Category: Privacy

Internet users are constantly surveilled—advertisers collect and purchase mass volumes of consumer data and then use that data to serve highly targeted ads back to consumers. Surveillance advertising not only harms consumer privacy and autonomy by using highly personal data in ways that consumers do not expect; it also worsens inequity by enabling predatory and discriminatory ad targeting. EPIC has long advocated for consumer privacy, autonomy, and equity by pushing for greater legislative and regulatory protections for consumers from the harms caused by surveillance advertising.

In response to public pushback to surveillance advertising, some companies are implementing their own changes. Google is rolling out Ad Topics, its new framework for targeted advertising on Chrome. Ad Topics is part of Google’s Privacy Sandbox Initiative. Ad Topics was preceded by FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts), which would have organized users into groups based on their browsing history and served ads to users based on their assigned group. Google ended the FLoC project after facing criticism that the tool would harm user privacy and exacerbate discriminatory and predatory ad targeting. Google claims that Ad Topics incorporates feedback and criticism to the FLoC proposal, but the new system—like all “self-regulatory” approaches to privacy—fails to provide the systemic and reliable protections that consumers need.  

The implementation of Ad Topics plays a key role in Google’s plan to stop supporting third-party cookies on Chrome in 2024. Chrome will be the last major browser to stop supporting third-party cookies on its platform—Apple’s Safari began to block third party cookies by default in 2017, and Mozilla’s Firefox did the same in 2019. After falling behind its competitors and facing criticism for previous plans to phase out third-party cookies, Google now touts Ad Topics for its benefits to user privacy and transparency. But Google’s new tool is far from a perfect solution to the harms of surveillance advertising.

To implement Ad Topics, Chrome infers interest-based categories, called “topics,” by evaluating users’ browsing history. For example, some of the topics include Rap & Hip Hop Music, High Intensity Interval Training, Women’s Clothing, and Child Care. The Topics API assigns a topic label to websites based on the content of the website. Users are assigned a new topic associated with their most frequently visited websites each week. For example, if a Chrome user seeking a loan visited multiple online lending sites in a week, that user could be assigned the “Credit & Lending” topic. In the initial rollout of Ad Topics, only 469 broad topics are included, but the topic taxonomy could expand in the future. Google states that it “aims to maintain a topics list that does not include sensitive categories (i.e. race, sexual orientation, religion, etc.).” Chrome will automatically delete topics after four weeks. Google states that topics are selected locally on users’ devices and that users’ topic data is not shared to external servers. To use topic data to serve an ad, Chrome…

The various state laws are problematic because of their “spectrum of strength,” said co-panelist Alan Butler, the executive director of EPIC. 

Citing a recently passed Washington health privacy data bill and the pioneering California privacy bill as examples of strong legislation, Butler observed that the myriad of other state laws in many cases raise as many questions as they answer. 

The McMorris Rogers-led bill that died last Congress was a strong enough bill to be worth the tradeoffs privacy advocates had to swallow, Butler said. 

He worries about the prospects for a similar bill passing this Congress, saying there’s a lot of “uncertainty” right now. 

Comprehensive federal privacy legislation is not meant “to cement the past,” Butler said. “It’s meant to change the status quo and we believe that the bipartisan federal legislation that we and many others gave input on last year did that in a strong way.” 

Read more here.

On September 21, 2001, the Dow Jones industrial average posted its largest weekly loss (14.3 percent) since the Great Depression.

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SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 108 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

1. The photovoltaic power specialists at Quantum Harvest LLC  are providing a store-wide 10% off coupon. Depending on the model chosen, this could be worth more than $2000.
2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any of their one, two, or three-day course (a $1,095 value),
3. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
4. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
5. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.
6. Two sets of The Civil Defense Manual, (in two volumes) — a $193 value — kindly donated by the author, Jack Lawson.

Second Prize:

1. A SIRT STIC AR-15/M4 Laser Training Package, courtesy of Next Level Training, that has a combined retail value of $679
2. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
3. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC.
4. Montana Survival Seed is providing a $225 gift code for any items on its website, including organic non-GMO seeds, fossils, 1812-1964 US silver, jewelry, botany books, and Montana beeswax.
5. A transferable $150 FRN purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun. There is no paperwork required for delivery of pre-1899 guns into most states, making them the last bastion of firearms purchasing privacy!

Third Prize:

1. A $300 gift certificate from Good2Goco.com, good for any of their products: Home freeze dryers, pressure canners, Country Living grain mills, Emergency Essentials foods, and much more.
2. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
3. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
4. A transferable $150 FRN purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun.

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More than $840,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. We recently polled blog readers, asking for suggested article topics. Refer to that poll if you haven’t yet chosen an article topic. Round 108 ends on September 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Yesterday, a district court judge in California enjoined enforcement of the state’s Age-Appropriate Design Code, or AADC, based on a dangerously overbroad reading of the First Amendment. The case, brought by big tech advocacy group Netchoice, threatens the viability of existing and future privacy legislation, including efforts to minimize the amount of information tech companies collect and use for targeted advertising and surveillance. EPIC submitted an amicus brief alongside others seeking to defend the law.

The AADC is different than other kids safety laws being challenged across the country. While other laws seek to block kids (and adults) from accessing certain types of content, the AADC requires companies that collect and use kids’ data to assess how their use of data can harm kids. These kinds of assessments are common corporate accountability measures that are found both in non-privacy laws in the United States and privacy laws around the world. The law also includes basic data protection and transparency requirements found in many current and proposed privacy laws in the United States.

The constitution does not make privacy protections impossible, but the court’s decision could do just that. The arguments advanced by Netchoice and adopted by the district court go against the entire premise of internet governance and would tie the hands of lawmakers and regulators at the exact moment when their work is desperately needed to rein in the unchecked power of tech companies. This dangerously overbroad view of the First Amendment also threatens the validity of privacy laws already on the books. But freedom to speak is not freedom to siphon data from unsuspecting internet users and use it against them. We reject Netchoice’s view that the First Amendment is a tool for the preservation and expansion of corporate power and will continue to support the fight to protect the AADC in the Ninth Circuit.

In comments to the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, EPIC encouraged the agencies to include data protection and consumer privacy as factors in the newest Merger Guidelines. The DOJ and FTC recently sought public input on their draft Merger Guidelines, which will supersede existing guidelines to better reflect market realities in the modern economy. EPIC’s comments explain that, in our data-driven economy, businesses’ mass accumulation of personal data can have anticompetitive effects that further undermine consumer privacy and data security. Mergers frequently involve the consolidation of data sets, which “can entrench a firm’s dominant market position, raise barriers to entry for new and smaller firms, and exacerbate the effects of harmful consumer data practices.” To promote competition and protect consumer privacy, EPIC urged the DOJ and FTC require that data consolidation and consumer privacy be considered in the review of future mergers.

For more than twenty years, EPIC has encouraged the FTC to weigh consumer privacy in the merger review process between companies that engage in data collection. EPIC has continued to argue that acquisitions by these types of dominant firms can lead to a reduction in both competition and privacy protection.

Today, EPIC published a new report detailing the risks of AI systems purchased and used by state governments. Across the country, state and local agencies are outsourcing important government decisions to private companies and their AI tools—all without meaningful public input or oversight. These systems assign children to schools, inform medical decisions about patients, impact policing decisions about where to patrol and whom to target, determine who receives public benefits, and more. And they are all developed and operated by private companies like Deloitte, Thomson Reuters, and LexisNexis.

EPIC’s report, Outsourced & Automated: How AI Companies Have Taken Over Government Decision-Making, builds on two years of research into state AI procurement and includes insights gleaned from 621 different contracts. Part One of the report describes the various risks that private AI systems pose when used for government decision-making, including data privacy risks, issues involving AI bias and reliability, and undermining government accountability. Part Two traces the AI vendor landscape across the country, highlighting three procurement processes that vendors can use to embed their AI systems within state agencies and ten vendors that take the lion’s share of state AI funding. Part Three proposes four paths forward, including AI audits, stronger contract language, more options for legal recourse, and reprioritizing non-AI government decision-making.

Generating Harms: Generative AI’s Impact & Paths Forward is part of EPIC’s AI & Human Rights Project, which advocates for transparent, equitable, and accountable AI regulations. For more information on EPIC’s report, visit EPIC’s dedicated webpage.

The Justice Department filing claims that Twitter was in “privacy compliance chaos” after Musk took over, according to John Davisson, director of litigation at the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). “Responsible officials exited the company, security controls were abandoned, products were introduced or radically altered with no attention paid to user privacy,” Davisson said. “Musk’s erratic decision-making repeatedly put the privacy of users at risk and clearly violated the 2022 consent decree.” 

If the government finds that Twitter violated the consent decree, it has a few options, Davisson and McGee told Quartz. It can negotiate a third consent decree and levy an even bigger civil penalty than the $150 million Twitter agreed to pay in 2022, it can sue Twitter and hash it out in court if the company won’t agree to settle, it could impose an independent monitor to oversee Twitter’s compliance, or it could limit the ways Twitter makes money off of user data. 

Read more here.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit focused on bolstering the right to privacy, defines data brokers as companies that collect and categorize personal information, usually to build profiles on millions of Americans that the companies can then rent, sell or use to provide services. The data they collect, per EPIC, can include: “names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, gender, age, marital status, children, education, profession, income, political preferences, and cars and real estate owned.” 

That’s not to mention “information on an individual’s purchases, where they shop, and how they pay for their purchases,” plus “health information, the sites we visit online, and the advertisements we click on. And thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and wearables, data brokers collect and sell real-time location data.” 

Privacy advocates have warned for years that location and seemingly non-specific personal data — often collected by advertisers and amassed and sold by brokers — can be used to identify individuals. They also charge that the data often isn’t well secured and that the brokers aren’t covered by laws that require the clear consent of the person being tracked. They’ve argued for both legal and technical protections so that consumers can push back. 

Read more here.

On September 15h, 1950, United Nations troops landed at Inch’ŏn, South Korea, crippling a North Korean invasion during the Korean War.

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The position recently mentioned in: Opportunity for Retreat Group Membership in a Secure Bug Out Location is still available. If you are interested, then let us know. To clarify: The retreat is located in Kansas.

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SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 108 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

1. The photovoltaic power specialists at Quantum Harvest LLC  are providing a store-wide 10% off coupon. Depending on the model chosen, this could be worth more than $2000.
2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any of their one, two, or three-day course (a $1,095 value),
3. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
4. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
5. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.
6. Two sets of The Civil Defense Manual, (in two volumes) — a $193 value — kindly donated by the author, Jack Lawson.

Second Prize:

1. A SIRT STIC AR-15/M4 Laser Training Package, courtesy of Next Level Training, that has a combined retail value of $679
2. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
3. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC.
4. Montana Survival Seed is providing a $225 gift code for any items on its website, including organic non-GMO seeds, fossils, 1812-1964 US silver, jewelry, botany books, and Montana beeswax.
5. A transferable $150 FRN purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun. There is no paperwork required for delivery of pre-1899 guns into most states, making them the last bastion of firearms purchasing privacy!

Third Prize:

1. A $300 gift certificate from Good2Goco.com, good for any of their products: Home freeze dryers, pressure canners, Country Living grain mills, Emergency Essentials foods, and much more.
2. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
3. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
4. A transferable $150 FRN purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun.

—

More than $840,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. We recently polled blog readers, asking for suggested article topics. Refer to that poll if you haven’t yet chosen an article topic. Round 108 ends on September 30th, so…

One sees many flags at half-mast across the country today. And rightly so. Thanks in part to the negligence and incompetence of the CIA and FBI, the Federal government  failed disastrously at what it tells us is the regime’s number-one priority: public safety.  

[Read More: “9/11 Was a Day of Unforgivable Government Failure” by Ryan McMaken]

More than 2,900 human beings died that day, the overwhelming majority of which were civilians working in ordinary private-sector jobs. Most of them paid taxes for many years to the government which told them that the government keeps them safe. Many victims continue to die to this day from illnesses caused by inhalation of building debris. 

But the response to 9/11 has done far more damage to the republic than the perpetrators of 9/11 ever could. Even worse, the regime’s architects of the countless assaults on freedom and human rights that have come in the wake of 9/11 have never been punished.

After 9/11 we were forced to endure nearly two decades of major wars. The Iraq war relied on post-9/11 fears to push the narrative that Saddam Hussein had weapons that could be used to attack Americans. US regime mouthpieces repeatedly hinted that Saddam maybe had planned or funded the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban in Afghanistan were essentially blamed for training the terrorists said to have perpetrated 9/11. (The fact that the Saudis were likely bankrolling the terrorists was carefully avoided.)  In the end, the wars did absolutely nothing to enhance either the freedom or the safety of Americans. Thousands of American families have paid for these pointless wars with their own blood or with the blood of their sons and brothers and fathers. Hundreds of millions of Americans continue to pay for the wars through higher taxes to service war debts, and through the inevitable price inflation that has come after two decades of runaway spending.  All this, of course, ignores the hundreds of thousands of innocent foreign victims of the regime. 

On the domestic front, we’ve also fallen victim to 20 years of the federal government shredding the rights supposedly protected by the Bill of Rights. Between the Patriot act, the TSA, countless abuses of the FISA court, and non-stop spying on peaceful Americans, the federal government’s “war on terror” has largely been a war on Americans. Or as Patrick Eddington put it in 2021: 

From the creation of the sprawling, privacy invading Department of Homeland Security (2002) to the passage of the FISA Amendments Act (2008, required to make portions of the previously illegal Stellarwind program legal) to the Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) Quiet Skies passenger surveillance programs (2012) to the burgeoning use of facial recognition by law enforcement at all levels, we now live in an age where our buying habits, web browsing history, air travel records, social media posts and more can be collected, analyzed and weaponized against us — often with little or no pretext or true, valid criminal predicate. … In all the ways that matter, Americans are now viewed by their government as suspects first, citizens second. 

Ridiculously, all of this has…