‘Small boat’ photos could be censored in the UK, Google’s abortion data problem, the low wage workers behind AI
When Edward Snowden showed just how much mass surveillance the U.S. government carries out each day, many in the digital privacy field thought it would mark a turning point for the U.S. We thought people would start to care more about their privacy and that legislators would make policies to protect it. But this never quite took hold. It didn’t help that Snowden wound up in Russia, the ultimate surveillance state. For years, friends and family would say to me things like, “I don’t like it, but I don’t worry about it either. I have nothing to hide.” Ten years after the fact, I think the tide may finally start to turn.
The real-life effects of mass surveillance by state and corporate actors are becoming difficult to ignore. ProPublica brought one to the surface this week, with a hard look at data collection on websites that sell abortion-inducing medications. Reporters found third-party trackers collecting users’ search history, location, device information and a unique browser number that can be tied to the individual. With no data privacy laws standing in their way (and HIPAA doesn’t apply here), all this data is funneled to companies that serve online ads, Google being the largest. Since Google knows a whole lot about most of us — thanks to Gmail, Google Maps and a half a dozen other services that you probably used today — the company is now (perhaps unwittingly) in possession of a lot of information about who’s getting or seeking an abortion. If you’re doing this in a state where abortion is now illegal, your data could be obtained with a subpoena and presented in court. How do you like your privacy now?
Indian officials don’t want anyone to see a new BBC documentary about the 2002 riots in Gujarat. Invoking “emergency powers,” the government ordered YouTube to censor clips and Twitter to remove links to the film. My colleague Shougat Dasgupta wrote for Coda that the film “held Narendra Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, ‘directly responsible’ for enabling three days of horrifying violence…[that] resulted in the deaths of a thousand people — nearly 800 of them Muslim.” The ban has only made people want to see the film more. University students have begun holding screenings in defiance of police and university authorities.
And the U.K. Parliament might ban images of immigrants arriving on small boats that depict such scenes in a “positive light.” The ban could be tacked onto a bill that claims to be about online safety. Proponents say that this will help reduce “illegal immigration” and reference organized crime groups that have used social media to promote transiting by sea. If this absurdity should somehow become law, Big Tech companies like Meta and Google will have to fish out pictures and videos of these scenarios and remove them from their sites. How do you teach an AI to find this stuff? With underpaid human labor, of course. More on this below.