The Guardian mentions that the Gold Coast council in Australia, where next month's Commonwealth Games are hosted, will use a new city WiFi service to harvest Facebook data from visitors.
The data mining, which the council says is legal and will be used to help the city market itself to tourists, relies on visitors using their Facebook accounts to log into a new high-speed WiFi service. Users who object to sharing their Facebook data can still access the free WiFi, but the speed will be much slower and downloads restricted.
The city switched on the wifi service in the tourist hubs of Surfers Paradise, Southport and Broadbeach on Tuesday, 15 days ahead of the Games opening ceremony. It spent $5m to build its own infrastructure for the Games due to concerns about the speed and rollout of the national broadband network.
A city spokeswoman insisted the council would only make "limited use" of the data it mined from tourists. She insisted data would not be shared with "other agencies" although reports about tourist activity based on the information could be made available to the tourism sector "and other sectors as appropriate".
"The most important information is about country of origin, to better understand the use by overseas tourists, who are one of the primary target groups for the service," the spokeswoman said.
"The city will be able to understand patterns of demand and use, including how many people are accessing the service, times of day and the amounts of data used. It will also be very useful for understanding numbers during events and seasonal effects."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:00AM (4 children)
Or the login page could have had 2 to 3 fields: Name, Country of Origin, Have you completed this form before? and they would have gotten the same information the summary claims they wanted without having to deal with 3rd parties.
I don't trust them, especially since they're limiting speeds of the other people. This is a slippery slope. How long until Facebook becomes a gateway to most of the net? You don't have to mandate national/internet id numbers if service providers all decide to only allow people with Facebook or Google services to use their services.
Her words don't matter. Where's the law/contract saying, in clear language instead of weasel words, what data is being collected and how it'll be used for how long?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by anubi on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:15AM (2 children)
I guess giving up yet more of your privacy is part of the price of admission.
They can state whatever businesstalk they want. You have the option of saying NO and just avoiding the place.
If significant people did the latter, businesses would think twice about putting in these kind of requirements, just as people think twice about showing up at a job interview unshaven and in need of a bath.
They obviously have a "phuck-yew" attitude because "olympics!", and think people are between a rock and a hard place. If enough people found what they are doing objectionable enough to choose the next alternative ( sometimes the only winning move is not to play - How about a nice game of Chess? ), they will change.
The powers that be *will* impose until the people say "enough", just as a child tests its parent's tolerance to find out where the boundaries are.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @10:57PM (1 child)
Yet they don't, and because of that, people who don't even use these privacy-invading services (like me) are affected as well. For example, if a picture is taken of you without your permission and uploaded to Spybook, your name might be tagged and facial recognition algorithms will analyze the photo. The mass adoption of monstrous surveillance engines like Facebook allows everyone's privacy to be violated, whether they use it or not. We need real regulations that will stop these companies from collecting and selling the data in the first place, as they are harmful to privacy and democracy. It's not enough to just say 'don't use these services'; most people don't listen, so we need real solutions that take into account actual human behavior. The problem is, many governments are controlled by corporations and/or are accepting of these types of services, so good luck. Even European-style privacy laws are not enough to stop companies like Facebook.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @06:39AM
I used to get so furious about my "friends" "caring" enough about me to send me an "e-card" on my birthday using those internet card services. I know good and well my birthdate is an identity verifier that is easily used to cause a lot of problems for ME, when people create a financial obligation in my name. I am quite aware a lot of people out there are damned good at this. Then these friends would consider ME the sourpuss for getting upset about it. I would not tell anybody what my birthday was, unless I legally HAD to. All these "store promotions" that would exchange my name/birthday for a "free" something, I'd give them the wrong data just to poison the database. I had just as soon give them my social security number. Its not that I am hiding anything, its just I don't wanna be so stupid as to disclose my location to a predatory animal. I am doing nothing more wrong than a mouse hiding from a cat.
One sore spot in me is that I seem to have no right to control distribution of data I generate, but my Congress seems to think businesses have the right to control how I use data THEY generate.
I do not mean to imply to say *anybody* has any right whatsoever to enforce ignorance of their bad reputation. What I do want to illustrate is what an unfair playing field we create when we base our ability to employ ourselves on our ability to get permission to work, because knowledge of how to do something is not enough, someone else has already claimed "rights" to do it, therefore I cannot unless he says its OK. Can you imagine ONE plumber in town getting in cahoots with the Government so as to keep any other plumber from doing any work? Then everyone has to go underground to change out a leaky washer, hoping the rightsholder does not discover you have illegally modified your plumbing and violated his business model, which was to charge $500 for the job.
In my mind, Congress is in abeyance of the Pledge of Allegiance... specifically the last three words of it, which were what was pledged to in the first three words of it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Sarasani on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:32AM
Considering that Gold Coast City Council members are being investigated for corruption [abc.net.au], it would be safe to conclude that you're not alone in your distrust.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:10AM (2 children)
Government offers free wifi
User gets free wifi for facebook data
Data from facebook goes to Cambridge Analytica, and/or others
Cambridge Analytica and/or others sell data to governments/political parties
Round and round the internet, like a data bear..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:45AM
This time it behaved like a dump bear [abc.net.au]:
For Indians, it still looked like a drop bear [scroll.in].
For others, it looked like a red bear in front of a bull [brisbanetimes.com.au]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 22 2018, @11:16AM
One click, two click, fuck you under there!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Sarasani on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:25AM (10 children)
The Gold Coast City Council has already backtracked on this nefarious plan [brisbanetimes.com.au]. Their stated reason for doing so:
Something tells me that the council's motivation for backtracking may very well have to do with their data mining plan gaining media attention. And yes, in light of current backlash against Facebook, such a plan does not look good.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:35AM
On ABC [abc.net.au]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:47AM (8 children)
I like how the motivation blames Facebook, when the guys planned to suck in then mine the data themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Thursday March 22 2018, @08:55AM (7 children)
Yes, but blaming facebook might make some people hink they *weren't* going to slurp up all the data.
Also, now they have to write all sorts of sniffers and IP trace programs to put on their wifi boxes - the data just got alot more expensive, especially as they only have a few weeks to get the new stuff installed.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:16AM (5 children)
That would be the normal reaction - put a spin on it.
However, I won't discount the possibility they actually believe what they said (as dumb as it may be) - don't forget they are political creatures and the political games aren't conducive to a deep understanding of what "data mining" and "big data" and "artificial intelligence" actually mean.
If they are semi-literates in IT, they may actually waste the public money in doing it - with HTTPS almost everywhere (FB and Google especially) packet sniffers will be useless.
An HTTP proxy would be the best they could do to capture the browsing history - nothing different from what our ISP do to obey the "metadata retention" laws we have now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:26AM (3 children)
so, is he value the facebook-limked marketing/personality insights, and/or the location/marketing opportunities to be fed into the feeds, or something else?
If the first two, facebook is essential. If the "something else", then maybe they can still extract data (value) from "free" wifi.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:47AM (2 children)
Some info on behaviour can be inferred from the location and the WiFI point can offer a vague idea about the location (less capability for triangulation than mobile protocols, I believe). Yes, the MAC address is useful as an ID, but capturing it doesn't require a special packet sniffer;even a consumer grade WiFI router can tell you what MACs are connected.
The actual identity and nationality of the user can only be gathered from FB (or any site that stores enough personal info and discloses it to an App).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MostCynical on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:57AM (1 child)
So, just like shopping centres and anywhere else offering "free" wifi, there is no value without the facebook login for promoted "likes" in your friends' feeds, and ads in the post-login screen, with some datamining about behaviour from facebook.
I suspect the games organisers will offer free wifi at a bit-better-than-the-original-plan "low speed" and accept they only get ads on login/fine print screens, and the only data available depends on people giving them a real email address.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Sarasani on Thursday March 22 2018, @02:37PM
A somewhat relevant quote (albeit about facial recognition) from the book "The Aisles Have Eyes" by Joseph Turow:
(Emphasis mine)
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday March 22 2018, @10:04PM
We ARE talking about the state that gave us the J B-P [wikipedia.org] era.
In this case incompetence may well be as important as malice. They are political creatures and words they hear mean whatever they want them to mean.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @10:38AM
Write? Just get a few off the shelf or from open source
(Score: 1) by noneof_theabove on Thursday March 22 2018, @12:22PM (1 child)
Rule #1: DO NOT CONNECT with mobile data or wifi TO UNKNOWN and/or untrusted SOURCES ! !
Rule #2: see Rule #1
People that do not understand technology do not deserve using technology.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday March 22 2018, @01:04PM
No, no. Connecting is fine. Just be sure to use fake info. Sure, that violates Facebook's terms and rules, and doubtless most of the terms in the wall of text they throw up in your face when you're connecting to the "free" wifi, but so what? I especially love that by connecting, you agree to obey all the laws, as if you weren't already obliged to be lawful before you connected.
Remember the lessons from years of pirating music and movies! Gotta push back against bad laws.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday March 22 2018, @04:28PM
What if I've never had and never will have a Facebook account?
What if my only use of their WiFi is to SSH to a "droplet" or "linode" establishing a SOCKS proxy, and then web surfing through that encrypted connection?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.