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from the when-the-party-of-the-first-part... dept.
You don't read privacy policies. And of course, that's because they're not actually written for you, or any of the other billions of people who click to agree to their inscrutable legalese. Instead, like bad poetry and teenagers' diaries, those millions upon millions of words are produced for the benefit of their authors, not readers—the lawyers who wrote those get-out clauses to protect their Silicon Valley employers.
But one group of academics has proposed a way to make those virtually illegible privacy policies into the actual tool of consumer protection they pretend to be: an artificial intelligence that's fluent in fine print. Today, researchers at Switzerland's Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL), the University of Wisconsin and the University of Michigan announced the release of Polisis—short for "privacy policy analysis"—a new website and browser extension that uses their machine-learning-trained app to automatically read and make sense of any online service's privacy policy, so you don't have to.
Details at Wired
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday February 10 2018, @08:31PM (4 children)
You can wax eloquent in your labels if you manufacture food in the US. You can extol the virtues and the spiritual energy it provides, and reference the toxins it cleanses.
But sooner or later you have to come up with that legally mandated nutritional label and list of ingredients.
Certainly we could come up with a simpler form than the long winded impenetrable lawyer language, and mandate that form be used and be binding.
If patting a woman's behind can become a career ending offense, with no trial or appeal, then surely lawyer's obfuscatory language abuse should be punishable in some form of career ending rico statute.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Saturday February 10 2018, @08:53PM
FTFY. But otherwise, yes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Saturday February 10 2018, @10:16PM
If you package oil (almost pure fat) in a spray can [scientificpsychic.com], you can get away with saying that it has "Total fat 0 grams" of fat-free goodness.
(See, "less than half a gram of fat per serving" is the legal definition of "fat free," and a "serving" of spray-fat is, you guessed it, less than half a gram.)
You can use the stuff to oil squeaky hinges and rusty bolts; the handwaving doesn't take any of the oil out of the oil can.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 11 2018, @02:31AM (1 child)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday February 11 2018, @02:51AM
Sigh. Yes, we all know that Professor Obvious.
But the communication fails, because nobody can understand it, so nobody reads, and THAT was the intent.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.