By Aishwarya Jagani

As governments and airlines worldwide prepare to issue “vaccine passports” — digital details of a person’s COVID-19 immunization status — privacy advocates are concerned over the security and privacy risks the documents pose. 

“Any information shared digitally is at risk of being leaked,” Alexis Hancock, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told Digital Privacy News. 

“And without good digital-privacy law internationally, this information can become easily associated with the rest of a person’s data without their knowledge and informed consent.”

Critics expressed fears that these digital passes could put sensitive medical and health data in the hands of authorities and law enforcement, endangering the privacy of millions of citizens.

By Robert Bateman

Facebook recently claimed it had achieved a “paradigm shift” in AI development after training its algorithm on a billion Instagram photos.

But experts in privacy and AI ethics told Digital Privacy News that they were concerned about Facebook’s lack of transparency and proper risk assessment.

Facebook’s SEER (self-supervised) AI can correctly identify images 84.2% of the time after processing one billion “random, public, and non-EU images from Instagram,” according to a March 5 research paper released by company.

While most AI development relies on using labeled images to help algorithms distinguish among objects, self-supervised AIs are trained on unlabeled images.

By Mary Pieper

The Utah House of Representatives passed a bill last week to regulate the use of surveillance and data-collection technology by government entities or their contractors. 

If signed by Republican Gov. Spencer Fox, the legislation would establish two personal privacy officer positions, one appointed by Fox and the other by State Auditor John Dougall, also a Republican, as well as a privacy oversight commission. 

The bill, sponsored by House Majority Leader Frank Gibson, R-Mapleton, may be the first of its kind in the nation.

The House passed the legislation March 4 on a unanimous procedural vote after the Utah Senate approved it earlier in the day.

According to the bill, known as H.B. 243, any Utah governmental agency, whether on the state or local level, that uses technology for personal data-collection or contracts with a company to do so is subject to privacy testing, Gibson told Digital Privacy News. 

New Apps Gauge Worker Moods, Though at Great Privacy Risks

By Joanne Cleaver

Take a deep breath. Center your thoughts. Be in the moment. 

If that felt good, your employer might like to know about it — especially through apps that tracked how you feel, as well as when and whether your inner peace converted to better work. 

Mindfulness apps like Calm, Headspace, Moodbeam and others rode the COVID-19 coattails to record financial and user results last year, according to company data and news reports. Employee-benefit versions of their services played a big part in their revenue and user growth.

But peace and privacy don’t always coexist easily, privacy consultants and lawyers told Digital Privacy News.

By Linda Childers

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, cash payments and checks were becoming a distant memory.

This past year, many small businesses and individuals have continued to embrace such cashless payment solutions as Venmo and Zelle, allowing consumers to make payments by transferring funds electronically.

While Venmo, a financial platform owned by Paypal, lets consumers send and accept payments directly to friends and small businesses, Zelle gives the option to send money directly from one bank account to another. 

“These types of payment systems don’t offer the same protection as your credit cards,” Scott Augenbaum, a retired FBI agent in Nashville, Tenn., told Digital Privacy News.

By Rachel Looker

If you use your personal device for work-related business and think your information is safe, the outcome of a 2014 federal lawsuit in Texas may make you reconsider.

Saman Rajaee was hired to provide sales and marketing for Design Tech Homes, a custom builder in Houston, according to court documents.

The job required constant email access — and the company provided him with no smartphone. Rajaee used his personal device to connect to the company’s server. 

When Rajaee gave his two weeks’ notice, he was immediately terminated. Days later, his iPhone 4 was wiped remotely and reset to factory settings.

By Nora Macaluso

When Deutsche Bank, the global financial-services company, issued a recent report recommending that Big Tech invest $15 billion over five years to help bridge the racial technology gap, it included the finding that just one in 20 African Americans cited privacy as their primary concern relating to technology. 

Privacy, the September report suggested, might be a “luxury” in light of more pressing inequities keeping Blacks and Hispanics out of the workforce.

Researchers told Digital Privacy News that data was lacking on privacy and people of color.

“I’ve been doing a big literature review,” said Elissa Redmiles, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany.

By Robert Bateman

In a change of policy, Facebook will allow Australian users to view and share news content the platform, reversing a decision made last week in response to the country’s proposed News Media Bargaining Code.

The code, expected to pass into Australian law later this month, would require Facebook and Google to pay news media outlets whenever users shared links or snippets of content on the platforms.

In a news release Monday, Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president of global news partnerships, said the company had reached a deal with the Australian government that would allow it to “retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook,” and would no longer “automatically be subject to a forced negotiation.”

News-sharing capabilities would be resumed “in the coming days,” Brown said.