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The Spanish soccer league's smartphone app, which has been installed by millions of users, uses the microphone and GPS readings of the devices its installed on to report possible instances of streaming piracy by listening. The smartphone app listens to and analyzes the audio in its surroundings to check if one of La Liga’s matches is being played and then pairs that with GPS data to see if that location is an authorized broadcaster and file reports.
Spanish soccer league "La Liga" is using its official Android app to create an army of millions of piracy spies. The app can access microphone and location data to scan for restaurants, bars, and other establishments that broadcast their matches without a license. "Protect your team," La Liga notes, while encouraging users to enable the functionality.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by urza9814 on Tuesday June 12 2018, @07:36PM (2 children)
"Consent" here seems to mean "they accepted the privacy policy." How many users do you really think read every single clause in the privacy policy before installing an app? Accepting such a policy is not the same as agreeing to work for someone.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @07:46PM
Not to mention how is the function described? Does it say "we'll listen in with your phone's microphone to record all background audio in order to find people pirating our soccer matches"? Or does it say something like "anonymized usage data may be gathered during specific events" which is so nebulous a description as to be useless? Even if someone went through the privacy policy they might still have no real clue how their phone was going to be abused via the app.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @10:09PM
It definitely wasn't clear from the original article. I was feeling optimistic, so I read it as explicit consent to this feature and not something stashed away in some legal text (why else would they "encourage people to enable" it if it was already allowed?). Assuming the other way is probably more realistic.
The Ars [arstechnica.com] article is a bit more clear about how they consent - apparently, it comes up and asks you after this update if it can use the mic/geolocation data. Accepting that is dumb but it doesn't seem terribly misleading, and it does seem opt-in.