Re:New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone ...
by pmoriarty on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @01:25PM
(#32155036)
I can believe that some employees of these companies are genuinely shocked and surprised that this is being done, but few will refuse to do it, and fewer still will quit.
The sad fact is that our surveillance society was built with the willing cooperation of countless developers for whom money was far more important than the privacy of their users.
Re:New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone ...
by n4r9 on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @05:31AM
(#32163344)
Framing this as "money vs privacy" is disingenuous. There are many other factors at play. It takes a lot of courage and social/emotional skill to be able to say "no" to a work request in a way that is assertive, respectful, and doesn't lead to becoming a pariah. Consistently doing this in the face of deadlines and incoming requests is a big investment of energy. Switching jobs whenever you find yourself in that position is also a big investment of energy. Not everyone has that energy to spare, for example if they have a young family, are going through bereavement, divorce or moving house, or have a health condition etc... .
I was recently discussing the Uber revelations in an ethical tech group that I run. The most shocking part for me was that at one time the app was designed to behave differently depending on whether the user was categorised as law enforcement based on their usage history.
This surely required complicity at all levels, from management down to engineers and testers.
But someone point out quite astutely that such a feature can be generically framed as "optimise/adapt behaviour based on historical usage". It makes business sense to categorise a user's profession and alter ride costs based on that. All that's needed then is to give a higher-up the control over a dial that effectively nullifies law enforcement's ability to get a ride.