Riders and overriders…
U.S.
Authorities Get Access to Data Stored on Overseas Cloud Servers
A $1.3 trillion spending deal that President
Donald Trump signed Friday includes a measure that gives U.S.
investigators access to data stored on overseas cloud servers,
resolving a long-running legal battle between law enforcement and big
tech companies.
But the measure drew widespread criticism from
privacy and human-rights activists, who suggested U.S. tech
companies—under pressure in Washington—had retreated on the
issue. They also suggested the bill could leave data stored in the
U.S. vulnerable to demands...
Every change has a downside? Probably not total
doom, but some impact among informed users.
Facebook
Fallout Could Deal Blow to Legitimate Academic Research
… The data at the center of the scandal was
supposedly collected for research purposes through an online
personality quiz app in 2014. Created by Cambridge University
psychologist Aleksandr
Kogan, the app required that users grant access to parts of their
profiles, and in turn allow it to draw information about their
friends as well. Kogan then turned that information — collected
from tens of millions of users — over to Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook claims that when it found out about the violation of its
terms in 2015, it was assured the data had been deleted. (It
hadn’t.)
… Although Facebook has cut back on the amount
and types of data it shares with third-party companies since then,
drawing
information through apps like the one created by Cambridge
Analytica is fairly routine. With tighter
controls on this and other methods of data collection in the
pipeline, however, researchers may soon encounter more red tape.
Moreover, those who require audience engagement in their work may
find it harder to recruit participants.
“People who consented thought it was for
science,” Casey Fiesler, an assistant professor in the Department
of Information Science at the University
of Colorado Boulder, told
The Guardian of Kogan’s quiz. “Will people stop wanting to
participate in studies?”
(Related) Oh the horror, the horror. Ah… Wait.
Maybe not.
Why Nothing
Is Going To Happen To Facebook Or Mark Zuckerberg
As Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal
spiraled
into chaos this week, a frantic hail of notes from Wall Street
analysts reached investor inboxes with a clear and definitive
directive: Buy.
… Analysts told investors to buy the dip.
Advertisers kept spending. Legislators continued to sit on their
hands while a basic ad transparency bill rotted in Congress. And
though users posted #DeleteFacebook en masse, Facebook actually rose
to 8th place from 12th in the iOS mobile App Store since the day
before the Cambridge Analytica news broke. It’s holding steady on
Android, too.
… Amid a weeklong reaming from legislators,
press, and public, Facebook relied on a playbook
that’s worked effectively during its past crises, be it in failing
to rein in fake
news, or subversive
foreign activity, or discriminatory
ad targeting: The company first downplays the problem, then
hunkers down as outrage builds. When it can no longer ignore the
outrage, it speaks up and apologizes, rolls out some fixes, and
returns to normal. Facebook has had practice at this sort of thing,
and it’s gotten good at it.
Something for mu Architecture students to ponder.
An
announcement on January 24 didn’t get the large amount of
attention it deserved: Apple and 13 prominent health systems,
including prestigious centers like Johns Hopkins and the University
of Pennsylvania, disclosed an agreement that would allow Apple to
download onto its various devices the electronic health data of those
systems’ patients — with patients’ permission, of course.
It could herald truly disruptive change in the
U.S. health care system. The reason: It could liberate health care
data for game-changing new uses, including empowering patients as
never before.
… Frustration has increased interest in a very
different approach to data sharing: Give patients their data, and let
them control its destiny. Let them share it with whomever they wish
in the course of their own health care journey.
Several technology companies — including Google
and Microsoft — tried this in the early 2000s, but their efforts
failed.
… A world in which patients have ready access
to their own electronic data with the help of facilitators like Apple
creates almost unfathomable opportunities to improve health care and
health. First, participating patients would no longer be dependent
on the bureaucracies of big health systems or on understaffed
physician offices to make their own data available for further care.
This could improve the quality of services and reduce cost through
avoiding duplicative and unnecessary testing.
Second, the liberation of patients’ data makes
it possible for consumer-oriented third parties to use that data
(with patients’ permission) to provide new and useful services that
help patients manage their own health and make better health care
choices. Such consumer-facing applications — if they are designed
to be intuitive, useable, and accurate — have the potential to
revolutionize patient-provider interactions and empower consumers in
ways never before imagined in the history of medicine. Imagine
Alexa- or Siri-style digital
health advisors that can respond to consumer questions based on
users’ unique health care data and informed by artificial
intelligence. Health care could start to function much more like
traditional economic markets.
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