The U.N. is using ‘Global Pulse’ to spy on people in every country

MassPrivateI

Along with other humanitarian organizations and UN agencies, one key advocate and user of big data is the UN Global Pulse, launched in 2009 in recognition of the need for more timely information to track and monitor the impacts of global and local socio-economic crises. 

UN Global Pulse clearly identified the privacy concerns linked to their use of big data and the impact of privacy in “Big Data for Development: Challenges & Opportunities” and have adopted Privacy and Data Protection Principles. Given the increasingly complex web of actors concerned, the expanding scope of their work, the growing amount of data that can be collected on individuals, and the poor legal protections in place.  

Ask yourself, why does the UN need to spy on people globally? Could it be because they’re working for the NSA, CIA, FBI or any other alphabet soup spy agency.

Increasingly, big data includes not only openly available information but extends to information collected by the private sector. This includes Twitter feeds, Google searches, and call detail records held by network providers. The efforts of groups such as UN Global Pulse are focused on opening access to private sector data; UN Global Pulse noted this “challenge” and have been encouraging enterprises to participate in “data philanthropy” by providing access to their data for public benefit.

There is no process to request the consent of a person for the resulting data that emerges. In many cases, that data is more personal than the set of data the person consented to give.

In October 2012, MIT and the Université Catholique de Louvain, in Belgium, published researchproving the uniqueness of human mobility traces and the implications this has on protecting privacy. 

The researchers analyzed the anonymized data of 1.5 million mobile phone users in a small European country collected between April 2006 and June 2007, and found that just four points of reference, with fairly low spatial and temporal resolution, were sufficient to uniquely identify 95 per cent of them. This showed that even if anonymized datasets do not contain name, home address, phone number or other obvious identifier, the uniqueness of individuals’ patterns (i.e. top location of users) information could be linked back to them.

Advocates for big data for development argue that there is no need to request consent because they concern themselves with unidentifiable anonymized data. Yet, even if one actor in one context uses data anonymously, this does not mean that the same data set will not be de-anonymized by another actor. The UN Global Pulse can promise that they will not do anything that could potentially violate the right to privacy and permit re-identification, but can they guarantee others along the process ensure the same ethical safeguards apply?

Data is being collected about our health care, Facebook, Twitter accounts etc., and other groupings like online shopping data, loyalty card info. of airlines, supermarkets, etc.
https://www.privacyinternational.org/blog/big-data-a-tool-for-development-or-threat-to-privacy

Health and Human Services claims social media spying improves customer service:

SC -The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) contracted with the Social Analytics Institute (SAI) at Clemson University to find people who were talking about its Medicaid services online so the agency could improve its customer service. The SAI scanned websites like Twitter, Facebook and blogs to inform the DHHS’ Medicaid customer service.

For $50,000, the agency got data reports from SAI, along with analysis and qualitative information, including particularly illustrative comments the researchers found. “South Carolina Medicaid seriously sucks!!” wrote one online forum user. “We have to deal with them some because we are so close to the state line and I hate it when I see that a patient has it.” 

Seeing negative comments was one of the difficult parts of this project, said John Supra, CIO of the DHHS, but that type of candor was also identified as valuable because it’s generally not found elsewhere.

Police are spying on citizens using social media, click here to watch the video. 

All the comments found through the SAI had to be put into the proper context, Supra said, but once completed, the department was in some cases able to fix the issues that people had, and he hopes that DHHS employees will update their processes too. “I don’t know, at this point, if overall by doing social media listening (spying) we are getting that back into our overall processes to continually improve,” he said. “I’d like to believe our team is using this information, but I think that is something that we are still learning.”

Supra said there have been several instances where the agency fixed problems by contacting people who wrote about their issues online. In one case, a Medicaid applicant was having trouble adding his or her child. In another case, someone had mistaken North Carolina regulations for those of South Carolina. The department was able to get the correct information to that person, he said.

It’s important, Supra said, to have a “very frank, honest and open look into what’s on our South Carolinians’ minds regarding our program, and it helps us to be better connected with them. It’s part of an ongoing effort for our department to be more customer focused.” The information gained from this type of data collection, he said, is more frank than what’s traditionally gathered through paper or phone surveys. 

When the DHHS first started looking (spying) for data online, it found a lot of high-level political discussions — not exactly what it was looking for. And by “high level” Thatcher meant in concept, not necessarily in content. It found many comments like “Obamacare sucks,” which weren’t useful to the department, he said — it wanted to know about people’s experiences with the agency’s Medicaid system. It eventually found useful information by redefining filters and search terms and drilling further down into what data would be helpful, Thatcher said.

How much do you want to bet those ‘Obamacare sucks’ comments were forwarded to South Carolina’s Fusion Center?
http://www.govtech.com/internet/Social-Media-Listening-Improves-Customer-Service.html

DOJ claims it will be harder to catch criminals if they need a warrant to search our cell phones:

The Dept. of Justice (DOJ) has entered its reply brief in the US vs. Wurie case and its argument in favor of warrantless searches of arrestees’ cell phones contains some truly terrible suppositions. 

Here’s a brief recap of the situation in this case: 

In 2007, the police arrested a Massachusetts man who appeared to be selling crack cocaine from his car. The cops seized his cellphone and noticed that it was receiving calls from “My House.” They opened the phone to determine the number for “My House.” That led them to the man’s home, where the police found drugs, cash and guns.

The defendant was convicted, but on appeal he argued that accessing the information on his cellphone without a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Earlier this year, the First Circuit Court of Appeals accepted the man’s argument, ruling that the police should have gotten a warrant before accessing any information on the man’s phone.

A lot has changed since 2007. The phone the police searched seven years ago was a grey flip phone with limited capabilities. Unfortunately, the Court is using this case to set precedent for a nation full of smartphones, which contain considerably more data and are roughly the equivalent of a person’s home computer, rather than the address book the government refers to in its arguments. 

The government agrees that times are changing but counterintuitively argues that only law enforcement is being negatively affected by this. Every argument in favor of warrantless searches contains some sort of lamentation about how tech-savvy criminals will be able to cover up or destroy evidence contained on their phones before the police can crack open these new-fangled address books and copy everything down. 

The Founding officers have conducted full evidentiary searches of individuals lawfully arrested on probable cause to find evidence of the crime of arrest, including the examination of objects, containers, and written material; (ii) that in an unbroken series of decisions from 1914 to 2013, this Court has recognized that this historical search authority applies categorically; and (iii) that if an officer does not search an unlocked cell phone as soon as she finds it, a significant risk exists that the police will never be able to recover evidence contained on the phone.

This speedy dismantling of the Fourth Amendment pursuant to law enforcement’s desire to secure is only the preamble. As the reply brief rolls on, the government makes even more questionable assertions that view smartphones and technological advances as little more than escape vehicles for alleged felons. (h/t to Hanni Fakoury for pointing this part out.) 

Searching an arrestee’s cell phone immediately upon arrest is often critical to protecting evidence against concealment in a locked or encrypted phone or remote destruction.The numerous party and amicus briefs in these cases have not seriously undermined that fundamental practical point. Although the briefs identify various techniques to prevent the remote-wiping problem (none of which is close to perfect), they barely address the principal problem that the government identified: automatic passcode-locking and encryption.

The government argues that impartial technological advancements somehow favor criminals. As it sees it, the path to the recovery of evidence should not be slowed by encryption or wiping or even the minimal effort needed to obtain a warrant. The police are presented as forever behind the curve, despite evidence otherwise. The gap between criminals & police isn’t nearly as large as the govt. wants us to believe. 
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140423/15081827008/government-argues-that-warrant-requirement-cell-phone-searches-does-nothing-keep-cops-catching-bad-guys.shtml

http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2014/04/carorlinas-health-human-services-dept.html