like wasting your own time in bouts of what ifs.

      Oh, you mean like this data firm?

      "Facebook and Twitter hold a huge amount of users' personal data while LinkedIn includes users' professional data. Data from real-estate site Zillow was also roped in to create these consolidated user profiles. Researchers believe these profiles containing sensitive and personally identifiable information is highly coveted and targeted by hackers."

      Or, perhaps this one? I mean, it's Google, right? They've never had this problem before, right?

      Oh, wait! Maybe you mean this one!

      I believe we, as a society, and as a global people, need to put Google, and others who hoover up and trade in peoples' data in their place. We need to get up off our collective butts, find or create an alternative to the service(s) offered by them. Start with Google. Bankrupt them and bury them. Fast and hard. Perhaps that will teach the others like them to think twice before engaging in this chicanery.

    2. Re:Look what we have here by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      But I thought AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile stated that they'll no longer sell location data...

      Believing a promise from a corporation that isn't legally compelled to comply was your first mistake.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    3. Re:Look what we have here by swillden · · Score: 1

      But I thought AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile stated that they'll no longer sell location data...

      Believing a promise from a corporation that isn't legally compelled to comply was your first mistake.

      Corporations are legally required to abide by any public statement that may affect the share price, which would include statements about how they treat customer data.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  4. Re:Anonymized by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Informative

    Is it anonymized to the point where they can't see who's parking in which driveway or walking into which home? It may be technically "anonymous", but if locations are sufficiently accurate, any POS with a mind to it can "deanonymize" it relatively quickly.

  5. Re:Legal control by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

    Yep, the removal of a random (and varying) length would work nicely for not matching cell phones to actual house/building locations. Problem is that this can still be removed, by seeing how the data change from day to day and/or matching the traffic flow against a map of the road without random error.

  6. Clickbait headline. by quenda · · Score: 1

    Commonsense unsurprising article. Shame on slashdot editor.

  7. Re: Anonymized by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    How do you know what Apple does? It is their data. They might be doing anything with it.

  8. Re:Anonymized by evendiagram · · Score: 4, Informative

    TFA: "Any location data that Sidewalk Labs receives is already de-identified (using methods such as aggregation, differential privacy techniques, or outright removal of unique behaviors)"

    Differential privacy is a rigorous mathematical definition of privacy. In the simplest setting, consider an algorithm that analyzes a dataset and computes statistics about it (such as the data's mean, variance, median, mode, etc.). Such an algorithm is said to be differentially private if by looking at the output, one cannot tell whether any individual's data was included in the original dataset or not. In other words, the guarantee of a differentially private algorithm is that its behavior hardly changes when a single individual joins or leaves the dataset -- anything the algorithm might output on a database containing some individual's information is almost as likely to have come from a database without that individual's information. Most notably, this guarantee holds for any individual and any dataset. Therefore, regardless of how eccentric any single individual's details are, and regardless of the details of anyone else in the database, the guarantee of differential privacy still holds. This gives a formal guarantee that individual-level information about participants in the database is not leaked. https://privacytools.seas.harv...

  9. Re:AOC and Google and how much is enough $? by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

    Indeed -- if it destroys the Big 4 of Tech (Google, Amazon, Apple, and MS), so much the better. The world was better off when they didn't have as much power.

  10. Re:AOC and Google and how much is enough $? by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    Most technocrats are "leftists" until it hurts them in the pocketbook.

  11. This is not news by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Being a Google-controlled company, the news would have been if they had decided NOT to sell that data.

  12. Invasive tracking by sinij · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I hope this practice get squashed under avalanche of privacy-related lawsuits.

    What Evoogle doing with this is in effect asserting that if they can track any electronic device that you have on you, then they can associate it with your identity and sell resulting location data to the highest bidder in any form without you having any say in this. They don't need to actually have any business relationship or agreement with you, it is sufficient that they can fingerprint and identify your electronic device to own your data.

    1. Re:Invasive tracking by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      I hope this practice get squashed under avalanche of privacy-related lawsuits.

      It won't, let me explain why:

      1. You expressly agreed to this data being collected and also being used in far worse ways than this.
      2. No data is being sold, only a aggregated results based on data is being sold, and even then only access to this data rather than the raw dataset itself.
      3. No individuals can be identified from this data so there's no privacy related effects on anyone.
      4. The high bar for privacy in the USA relies on someone being materially impacted. Far worse privacy breaches have gotten nowhere with lawsuits.

      then they can associate it with your identity and sell resulting location data to the highest bidder in any form without you having any say in this.

      5. Except Google has never and is not now selling any information or even provided information that individually identifies a specific person without that being in control of the user.
      6. You have an express say in this through the use of a Google account with an Android device and your location services being active. Furthermore Google provides you complete insight and control over your location data including the ability to delete it from its timeline service.

      They don't need to actually have any business relationship or agreement with you, it is sufficient that they can fingerprint and identify your electronic device to own your data.

      Actually it's quite the opposite. Without the business relationship or agreement with you they would have fuck all location data that makes these services possible which is precisely why they expressly ask you to agree to this service when you first power on your phone.

      What Evoogle doing

      Now the real question is that statistically based on your UID you're an adult, however based on your speech patterns you more closely match those 13 year olds who used to think replacing the S in Microsoft with a $ was somehow "cool". Does your father know you're using his Slashdot account?

    2. Re:Invasive tracking by Can'tNot · · Score: 1

      Google is asserting nothing of the sort. First of all, this can't come from Android data alone: since Android vs. iPhone ownership varies by demographic that would give a skewed misrepresentation of traffic patterns. It probably isn't coming from Android data at all, it's probably coming from the telcos. Congress specifically legalized data collection and sale by ISPs back in March of 2017, and that would be the most complete dataset for doing something like this.

    3. Re:Invasive tracking by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      If you paid for the device before agreeing to the required "contract" then there might not be any "consideration" exchanged by them for signing it, and the only parts that would be valid are the limitations of warranty; and even those wouldn't apply in every state.

      Most of the rest remains to be seen; you only have one party's characterization of what they're doing, but without the specific technical details to do an independent analysis of what they're actually selling.

      Furthermore, cases wouldn't be "privacy" cases, that's a straw man.

      If the details were public, much of what you say might be true; but we don't know. So the claims are clearly false.

    4. Re:Invasive tracking by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      They didn't actually claim that. They gave you a list of things that they might have done, and didn't give you any information about what was actually done, and you selected the item in the list most favorable to the person who made the list, and then you substitute that one thing for the whole list.

      In other places, they make much narrower claims, such as that their system "obscures the real-world travel habits of individual people."

      "Obscuring" your real-world habits is not at all the same as "prove -- mathematically -- that there's no privacy impact."

      And they don't tell you where they get the information, so you have no reason to think that there is any "proof" of anything. There is not proof, there is not even a claim that proof exists!

    5. Re:Invasive tracking by swillden · · Score: 1

      You're also forgetting the fact that the data reported is from a simulation derived from the model built from the de-identiied data, not from the input data. And the most logical implication of the list of techniques used is that all of them are used where appropriate.

      But, yes, I'm assuming competence. When it comes to statisticians at Google, that's an eminently reasonable assumption.

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    6. Re: Invasive tracking by astrofurter · · Score: 1

      "But, yes, I'm assuming competence. When it comes to statisticians at Google, that's an eminently reasonable assumption."

      You're also assuming honesty & good will. When it comes to leadership at Google, that's an eminently unreasonable assumption.

    7. Re:Invasive tracking by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      If you paid for the device before agreeing to the required "contract"

      The location services are optional which provides the device additional functionality beyond it's core and must be expressly activated after reading the license. You paying for a mobile phone is entirely irrelevant.

      Furthermore, cases wouldn't be "privacy" cases, that's a straw man.

      Let me quote you the relevant part of the discussion: "I hope this practice get squashed under avalanche of privacy-related lawsuits."

    8. Re: Invasive tracking by swillden · · Score: 1

      "But, yes, I'm assuming competence. When it comes to statisticians at Google, that's an eminently reasonable assumption."

      You're also assuming honesty & good will. When it comes to leadership at Google, that's an eminently unreasonable assumption.

      (Note: In this reply, I'm assuming that you are interested in an actual conversation about this topic, and are willing to logically evaluate an opposing point of view. If that's an unreasonable assumption, you can just stop reading now. Otherwise, know that I'm also willing to logically and honestly evaluate counter arguments. This topic is personally important to me.)

      It's not unreasonable at all to assume honesty and goodwill, but let's ignore that. Honesty and good will need not be assumed if motivation is sufficient, and Google's motivation here is clearly to thoroughly anonymize the data.

      In general, Google is has no interest in disclosing information about users... indeed Google's most important business model is based completely on not disclosing information about users. I challenge you to find any evidence of Google selling identifiable private data. To anyone. Ever. (No, Google didn't participate in PRISM. Snowden's documents show that the NSA was tapping fiber between Google data centers. Google's response was a crash program to encrypt everything. Google spent millions to avoid leaking to the government, rather than selling to them.) This isn't to say that no one at Google makes mistakes -- there have obviously been some. People are fallible. On the other hand, Google pioneered the transparency report and the notion of making users' data available for downloading and deletion. And Google has invested heavily in research into and tools for really strong anonymization. (For example.)

      I understand that the way Google collects data about people bothers you. It bothers me, too, though not as much as it bothers many people, for a couple of reasons that I'll go into if you're interested. I actually spend a portion of my working day on preventing Google (and others) from being able to collect data from Android users (with the complete support of my director, VP and SVP, and without any real pushback from the teams I'm blocking -- as soon as I point out the risk, they agree and back off). But what you're talking about here isn't about collection, it's about disclosure... and when was the last time you saw an article about data disclosed by or leaking from Google? The only one I can think of is the G+ APIs which overshared. And note the thoroughness of Google's response to the discovery of that problem (no, the API problems aren't the whole reason for shutting down G+, but they were the proximate cause).

      Finally, given the target audience of this data, it seems highly unlikely that they would be interested in buying identifiable data, even if Google were interested in selling it. Also, note that having made public statements about the anonymous nature of this data, Google is legally obligated to ensure that's true, or be subject to lawsuits and fines from both citizens and regulators. People at Google would have to be really dumb to expose themselves to that risk.

      Bottom line: Google has zero interest in disclosing identifiable data about user movements, and lots of PR and regulatory reasons not to do it. I assert that Google employees also have a deep and abiding altruistic interest in not disclosing identifiable user data, but even if that weren't true, the self-interested reasons are sufficient.

      --
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    9. Re:Invasive tracking by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Doesn't it vary from State to State if that is even "expressly stated?" You say stuff about reading a license, but don't they ask you to agree with a yes/no button even when their software knows you've never read it?

      The details might turn out to matter more than the words said while waving the hand.

    10. Re:Invasive tracking by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      You're also forgetting the fact that the data reported is from a simulation derived from the model built from the de-identiied data, not from the input data. And the most logical implication of the list of techniques used is that all of them are used where appropriate.

      But, yes, I'm assuming competence. When it comes to statisticians at Google, that's an eminently reasonable assumption.

      Right, but when google management is pushing the work out into other companies that they can control, that makes me think that perhaps they made a choice to compartmentalize a different set of assumptions.

      You're making assumptions about assumptions, it is not a good system for understanding. If you don't know anything, and you know that much, it would be more knowledge than you have by assumptions based on assumptions.

  13. Mod informative by raymorris · · Score: 2

    > Differential privacy is a rigorous mathematical definition of privacy ...

    That was informative, thank you.

    Data which has been anonymized poorly, if the raw data is distributed rather than statistics, can sometimes be de-anonymized. I see differential privacy mathematically guarantees that the statistics they provide cannot be de-anonymized back to data about individuals.

    1. Re:Mod informative by swillden · · Score: 1

      Data which has been anonymized poorly, if the raw data is distributed rather than statistics, can sometimes be de-anonymized. I see differential privacy mathematically guarantees that the statistics they provide cannot be de-anonymized back to data about individuals.

      Yep, it's pretty cool. Differential privacy as a concept is just about proving the maximum amount of information that can be extracted from an anonymized data set, but in practice we usually talk more about specific algorithms that are designed to anonymize data such that the differential privacy falls below a certain threshold, while still enabling highly-accurate statistics to be calculated over the anonymized data. They work on the principle that if you inject noise of a known distribution into the data, you can then perform statistical analysis on the noisy data and apply corrections to remove the effects of the noise such that the result of the corrected calculations is within an error bound of the result of calculations performed on the raw data. Of course, the error bound can be predicted, and the math also allows calculation of the minimum amount of noise required to ensure privacy.

      For a simple example, suppose you have a data set D and want to compute the mean of that data set. You inject a uniformly-distributed noise set N, either by adding fake samples or by randomly perturbing real samples, then compute the mean of the result. Now notice that mean(D + N) = (mean(D) * |D| + mean(N) * |N|)/(|D| + |N|). If you knew the actual noise set N, then you could solve for mean(D). For differential privacy, it's important that you not know N, or even mean(N), exactly. But if you generate noise corresponding to some distribution, then given |N|, with standard statistical techniques you can estimate the distribution of your noise sample mean(N), and you can take those error bounds and work them back through, so you end up with an estimate for mean(D) and error bounds on that estimate (of course, those error bounds need to be combined correctly with the error bounds from the sampling method used to obtain D in order to get bounds on your estimate for the population mean).

      Anyway, while the math gets a little complicated, the concept is actually quite simple and can be easily applied (with the help of a good statistician) to a wide variety of data sets and statistical calculations. Google has excellent tools for doing this, and a staff of helpful statisticians to make sure they're used correctly.

      Oh, and the best way to ensure that D and N are unknown is to avoid reporting either of them. This is extremely easy on mobile devices: You just program the device to add the random noise, then upload the result. Since the servers never receive either D or N, but only D+N, and the noise parameters were carefully chosen to ensure differential privacy, the data cannot be deanonymized. Where that can't be done (I don't think it would work for location data, but maybe there's a clever way to do it), the data can be anonymized server-side and only the anonymized data stored.

      And note that, as the summary says, after the data is anonymized it's used to construct a model of cellphone user movement which is then simulated to create a set of synthetic tracks which follow the same patterns as real cellphone users, but have no relationship whatsoever to any specific individuals. This seems like it would be a sufficient anonymization process by itself, even if the model were built from non-anonymous data, but adding the noise-based anonymization step allows differential privacy to be proven, and privacy therefore guaranteed.

      This seems like a responsible, careful and privacy-conscious approach to producing a really useful data set.

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  14. If (false) { . (true but not relevant) by raymorris · · Score: 3, Informative

    What you said is true, but not relevant.

    Google is distributing statistics about large populations, not tokenized data about individuals.

    Tokenized data (raw data with names replaced by numbers) can sometimes be de-anonymized. That's not what Google is doing.

    1. Re:If (false) { . (true but not relevant) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The point is that Google (or anyone else) should NOT be allowed to collect any of this data in the first place!

  15. Selection bias in the data? by smi.james.th · · Score: 1

    So... it looks to me as though this data will be heavily biased towards users of Android. Surely that's not good for urban planners? People with other brands of smartphone or (gasp) no smartphones, surely their activities would affect urban planners too?

    --
    One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
  16. The Ultimate Anonymizer by DERoss · · Score: 1

    I do not have even a dumb phone, let alone a smart phone. I do not need 24/7 connection to other people or to the Internet. Thus, my activities would not be tracked.

    All this reminds me of the polling for a U.S. presidential election during the 1930s. The poll predicted a Republican win against Franklin Roosevelt. The problem was that the poll was conducted entirely by phone. The pollster was thus talking to those who, during the Great Depression, could afford phones -- mostly Republicans. Data from Sidewalk Labs' will be similarly biased, this time in favor of those who are slaves to their mobile phones.

    1. Re:The Ultimate Anonymizer by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2

      Technically, this is not correct. Many people with phones are tagging you in pictures, correlating your purchases with theirs, and their home "ring" cameras are illegally recording you in public places, dumping it all into a database, which correlates with your facial recognition data and walk/stride patterns.

      You're being tracked too.

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    2. Re:The Ultimate Anonymizer by DERoss · · Score: 1

      The article indicates Sidewalk Labs' database will involve data obtained by tracking mobile phones. I do not have even a dumb phone. If others are using their phones to tag, photograph, or otherwise track me, I do not see those data being used by Sidewalk Labs. After all, what is the value of non-continuous tracking an unknown person though multiple phones.

  17. pimple by swell · · Score: 1

    "ability to model an entire city's patterns of movement"

    That's right. We, the 99%, are statistical data. Just as scientists study the movement of butterflies, whales, migrating birds and ants, we are the subject of scrutiny. Not as unique individuals who have our own special formula at Starbucks, but as a horde. A herd. A quantity.

    Are we wrong to imagine our uniqueness? Are the patterns of our life not special to each of us? Surely we aren't a mass of seven billion clones!

    Actually, this can be a liberating way of thinking. To the extent that we think of ourselves as 'special', we create problems for ourselves. We are then forced to do things that demonstrate our individuality, and those things pretty much always fail and make us look foolish. Just relax. Go with the (literal) flow. Realize that you are just a pimple on the ass of the universe and your life will go smoothly.

    --
    ...omphaloskepsis often...
    1. Re:pimple by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      I can't even read Cyrillic, Ivan.

  18. Corrected title... by gosand · · Score: 1

    I know the title was just lifted from the article, but it should read "Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs Plans To Sell Location Data On Millions of Cellphones"

    The second sentence of the summary says it is being done by an Alphabet subsidiary, which would make it a "sibling" of Google.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

    1. Re: Corrected title... by astrofurter · · Score: 1

      New slogan:
      "Alphabet - we're evil from A to Z!"

    2. Re: Corrected title... by gosand · · Score: 1

      New slogan:
      "Alphabet - we're evil from A to Z!"

      They can't, they would get sued by Amazon for infringement.

      --

      My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  19. Re: AOC and Google and how much is enough $? by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    Take your medicine - otherwise, your high blood pressure will make you explode.

  20. Eat shit and die, Google by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    Get the fuck out of our lives you assholes.

  21. Re:Anonymized by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's Anonymized. This is a non-issue.

    Irrelevant. Collecting this data in the first place is unacceptable.

    The data will help design better cities.

    Sentencing everyone who commits a traffic infraction to death reduces traffic accidents.

    Hint: Ends don't justify means.

  22. Re:Anonymized by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

    Differential privacy is a rigorous mathematical definition of privacy. ... (supporting nonsense deleted) ...

    This gives a formal guarantee that individual-level information about participants in the database is not leaked.

    This is getting old.

    The issue isn't what is done with data stolen continuously in real-time from millions of people the issue is the theft in the first place.

    If someone broken into your house and stole all of your shit... whether they donated it all to a worthwhile charity or pawned it all for crack is irrelevant.

  23. "Not completely sure" where the data is coming fro by gavron · · Score: 1

    What an odd way to illiterately say "I don't know.

    Surety means 100%. Anything less isn't "not completely sure" it's either "unsure" or "don't know."

    E

  24. Re:Anonymized by Aighearach · · Score: 2

    Differential privacy is a rigorous mathematical definition of privacy.

    And the word "or" means you have no idea if they did that, or not.

  25. And in China this is used against you by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    In the US and Canada it's also used against you, but they pretend that corporations actually care about consumers, when the consumers are actually the product, and treated only as a profit center.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re: And in China this is used against you by astrofurter · · Score: 1

      "pretend that corporations actually care"

      Do they even pretend anymore? Seems like companies are adopting a more or less explicit policy of "fuck you, pleb, that's why".

  26. Not my phone. by emil · · Score: 1

    I wiped Google's stock off my Nexus 6 and loaded the Lineage reroll of MicroG.

    That belongs to me, thank you very much.

  27. Excellent way to orphan the elderly from stats by Zigakly · · Score: 1

    In my town there is a retirement home which houses 800+ on a street that's not especially busy, but a downtown artery nonetheless. Most of the residents have mobility issues, but aren't bed-ridden. They literally had to blockade the street multiple times in protest to get a crosswalk installed by the city.

    Sure, the boomer generation is probably the last that's not saturated with cellular users. But there's still a huge number with 25+ years to go, and if anything they're more dependent on city infrastructure than anyone. It's a common theme for city councilors to promise to build benches to woo elderly voters who can't walk far without resting, for example.

    This doesn't have to dominate infrastructure strategy, it's just a tool. But so are politicians...

  28. selling dystopia by astrofurter · · Score: 1

    This.

    I'm surprised anyone still believes Big Brother Google makes their money from _advertising_. It's been obvious for quite a while now that they are in the dystopian mass surveillance and censorship business. They just claim it's for "advertising purposes" so people will think it's merely annoying rather than unamerican and full-on evil.

    Who would pay for dystopia? Probably not companies selling widgets. But repressive regimes - sure, I bet they would fork out quite a pretty penny for Big Bother Google's services.

  29. Re: Legal control by astrofurter · · Score: 1

    It's almost like anonymizing data is very very difficult, often in subtle ways - much more difficult than panopticon apologists like to claim.

  30. Google can't be trusted by astrofurter · · Score: 1

    It's time for President Trump to get out his trust-busting stick. Break up Alphabet!

    Android - separate company
    Chrome - separate company
    YouTube - separate company
    Gmail - separate company
    Search - separate company
    Advertising - separate company
    Maps - separate company

    Arrest Sundar Pichai and the executive team. Destroy all the mass surveillance data. Shut down the dangerous mad science projects. Arrest the nazi mad scientists. Shut down the wannabe-Skynet AI. Arrest those mad scientists too.

    Stop Google before it's too late!

  31. Re: AOC and Google and how much is enough $? by astrofurter · · Score: 1

    "Leftist" is meaningless here. I've met a few Googlers. They were all hyperconformist corporate drones. But it's a Norcal company - so they conform by dressing like slovenly college kids and loudly voicing their agreement with the latest batshit pumped out by the corporate progressive propaganda apparatus.