We’re seeing more casual COVID transmission. But is that because of the variant or better case tracking?

Catherine Bennett, Deakin UniversityVictoria’s lockdown is to be extended for another week to get on top of the growing number of community cases, which now stands at 60.

But questions remain about what’s behind some of these cases.
Victoria’s COVID-19 testing commander Jeroen Weimar said yesterday in about four or five cases, the virus was transmitted after only “fleeting contact”.

Today, we heard from Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton about one case suspected to have been infected when visiting a site some two hours after an infectious person had left. The source case had been there for some time, and it was described as a poorly ventilated space.

Nonetheless, this is consistent with the aerosol transmission we have become increasingly concerned about, and perhaps this is the first documentation of this outside hotel quarantine.

Today we also heard that health authorities have reported about 10% of cases are linked with more casual exposures, including at “tier two” sites (Victoria describes exposure sites according to risk, with a tier one site being the most risky).

So is it the virus, or more focused efforts in tracking cases, that’s led us to finding such casual exposures?

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Is it the virus?

Despite today’s news, people are not more likely now to get infected by brushing past someone on the street.

In the vast majority of cases, people have become infected by very close contacts, or at certain “tier one” exposure sites when there at the same time as a known case.

There is evidence the variant associated with India is more infectious. This particular lineage of the Indian variant B.1.617.1, however, may not be as infectious as other lineages.

It reinforces how important it is that outbreaks are contained as early as possible where this increased risk of spread is still manageable.

On average, with variants of concern like the one currently circulating in Victoria, a case might infect 15% of household contacts instead of 10% seen in 2020. When new case numbers are high later in an outbreak, this difference in transmission translates to much bigger jumps in case numbers.

The way the virus spreads in clusters has also not changed, with some cases not passing the virus on, while a small number pass it on to many.

If this strain of the virus were vastly more transmissible than the original strain, we’d expect to see many cases. This strain has been in our community for a month now, undetected and running free for more than two weeks. There would be many more than 60 cases if this were true.

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We’re also better at tracking cases

The main thing that’s changed since Victoria’s second wave last year is that we have forensic analysis of every case and we’re better at finding casual links between cases.

We’re now publishing lists of venues with exposure times and more people are coming forward for testing than at the peak of Victoria’s second wave. We also have check-in data for many venues.

This results in more reliable measures of both the total spread and routes of virus transmission, than in the second wave, or any community outbreak of this size.

Transmission associated with more casual exposures would have been much more likely to be missed before. Even if these cases were picked up, they might have been counted among the “mystery cases” that comprised 18% of all cases in 2020. We didn’t know where these cases were infected as there were no apparent links between them and known cases.

We are doing much better this time with only three transmission events that not yet fully understood.

How about this ‘fleeting contact’?

The four or five cases Weimar mentioned yesterday relate to a range of indoor exposure sites including a display home, a Telstra shop, local grocery stores, and a shopping strip.

This is where people may have been in direct contact with a case, but where no definitive exposure event is documented, there is no check-in and people don’t know each other.

So from what we know so far, there’s been a crossover between when most cases were present and where their contacts became infected. And 90% of these are in the settings we know are high transmission risk — households and workplaces in particular, where there is extended and repeated indoor contact.

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The more casual contacts described yesterday, in a display home or at the Telstra shop, there might have been some overlap with a case in a small enclosed area for sufficient time to receive an infecting dose.

A further example Sutton provided today was an infection that started with someone sitting in the same outdoor area as a case at a hotel bistro. We know there is less risk in outdoor settings generally, but on a still autumn day, we now know this is all it takes.

Now, as we have transmission in the beer garden, all those nearby will be recategorised as primary close contacts and asked to quarantine for a full 14 days, even if they have returned a negative test. Better to be safe than sorry.

That’s why it’s so important to check in with a QR code. You don’t always know the name of the person who’s standing (or sitting) next to you. It is also why check-ins will now be required at more retail and public venues across the state. Being able to identify contacts in these settings will remove some of the fear associate with this more casual spread.

So what are we to make of this?

This latest news reinforces the importance of QR codes and checking in. You never know who you’re standing next to in a long queue while shopping.
Extending our QR codes into further settings whether retail, grocery stores or display homes, which we now know are a risk, is a good move.

The message remains the same, get tested if you have symptoms or when directed to by public health officials, and isolate when necessary. In particular, keep an eye on those exposure sites, even if you only dropped in to grab a coffee.

But we shouldn’t be overly concerned about COVID-19 spread by “fleeting contact”. The precautions we all know (hygiene, distancing and masks) still work and are our best forms of protection.

Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Apple’s new ‘app tracking transparency’ has angered Facebook. How does it work, what’s all the fuss about, and should you use it?

Amr Alfiky/AP

Paul Haskell-Dowland, Edith Cowan University and Nikolai Hampton, Edith Cowan UniversityApple users across the globe are adopting the latest operating system update, called iOS 14.5, featuring the now-obligatory new batch of emojis.

But there’s another change that’s arguably less fun but much more significant for many users: the introduction of “app tracking transparency”.

This feature promises to usher in a new era of user-oriented privacy, and not everyone is happy — most notably Facebook, which relies on tracking web users’ browsing habits to sell targeted advertising. Some commentators have described it as the beginnings of a new privacy feud between the two tech behemoths.

So, what is app tracking transparency?

App tracking transparency is a continuation of Apple’s push to be recognised as the platform of privacy. The new feature allows apps to display a pop-up notification that explains what data the app wants to collect, and what it proposes to do with it.

Privacy | App Tracking Transparency | Apple.

There is nothing users need to do to gain access to the new feature, other than install the latest iOS update, which happens automatically on most devices. Once upgraded, apps that use tracking functions will display a request to opt in or out of this functionality.

A new App Tracking Transparency feature across iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS will require apps to get the user’s permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies.
Apple newsroom

How does it work?

As Apple has explained, the app tracking transparency feature is a new “application programming interface”, or API — a suite of programming commands used by developers to interact with the operating system.

The API gives software developers a few pre-canned functions that allow them to do things like “request tracking authorisation” or use the tracking manager to “check the authorisation status” of individual apps.

In more straightforward terms, this gives app developers a uniform way of requesting these tracking permissions from the device user. It also means the operating system has a centralised location for storing and checking what permissions have been granted to which apps.

What is missing from the fine print is that there is no physical mechanism to prevent the tracking of a user. The app tracking transparency framework is merely a pop-up box.

It is also interesting to note the specific wording of the pop-up: “ask app not to track”. If the application is using legitimate “device advertising identifiers”, answering no will result in this identifier being set to zero. This will reduce the tracking capabilities of apps that honour Apple’s tracking policies.

However, if an app is really determined to track you, there are many techniques that could allow them to make surreptitious user-specific identifiers, which may be difficult for Apple to detect or prevent.

For example, while an app might not use Apple’s “device advertising identifier”, it would be easy for the app to generate a little bit of “random data”. This data could then be passed between sites under the guise of normal operations such as retrieving an image with the data embedded in the filename. While this would contravene Apple’s developer rules, detecting this type of secret data could be very difficult.

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Apple seems prepared to crack down hard on developers who don’t play by the rules. The most recent additions to Apple’s App Store guidelines explicitly tells developers:

You must receive explicit permission from users via the App Tracking Transparency APIs to track their activity.

It’s unlikely major app developers will want to fall foul of this policy — a ban from the App Store would be costly. But it’s hard to imagine Apple sanctioning a really big player like Facebook or TikTok without some serious behind-the-scenes negotiation.

Why is Facebook objecting?

Facebook is fuelled by web users’ data. Inevitably, anything that gets in the way of its gargantuan revenue-generating network is seen as a threat. In 2020, Facebook’s revenue from advertising exceeded US$84 billion – a 21% rise on 2019.

The issues are deep-rooted and reflect the two tech giants’ very different business models. Apple’s business model is the sale of laptops, computers, phones and watches – with a significant proportion of its income derived from the vast ecosystem of apps and in-app purchases used on these devices. Apple’s app revenue was reported at US$64 billion in 2020.

With a vested interest in ensuring its customers are loyal and happy with its devices, Apple is well positioned to deliver privacy without harming profits.

Should I use it?

Ultimately, it is a choice for the consumer. Many apps and services are offered ostensibly for free to users. App developers often cover their costs through subscription models, in-app purchases or in-app advertising. If enough users decide to embrace privacy controls, developers will either change their funding model (perhaps moving to paid apps) or attempt to find other ways to track users to maintain advertising-derived revenue.

If you don’t want your data to be collected (and potentially sold to unnamed third parties), this feature offers one way to restrict the amount of your data that is trafficked in this way.

But it’s also important to note that tracking of users and devices is a valuable tool for advertising optimisation by building a comprehensive picture of each individual. This increases the relevance of each advert while also reducing advertising costs (by only targeting users who are likely to be interested). Users also arguably benefit, as they see more (relevant) adverts that are contextualised for their interests.

It may slow down the rate at which we receive personalised ads in apps and websites, but this change won’t be an end to intrusive digital advertising. In essence, this is the price we pay for “free” access to these services.

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Paul Haskell-Dowland, Associate Dean (Computing and Security), Edith Cowan University and Nikolai Hampton, School of Science, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Privacy erosion by design: why the Federal Court should throw the book at Google over location data tracking

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Jeannie Marie Paterson, The University of Melbourne and Elise Bant, The University of Western AustraliaThe Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has had a significant win against Google. The Federal Court found Google misled some Android users about how to disable personal location tracking.

Will this decision actually change the behaviour of the big tech companies? The answer will depend on the size of the penalty awarded in response to the misconduct.

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In theory, the penalty is A$1.1 million per contravention. There is a contravention each time a reasonable person in the relevant class is misled. So the total award could, in theory, amount to many millions of dollars.

But the actual penalty will depend on how the court characterises the misconduct. We believe Google’s behaviour should not be treated as a simple accident, and the Federal Court should issue a heavy fine to deter Google and other companies from behaving this way in future.

Misleading conduct and privacy settings

The case arose from the representations made by Google to users of Android phones in 2018 about how it obtained personal location data.

The Federal Court held Google had misled some consumers by representing that “having Web & App Activity turned ‘on’ would not allow Google to obtain, retain and use personal data about the user’s location”.

In other words, some consumers were misled into thinking they could control Google’s location data collection practices by switching “off” Location History, whereas Web & App Activity also needed to be disabled to provide this protection.

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The ACCC also argued consumers reading Google’s privacy statement would be misled into thinking personal data was collected for their own benefit rather than Google’s. However, the court dismissed this argument on the grounds that reasonable users wanting to turn the Location History “off”

would have assumed that Google was obtaining as much commercial advantage as it could from use of the user’s personal location data.

This is surprising and might deserve further attention from regulators concerned to protect consumers from corporations “data harvesting” for profit.

How much should Google pay?

The penalty and other enforcement orders against Google will be made at a later date.

The aim of the penalty is to deter Google specifically, and other firms like Google, from engaging in misleading conduct again. If penalties are too low they may be treated by wrongdoing firms as merely a “cost of doing business”.

However, in circumstances where there is a high degree of corporate culpability, the Federal Court has shown willingness to award higher amounts than in the past. This has occurred even where the regulator has not sought higher penalties. In the recent Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft v ACCC judgement, the full Federal Court confirmed an award of A$125 million against Volkswagen for making false representations about compliance with Australian diesel emissions standards.

The Federal Court found Google’s information about local data tracking was misleading.
Shutterstock

In setting Google’s penalty, a court will consider factors such as the nature and extent of the misleading conduct and any loss to consumers. The court will also take into account whether the wrongdoer was involved in “deliberate, covert or reckless conduct, as opposed to negligence or carelessness”.

At this point, Google may well argue that only some consumers were misled, that it was possible for consumers to be informed if they read more about Google’s privacy policies, that it was only one slip-up, and that its contravention of the law was unintentional. These might seem to reduce the seriousness or at least the moral culpability of the offence.

But we argue they should not unduly cap the penalty awarded. Google’s conduct may not appear as “egregious and deliberately deceptive” as the Volkswagen case.

But equally Google is a massively profitable company that makes its money precisely from obtaining, sorting and using its users’ personal data. We think therefore the court should look at the number of Android users potentially affected by the misleading conduct and Google’s responsibility for its own choice architecture, and work from there.

Only some consumers?

The Federal Court acknowledged not all consumers would be misled by Google’s representations. The court accepted many consumers would simply accept the privacy terms without reviewing them, an outcome consistent with the so-called privacy paradox. Others would review the terms and click through to more information about the options for limiting Google’s use of personal data to discover the scope of what was collected under the “Web & App Activity” default.

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This might sound like the court was condoning consumers’ carelessness. In fact the court made use of insights from economists about the behavioural biases of consumers in making decisions.

Consumers have limited time to read legal terms and limited ability to understand the future risks arising from those terms. Thus, if consumers are concerned about privacy they might try to limit data collection by selecting various options, but are unlikely to be able to read and understand privacy legalese like a trained lawyer or with the background understanding of a data scientist.

If one option is labelled “Location History”, it is entirely rational for everyday consumers to assume turning it off limits location data collection by Google.

The number of consumers misled by Google’s representations will be difficult to assess. But even if a small proportion of Android users were misled, that will be a very large number of people.

There was evidence before the Federal Court that, after press reports of the tracking problem, the number of consumers switching off the “Web” option increased by 500%. Moreover, Google makes considerable profit from the large amounts of personal data it gathers and retains, and profit is important when it comes deterrence.

Google’s choice architecture

It has also been revealed that some employees at Google were not aware of the problem until an exposé in the press. An urgent meeting was held, referred to internally as the “Oh Shit” meeting.

The individual Google employees at the “Oh Shit” meeting may not have been aware of the details of the system. But that is not the point.

It is the company fault that is the question. And a company’s culpability is not just determined by what some executive or senior employee knew or didn’t know about its processes. Google’s corporate mindset is manifested or revealed in the systems it designs and puts in place.

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Google designed the information system that faced consumers trying to manage their privacy settings. This kind of system design is sometimes referred to as “choice architecture”.

Here the choices offered to consumers steered them away from opting out of Google collecting, retaining and using personal location data.

The “Other Options” (for privacy) information failed to refer to the fact that location tracking was carried out via other processes beyond the one labelled “Location History”. Plus, the default option for “Web & App Activity” (which included location tracking) was set as “on”.

This privacy eroding system arose via the design of the “choice architecture”. It therefore warrants a serious penalty.

Jeannie Marie Paterson, Professor of Law, The University of Melbourne and Elise Bant, Professor of Law, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ACCC ‘world first’: Australia’s Federal Court found Google misled users about personal location data

Henry Perks / Unsplash

Katharine Kemp, UNSWThe Federal Court has found Google misled some users about personal location data collected through Android devices for two years, from January 2017 to December 2018.

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) says this decision is a “world first” in relation to Google’s location privacy settings. The ACCC now intends to seek various orders against Google. These will include monetary penalties under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL), which could be up to A$10 million or 10% of Google’s local turnover.

Other companies too should be warned that representations in their privacy policies and privacy settings could lead to similar liability under the ACL.

But this won’t be a complete solution to the problem of many companies concealing what they do with data, including the way they share consumers’ personal information.

How did Google mislead consumers about their location history?

The Federal Court found Google’s previous location history settings would have led some reasonable consumers to believe they could prevent their location data being saved to their Google account. In fact, selecting “Don’t save my Location History in my Google Account” alone could not achieve this outcome.

Users needed to change an additional, separate setting to stop location data from being saved to their Google account. In particular, they needed to navigate to “Web & App Activity” and select “Don’t save my Web & App Activity to my Google Account”, even if they had already selected the “Don’t save” option under “Location History”.

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ACCC Chair Rod Sims responded to the Federal Court’s findings, saying:

This is an important victory for consumers, especially anyone concerned about their privacy online, as the Court’s decision sends a strong message to Google and others that big businesses must not mislead their customers.

Google has since changed the way these settings are presented to consumers, but is still liable for the conduct the court found was likely to mislead some reasonable consumers for two years in 2017 and 2018.

ACCC has misleading privacy policies in its sights

This is the second recent case in which the ACCC has succeeded in establishing misleading conduct in a company’s representations about its use of consumer data.

In 2020, the medical appointment booking app HealthEngine admitted it had disclosed more than 135,000 patients’ non-clinical personal information to insurance brokers without the informed consent of those patients. HealthEngine paid fines of A$2.9 million, including approximately A$1.4 million relating to this misleading conduct.

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The ACCC has two similar cases in the wings, including another case regarding Google’s privacy-related notifications and a case about Facebook’s representations about a supposedly privacy-enhancing app called Onavo.

In bringing proceedings against companies for misleading conduct in their privacy policies, the ACCC is following the US Federal Trade Commission which has sued many US companies for misleading privacy policies.

The ACCC has more cases in the wings about data privacy.
Shutterstock

Will this solve the problem of confusing and unfair privacy policies?

The ACCC’s success against Google and HealthEngine in these cases sends an important message to companies: they must not mislead consumers when they publish privacy policies and privacy settings. And they may receive significant fines if they do.

However, this will not be enough to stop companies from setting privacy-degrading terms for their users, if they spell such conditions out in the fine print. Such terms are currently commonplace, even though consumers are increasingly concerned about their privacy and want more privacy options.

Consider the US experience. The US Federal Trade Commission brought action against the creators of a flashlight app for publishing a privacy policy which didn’t reveal the app was tracking and sharing users’ location information with third parties.

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However, in the agreement settling this claim, the solution was for the creators to rewrite the privacy policy to disclose that users’ location and device ID data are shared with third parties. The question of whether this practice was legitimate or proportionate was not considered.

Major changes to Australian privacy laws will also be required before companies will be prevented from pervasively tracking consumers who do not wish to be tracked. The current review of the federal Privacy Act could be the beginning of a process to obtain fairer privacy practices for consumers, but any reforms from this review will be a long time coming.

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This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on UNSW Newsroom.

Katharine Kemp, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, UNSW, and Academic Lead, UNSW Grand Challenge on Trust, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Coronavirus Update: Australia

General

Australia

Privacy vs pandemic: government tracking of mobile phones could be a potent weapon against COVID-19

Patrick Fair, Deakin University

Borders, beaches, pubs and churches are closed, large events are cancelled, and travellers are subject to 14 days’ isolation – all at significant cost to taxpayers and the economy. But could telecommunications technology offer a more targeted approach to controlling the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus?

One possibility is to use location history data from the mobile phones of confirmed cases, to help track and trace the spread of infection.

Some people can be contagious without knowing, either because they have not yet developed symptoms, or because their symptoms are mild. These individuals cannot be identified until they become sufficiently unwell to seek medical assistance. Finding them more quickly could help curb the spread of the disease.

This suggestion clearly raises complex privacy issues.

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All mobile service providers in Australia are required to hold two years of data relating to the use of each mobile phone on their network, including location information.

For anyone who tests positive with COVID-19, this data could be used to list every location where they (or, more accurately, their phone) had been over the preceding few weeks. Using that list, it would then be possible to identify every phone that had been in close proximity to the person’s phone during that time. The owners of those phones could then be tested, even though they may not necessarily have developed symptoms or suspected that they had come into contact with the coronavirus.

The government could do this in a systematic way. It could assemble everyone’s location history into a single, searchable database that could then be cross-referenced against the locations of known clusters of infection. This would allow contact tracing throughout the entire population, creating a more proactive way to track down suspected cases.

The privacy problem

You may well ask: do we want the government to assemble a searchable database showing the locations of almost every person over 16 in Australia over the past month?

Some people will undoubtedly find it a confronting prospect to be contacted by the government and told that surveillance analysis suggests they need to be isolated or tested. Others will be concerned that such a database, or the broad surveillance capability that underpins it, could be used to intrude on our privacy in other ways.

Several countries are already using mobile phone data in the fight against the coronavirus. The UK government is reportedly in talks with major mobile phone operators to use location data to analyse the outbreak’s spread.

India, Hong Kong, Israel, Austria, Belgium, Germany are also among the list of countries taking advantage of mobile data to tackle the pandemic.

The Singapore government has launched an app called Trace Together, which allows mobile users to voluntarily share their location data. Iran’s leaders have been accused of being rather less transparent, amid reports that its coronavirus “diagnosis” app also logs people’s whereabouts.

Is it legal anyway?

We may well take the view that the privacy risks are justified in the circumstances. But does the Australian government actually have the power to use our data for this purpose?

The Telecommunications Act requires carriers to keep telecommunications data secure, but also allows federal, state and territory governments to request access to it for purposes including law enforcement, national security, and protecting public revenue.

Being infected with COVID-19 is not a crime, and while a pandemic is arguably a threat to national security, it is not specifically listed under the Act. Limiting the outbreak would undoubtedly benefit public revenue, but clearly the primary intent of contact tracing is as a public health measure.

There is another law that could also compel mobile carriers to hand over users’ data. During a “human biosecurity emergency period”, the Biosecurity Act 2015 allows the federal health minister to take any action necessary to prevent or control the “emergence, establishment or spread” of the declared emergency disease. A human biosecurity emergency period was declared on Sunday 23 March.

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In recent years there has been a great deal of debate over the use of telecommunications data for surveillance purposes. The introduction of the mandatory data retention regime was contentious, as was the broad power granted to multiple agencies to access the data for law enforcement.

One reason for the controversy was the relatively low threshold for use of these laws: authorities could access data relating to any suspected offence punishable by three years or more in prison.

Australia is now facing a crisis that is orders of magnitude more serious. Many Australians would be willing to see their information used in this way if it saves lives, limits the economic impact, and impedes the spread of COVID-19.

The Commonwealth has the legal power to do it, the security and privacy issues can be managed, and the benefits may be significant.

Patrick Fair, Adjunct Professor, School of Information Technology, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The ACCC is suing Google over tracking users. Here’s why it matters

The ACCC has been highly critical of how many large digital platforms use data.
Shutterstock

Katharine Kemp, UNSW

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) today announced it is suing Google for misleading consumers about its collection and use of personal location data.

The case is the consumer watchdog’s first move against a major digital platform following the publication of the Digital Platforms Inquiry Final Report in July.

The ACCC follows regulators in countries including the US and Germany in taking action against the way “tech giants” such as Google and Facebook harvest and exploit their users’ data.

What did Google do?

ACCC Chair Rod Sims said Google “collected, kept and used highly sensitive and valuable personal information about consumers’ location without them making an informed choice”.

The ACCC alleges that Google breached the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) by misleading its users in the course of 2017 and 2018, including by:

• not properly disclosing that two different settings needed to be switched off if consumers did not want Google to collect, keep and use their location data

• not disclosing on those pages that personal location data could be used for a number of purposes unrelated to the consumer’s use of Google services.

Some of the alleged breaches can carry penalties of up to A$10 million or 10% of annual turnover.

A spokesperson for Google is reported to have said the company is reviewing the allegations and engaging with the ACCC.

The two separate settings that users needed to change to disable location tracking.
Android screenshots, Author provided

Turning off “Location History” did not turn off location history

According to the ACCC, Google’s account settings on Android phones and tablets would have led consumers to think changing a setting on the “Location History” page would stop Google from collecting, keeping and using their location data.

The ACCC says Google failed to make clear to consumers that they would actually need to change their choices on a separate setting titled “Web & App Activity” to prevent this location tracking.

Location data is used for much more than Google Maps

Google collects and uses consumers’ personal location data for purposes other than providing Google services to consumers. For example, Google uses location data to work out demographic information, target advertising, and offer advertising services to other businesses.

Digital platforms increasingly track consumers online and offline to create highly detailed personal profiles on each of us. These profiles are then used to sell advertising services. These data practices create risks of criminal data breaches, discrimination, exclusion and manipulation.

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Concealed data practices under fire around the world

The ACCC joins a number of other regulators and consumer organisations taking aim at the concealed data practices of the “tech giants”.

This year, the Norwegian Consumer Council published a report – Deceived by Design – which analysed a sample of Google, Facebook and Microsoft Windows privacy settings. The conclusion: “service providers employ numerous tactics in order to nudge or push consumers toward sharing as much data as possible”.

The report said some aspects of privacy policies can be seen as “dark patterns”, or “features of interface design crafted to trick users into doing things that they might not want to do”.

In Canada, an investigation into how Facebook gets consent for certain data practices by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada was highly critical.

It found that the relevant data use policy “contained blanket statements referencing potential disclosures of a broad range of personal information, to a broad range of individuals or organisations, for a broad range of purposes”. The result was that Facebook users “had no way of truly knowing what personal information would be disclosed to which app and for what purposes”.

Is Facebook next?

The ACCC was highly critical of the data practices of a number of large digital platforms when the Final Report of the Digital Platforms Inquiry was published in July this year. The platforms included Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Google.

The report was particularly scathing about privacy policies which were long, complex, difficult to navigate and low on real choices for consumers. In its words, certain common features of digital platforms’ consent processes:

leverage digital platforms’ bargaining power and deepen information asymmetries, preventing consumers from providing meaningful consents to digital platforms’ collection, use and disclosure of their user data.

The report also stated the ACCC was investigating whether various representations by Google and Facebook respectively would “raise issues under the ACL”.

The investigations concerning Facebook related to representations concerning its sharing of user data with third parties and potential unfair contract terms. So far no proceedings against Facebook have been announced.

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94% of Australians do not read all privacy policies that apply to them – and that’s rational behaviour

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Will this change anything?

While penalties of up to A$10 million or 10% of annual turnover (in Australia) may sound significant, last year Google made US$116 billion in advertising revenue globally.

In July, the US Federal Trade Commission settled with Facebook on a US$5 billion fine for repeatedly misleading users about the fact personal information could be accessed by third-party apps without the user’s consent, if a user’s Facebook “friend” gave consent. Facebook’s share price went up after the FTC approved the settlement.

But this does not mean the ACCC’s proceedings against Google are a pointless exercise. Aside from the impact on Google’s reputation, these proceedings may highlight for consumers the difference between platforms which have incentives to hide data practices from consumers and other platforms – like the search engine DuckDuckGo – which offer privacy-respecting alternatives.

Katharine Kemp, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, UNSW, and Co-Leader, ‘Data as a Source of Market Power’ Research Stream of The Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Tracking the storm: the science behind Tropical Cyclone Debbie

Liz Ritchie-Tyo, UNSW

Tropical cyclone Debbie has made landfall in Queensland as a category 4 cyclone with winds of more than 150 kilometres per hour.

The cyclone crossed the coast near Airlie Beach on Tuesday afternoon. Reports of wind gusts in excess of 200km per hour and rainfall of more than 200mm of rain have been made in some areas along the central Queensland coast.

The Bureau of Meteorology forecasted an average to above-average number of Australian cyclones in its October severe weather outlook. Australia receives 11 cyclones on average each year, with about four of those in Queensland. Debbie is the fifth cyclone of the season for Australia as a whole and the most intense of the season so far.

Anomalously high moisture, warm ocean temperatures, and low environmental pressures seem to have created the conditions that allowed TC Debbie to form and grow in intensity.

Perfect storm

Tropical cyclones are low pressure systems that form over warm tropical oceans. The warmth and moisture of the oceans are what gives a cyclone its energy. The low pressure, which meteorologists measure in “hectopascals”, draws in the surrounding warm, moist air, which then rises into deep thunderstorm clouds. As the air is pulled into the centre of low pressure, Earth’s rotation causes it to spin cyclonically and it continues to intensify.

TC Debbie formed at the eastern end of an active monsoon trough extending from the Indian Ocean across the top of Australia and into the Coral Sea. The monsoon trough is a region of low air pressure and thunderstorms that forms over northern Australia in the summer months, bringing with it the wet season. On March 22, a large region of active thunderstorms began to organise into a weather disturbance off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea.

Over the following two days the thunderstorms organised about a circulation centre as sea level pressures began to drop and moist air converged into the area. By late on March 24 a tropical depression, a forerunner of a cyclone, had formed and begun to drift south, making a long S-shaped track.

Tropical Cyclone Debbie was named on March 25. It then came under the influence of the subtropical ridge, a zone of stable high pressure that gives much of Australia’s fine weather during the summer. This drove Debbie west-southwest towards the Queensland coast while it gradually intensified further.

Because of the relatively high amounts of moisture in the atmosphere, and relatively warm ocean waters, Debbie intensified to category 4 by 10 pm on March 27, with the strongest wind gusts reaching 225-280km per hour. On Tuesday afternoon Debbie was a strong category 4 cyclone with a central pressure of 943 hectopascals and surface sustained winds of 185 kilometres per hour. The Bureau of Meteorology downgraded TC Debbie to a category 3 at 4:00 pm EST.

To put Debbie in context, there has been only one cyclone since 1980 to have made landfall in Queensland with a lower central pressure. That was Yasi in 2011.

Of the 46 cyclones to have made landfall in Queensland since 1980, only three others arrived at the coast with pressures of less than 960 hectopascals: Dominic in 1982, Winifred in 1986, and Ingrid in 2005.

Predicting cyclones

Tropical cyclone forecasters use a variety of tools to forecast the storm’s track, intensity, storm surge, and rainfall. Because it is difficult to obtain observations of wind at the ocean’s surface under a cyclone, meteorologists have developed tools based on satellite imagery to estimate a storm’s intensity, location, and where the strongest and most destructive winds are found.

Several models are also used to aid in making forecasts – from the complex numerical weather prediction models, to statistical models. Models start by using observations of the atmosphere, and then use these data to make a forecast.

Depending on their level of complexity the models can predict the future track, intensity, rainfall, wave height, and/or storm surge. The forecasters access all of this information to then make their forecast.

Cyclone forecasts have improved considerably over time. In particular, track forecasts have improved so that the 48-hour forecast is now more accurate than the 24-hour ones were back in the early 1990s. Track forecasting has become so reliable that the US National Hurricane Centre now produces 120-hour track forecasts.

Intensity forecasts have improved more slowly, but as models have become more refined and satellite technology has improved, the ability of forecasters to accurately estimate and predict intensity is also getting gradually better.

The prediction of rainfall, the extent of the damaging wind field, and storm surge forecasts are also slowly improving. Now that they are receiving more attention, we can expect considerable improvements in these over the next decade.

Liz Ritchie-Tyo, Associate Professor, School of Physical, Environmental, and Mathematical Sciences, UNSW

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Through a PRISM darkly: Tracking the ongoing NSA surveillance story

Gigaom

It was a relatively quiet week for internet news until Guardian blogger Glenn Greenwald dropped a bombshell on Thursday, with a story that showed the National Security Agency was collecting data from Verizon thanks to a secret court order. But that was just the beginning: the Washington Post later revealed an even broader program of surveillance code-named PRISM, which involved data collection from the web’s largest players — including Google (s goog), Facebook (s fb) and Apple (s aapl) — and then the Wall Street Journal said data is also being gathered from ISPs and credit-card companies.

This story is moving so quickly that it is hard to keep a handle on all of the developments, not to mention trying to follow the denials and non-denials from those who are allegedly involved, and the threads that tie this particular story to the long and sordid history of the U.S. government’s…

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Mourners Protest Islamic Attacks on Copts in Egypt

Muslim assailant gruesomely slays Christian, attacks two others with knife.

ISTANBUL, September 23 (CDN) — A funeral for a Coptic Christian gruesomely killed on a village street north of Cairo by a Muslim assailant last week turned into a protest by hundreds of demonstrators in Egypt.

Galal Nasr el-Dardiri, 35, attacked 63-year-old Abdu Georgy in front of the victim’s shop in Behnay village the afternoon of Sept. 16, according to research by a local journalist. Other Copts watched in horror as El-Dardiri stabbed Georgy five times in the back, according to interviews by Gamal Gerges, a reporter for newspaper Al-Youm al-Sabeh.

As Georgy fell to the ground, El-Dardiri took his knife and stabbed him four times in the stomach. He then disemboweled him, slit his throat and began sawing off his head, according to Gerges. The Rev. Stephanos Aazer, a Coptic priest who knew Georgy and saw photographs of his mutilated body, said the victim’s head was attached to the body by a small piece of flesh.

After killing Georgy, El-Dardiri got on a motorcycle and rode 30 minutes to another town, where he found Coptic shopkeeper Boils Eid Messiha, 40, and stabbed him twice in the stomach, according to Gerges. El-Dardiri immediately left the scene, went to nearby Mit Afif and allegedly attacked Hany Barsom Soliman. Soliman, a Copt in his mid-20s, managed to fight him off.

Messiha was taken to a hospital where he has been operated on at least five times. He remained in intensive care at press time. Soliman suffered lacerations to his arms but was otherwise unharmed.

On Thursday afternoon (Sept. 17), about 1,000 people gathered at Georgy’s funeral to protest the killing and assaults on Coptic Christians. Protestors chanted that Georgy’s “blood was not [spilled] in vain” as they carried signs that read, “Where are you, government? The terrorists are going to kill us.”

Aazer and several other priests participated in the demonstration. Aazer, of the Behnay area, confirmed that police had been monitoring local Copts and even tracking telephone conversations of clergy.

El-Dardiri was arrested on Thursday (Sept. 17) in Cairo and has been charged with murder. It was unclear when he would appear in court.

Ibrahim Habib, chairman of United Copts Great Britain, said Egypt has encouraged the type of “radicalization” that has led to such attacks.

It is the Egyptian government’s responsibility now to stop the persecution and victimization of its Coptic minority by Islamic fundamentalists,” he said. “The persecution and victimization of the Christians in Egypt has been persistent for three decades and recently escalated to a worrying tempo.”

Habib added that Egypt needs to root out Islamic extremists from government agencies, “including the Egyptian police, which frequently show complacency or collusion with the Islamists against the peaceful Christians.”

Report from Compass Direct News