Eyes in the sky

Orwell’s nightmarish vision of society is very much upon us. So much so that George himself would have been amazed as to what extent his futuristic vision has become reality, even stretching beyond his own imagination. As technology gradually developed, one has become accustomed to an assortment of techniques used by governments, public services and workplaces to keep a close eye on society. Elaborate biometrics, front end verification, data matching, profiling, cross-system enforcement and multi-purpose identification schemes, along with enhanced powers to undertake telephone, email and web use surveillance, have all become part of everyday life. Video surveillance, meanwhile, has become wildly ubiquitous in most corners of the world.

Beating the public sector to it, consumer marketing companies have adopted ever more sophisticated ways to retrieve, analyse and utilise personal data and shopping habits in order to gain consumer intelligence, and spread the info to external parties.

Stepping up the campaign to watch our every move and action, quite literally, Apple is currently at the receiving end of a privacy breech row sparked by the controversial discovery that it plans to monitor its iPhone and iPad users via an encrypted tracking file. The secret file was discovered by two British researchers, and their potent find quickly created media frenzy, both within the blogosphere and among traditional media outlets. Denying the allegations, the company CEO, Steve Jobs, directed the attention to Google instead, claiming that the rival company’s Android phone indeed tracked the whereabouts of its customers, while Apple did not. Offering a statement shortly after the news surfaced, if not officially, a much buzzed email between an iPhone user and Mr Jobs himself read as follows: “Could you please explain the necessity of the passive location-tracking tool embedded in my iPhone? It’s kind of unnerving knowing that my exact location is being recorded at all times. Maybe you could shed some light on this for me before I switch to a Droid. They don’t track me.” Mr Jobs is said to have replied: “We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false. In response to the customer’s claim that Android doesn’t track users, Jobs simply replied: ‘Oh yes they do.”

A curtly phrased email didn’t end the drama surrounding that case. Backing the researcher’s findings, a patent filed by one of Apple’ senior engineer managers, Ronald Huang,  sheds light on the fact that the company does indeed plan to use the data mined from tracking its users. Mapped out in the patent application number 12/553,554, which was filed in the U.S. in March 2011. Apple intends to create a ‘Location History’ map which will allow it to track users’ movements on a searchable programme. According to Gawker.com, the first online publication to report on the news, the document describes how the database could be ‘correlated or related’ to other personal information, such as data associated personal pictures,  financial transaction, sensor outputs data, communication and network events and, and so on. Invading its customers privacy yet further, the patent application also spells out that data will be forwarded to remote servers or, to use the precise description, a ‘remote reference database’, assumingly without consent from the user.

Rotten to the core
Suggesting that Apple has been planning this move for some time and is serious about its innovation, details about data compression has also been discovered. The latest developments, according to claims made in the Wall St Journal at the end of April, is that the secret file embedded in iPhones and iPads is designed as to track users even when the ‘location services’ tool is switched off. Location data is an invaluable tool to advertisers as it provides the most key information a mobile phone can offer, namely the consumers’ whereabouts as well as details on where they’re heading and even what they might purchase once they reach their destination, along with precise details how long they stayed at said commercial outlet.

Previously, both Mr Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt have admitted that they use location data for Wi-Fi for databases. Recognising the seriousness of the situation, Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.), the chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, wrote a letter to Apple demanding an explanation for its elaborate master plan. A fragment of the letter read: “The existence of this information — stored in an unencrypted format — raises serious privacy concerns. The researchers who uncovered this file speculated that it generated location based on cell phone triangulation technology. If that is indeed the case, the location available in this file is likely accurate to 50 metres or less. Anyone who gains access to this single file could likely determine the location of a user’s home, the businesses he frequents, the doctors he visits, the schools his children attend, and the trips he has taken-over the past months or even a year.” Franken then went on to list a series of points and questions for Apple to answer with regards to the exact nature of the patent, and how precisely the data gathered by the company would be used.

Due to his health concerns, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did not make an appearance on Capitol Hill to testify in congressional hearings on the tracking file discovery. Senator Al Franken held the hearing from May 10, under the theme “Protecting Mobile Privacy: Your Smartphones, Tablets, Cell Phones and Your Privacy.” Alongside Apple, representatives from Google attended to testify.  As the controversy gathered force, Jobs saw no choice but to come forward ahead of the hearing, to answer some of the questions posed by senators, privacy campaigners and consumers. He posted the following responses on Apple’s website on April 27:

1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone?
Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.

2. Then why is everyone so concerned about this?
Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date.

3. Why is my iPhone logging my location?
The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available. These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.

Your home is your castle. Or is it?
Another privacy busting occurrence that made the headlines in May 2010, is the instance when Google entered every WiFi wireless router in every UK household in its database. The information was collected by radio aerials via the company’s Street View cars, and the data gathered was intended for Google’s Maps Mobile application designed to help smartphone users access local information to the such as the location of restaurants, cinemas, theatres, shops and hotels. The project remained under wraps until an inquiry in Germany revealed the nature of the operation, forcing Google to admit that it had “mistakenly” downloaded data packets. In cases where the networks targeted lacked password protection, the downloads retrieved by the search engine giant may even have encompassed fragments of emails and other potentially sensitive information. Coming to its own defence, and by doing so making matters more spine-chilling for the public, Google claimed that other companies had also adopted the same scheme.

Google claims that the information, which lists the networks’ MAC (Media Access Control) address and SSID (Service Set-ID) number, but not the corresponding house number, is publicly available since the wireless network signal extends beyond the property in which it’s located. Following the contentious bust-up, Google suspended the use of Street View cars across the world, but their work in Britain is already complete, and most homes in the country have been added to the database.

In response to the widespread critique, Google offered that they had not notified data protection authorities because they didn’t think it necessary, but admitted that clearer transparency “would have been better”. To create some order amidst the chaos, a string of different authorities, including those in Britain and the US, have asked Google to retain the downloaded emails pending a full inquiry but as yet, a year later, it is unclear what their obligations are concerning the WiFi data.

Ardent privacy campaigners claim that the liberties taken by Google and their competitors point to the fact that regulation policies are crumbling.  Privacy International- a UK based organisation whose raison d’être is to defend personal privacy- strongly believes that the street view innovation will in the future be viewed as a breach of law, and that Google should never have been allowed to get away with its intrusive project.

“There should be a parliamentary inquiry which should question Google and finally get it to explain what it is up to both technically and commercially. The idea that it can log everyone’s wi-fi details because it is all ‘public’ is a bogus argument. It is bogus because of the question of scale and the question of integration with other information which would amount to a huge breach of our privacy,” said a spokesperson of Privacy International.

Being partially directed to the ICO (Information Commisioner Office), the organisation under fire responded:  “We are aware that the collection of information by Google Street View cars has raised a number of issues which we are considering. “All organisations that process personal information must comply with the requirements of the Data Protection Act. “Organisations are only permitted to collect data for a specific purpose. Similarly, organisations must only retain data for as long as necessary.”

The advancement of biometrics
Not only is data such as location tacking movements and emails recorded these days, our very bodies and facial features are being scrutinised and kept on file, too. At the end of March 2011, an international alliance of organisations and individuals from 27 countries lodged a petition calling on the Council of Europe to start an in-depth survey on the collection and storage of biometric data by member states, in view of the fact that European governments have increasingly started to store biometric data of fingerprints and facial scans from individuals. Personal scans recorded include contactless ‘RFID’ chips used for passports and/or ID cards. Some nations – France, Lithuania and the Netherlands among them – have even implemented database storage.