Google ad service raises privacy fears

Is Google's new targeted advertising service a boon to users, or is it Big Brother in disguise?

Google knows more about you than any organisation in human history. It can give you a bird’s eye view of your house, allow friends and family to track your every move through their mobile phones, and through its search engine - knows your likes, dislikes and even your vices. 

Google’s influence over our lives is set to grow further after it anounced today that it will track millions of people as they move through the internet in order work out what their interests are. Using that information, it will then provide targeted advertising to suit users' individual tastes. 

The move was met with fierce criticism. MPs described the new system as the introduction of “big brother” advertising, and leading privacy campaigners said the development was “dangerous”, calling on the government to launch an investigation into the activities of the company to see whether it was becoming too powerful. 

Google’s new system, which launched today, can track users who visit hundreds of thousands of sites that show Google advertising. By following users through these sites, Google is able to display advertising that is relevant to each individual user.

The company said in a statement: “If you love to travel and frequently visit travel-related websites, you’re more likely to see interest-based ads about vacations and travel deals as you surf the web.” 

“If you visit a website that sells pet supplies, you might see an ad from that particular pet supply website the next time you browse other sites showing interest-based ads from Google.” 

Other companies in the online industry have already embraced behavioural advertising of this sort, but privacy campaigners have consistently fought against tracking for advertising purposes. Google calls the system “interest-based advertising”. 

The way the system works is that Google will use a “cookie” - a small piece of data inside a web browser - to track people as they visit one of the sites that display Google advertising. Google will then assign those users to categories based on the content of the pages they visit. For example, someone may be pigeon-holed as a football fan, a car owner or soon-to-be parent, based on the information gathered by Google. 

Google said it would not categorise certain “sensitive” interests which including race, religion, sexual orientation and personal medical information. However, privacy campaigners lambasted the system. “Google might well hype their targeting system as a boon to pet owners, but the reality is that the service will track just about everything you do and everything you’re interested in, no matter how personal or sensitive,” said Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International. 

He added: “The privacy threat from Google is growing by the day. It is now time for parliament to launch a full investigation of the company.” 

In response, a Google spokesperson said: "This is completely untrue. We will not serve ads against sensitive categories full stop, and users can easily opt out of receiving any interest-based adverts entirely." 

The information commissioner’s office said they had been consulted on Google’s plans and were pleased that Google had given users a high level of control over how their information is used. 

But some were less convinced by the security of the system. “‘Big brother’ advertising will soon be hitting our computer screens thanks to Google,” said Tom Brake MP, the Liberal Democrats’ Home Affairs Spokesman. 

“There must also be clear rules about how long the data is kept for, who it can be accessed by and whom it can be sold on to.” 

Behavioural advertising has already been the source of fierce controversy. 

Phorm, a UK-based company that aims to show advertisements based on users’ internet history, has been investigated by the police and the government over privacy concerns. Phorm has attracted interest from UK Internet Service Providers including BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk, although no company has yet introduced the system.  continues here

Council snoopers to get new powers to seize phone and email records - with taxpayers footing the £160m bill

Council snoopers are to be given even greater powers to pry into our phone, email and internet records - landing the taxpayer with a bill of almost £50million. 

Town halls, along with the police, security services, health authorities and other public bodies, will have access to ' communication' records of anyone suspected of involvement in even the most minor crime. 

The powers, which stem from an EU directive supposedly designed to catch terrorists, will even allow police to track down those who have told friends they are planning to harm themselves.

But it will cost the taxpayer £46.58million over eight years to compensate mobile phone companies and internet firms for storing and providing the data. 

Critics said the measure took Britain a step closer to becoming a surveillance state. Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'Yet again the Government have proved themselves unable to resist the temptation to take a power quite properly designed to combat terrorism to snoop on the lives of ordinary people in everyday circumstances.

Councils criticised as 'spying' requests soar to over half a million

The number of official 'spying' requests for private communications data such as telephone records jumped to more than 500,000 last year, it was revealed today.

Use of the techniques by local councils - which only made up a small fraction of the overall total - was criticised by the Chief Surveillance Commissioner, Sir Christopher Rose.

A number of local authorities have been slated for using the spying powers to target relatively minor offences such as fly-tipping.

Today's figures showed the police, security services and other public bodies made 519,260 requests to 'communications providers' such as phone and internet firms for billing records and other information.

The total - amounting to more than 1,400 a day - compared with an average of less than 350,000 requests a year in the previous two years.

The figures emerged in a report by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, who also disclosed that 1,707 requests were made by local councils during the year.

While Sir Paul said he believed 'local authorities could make much more use of communications data as a powerful tool to investigate crime', his fellow commissioner Sir Christopher called for a series of improvements.

He said some councils had a 'tendency to expose lack of understanding of the legislation' and displayed a 'serious misunderstanding of the concept of proportionality'.

Some authorising officers were inexperienced and suffered 'poor oversight', he added.

He called on town halls to invest in properly trained intelligence officers who could operate covertly.

The 519,000 requests allow public bodies to see details such as itemised phone bills and website records but are not 'bugging' requests because, for example, they do not allow monitoring of conversations.

In comparison, there were 254,000 requests in the previous nine months and 439,000 in the 15 months before that - an average of 346,000 a year.

The reports by the commissioners also showed:

• There were 929 warrants signed under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) by the Home Secretary in force at the end of 2007, up from 754 at the end of 2006, plus 28 in Scotland, down from 43;
• The number of authorisations for law enforcement agencies to interfere with someone's property increased from 2,311 to 2,493 in 2007/08, plus 525 operations which were renewed from the previous year;
• There were 355 authorisations for 'intrusive surveillance' - when an operative is authorised to break in to someone's property or a bug is planted - about the same number as in the previous year, plus 77 operations which were renewed;
• Law enforcement agencies authorised 18,767 cases of 'directed surveillance' when a member of the public is followed and their activities recorded - a fall of about 1,000 on the previous year. continues here
  
  
  

Big Brother database recording all our calls, texts and e-mails will 'ruin British way of life'

Plans for a massive database snooping on the entire population were condemned yesterday as a ‘step too far for the British way of life’. 

In an Orwellian move, the Home Office is proposing to detail every phone call, e-mail, text message, internet search and online purchase in the fight against terrorism and other serious crime. 

But the privacy watchdog, Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, warned that the public’s traditional freedoms were under grave threat from creeping state surveillance.

Apart from the Government’s inability to hold data securely, he said the proposals raised ‘grave questions’. 

‘Do the risks we face provide justification for such a scheme in the first place? Do we want the state to have details of more and more aspects of our private lives?

‘Whatever the benefits, would such a scheme amount to excessive surveillance? Would this be a step too far for the British way of life?’ 

It is thought the scheme would allow the police or MI5 to access the exact time when a phone call was made, the number dialled, the length of the call and, in the case of mobile phones, the location of the handset to within an accuracy of a few hundred yards. 

Similarly for e-mails, it would provide details of when they were sent and who the recipients were. Police recovering a suspect’s computer would then be able to trawl through hard-drive records and recover particular messages. The content of telephone calls could not be recovered unless they were being intercepted at the time. 

Mr Thomas’s warnings were backed by privacy campaigners, who claimed such Big Brother powers would give Government agencies unprecedented abilities to trawl through intimate details of ordinary people’s private lives at will. 

He used the launch of his annual report to speak out after ministers signalled their intentions in their programme of legislation earlier this year, describing the new Bill as ‘modifying procedures for acquiring communications data’.

There are fears that the data will be shared with foreign governments – such as the Americans demanding personal details of air passengers – accessed by internet hackers or lost by bungling civil servants. 

Opponents pointed out that town halls are already using extraordinary surveillance powers under the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to investigate minor issues such as littering, or checking whether parents are abusing school catchment area rules, and they could be given access to almost unthinkable levels of personal data under the new scheme.

Currently police and MI5 can access customer records stored by telephone companies, but only with a warrant to examine individual accounts. 

Mr Thomas said: ‘I am absolutely clear that the targeted and duly-authorised interception of the communications of suspects can be invaluable in the fight against terrorism and other serious crime. 

‘But there needs to be the fullest public debate about the justification for, and implications of, a specially created database – potentially accessible to a wide range of law enforcement authorities – holding details of everyone’s telephone and internet communications. 

'Do we really want the police, security services and other organs of the state to have access to more and more aspects of our private lives?’



Opposition MPs said the Government’s dismal records on safeguarding private data – most notably the loss of the entire child benefit database holding millions of people’s financial details – showed it was incapable of safeguarding such a vast volume of information safely, and the scheme should be dropped immediately. An estimated-three billion emails are sent in Britain every day and last year 57billion text messages were sent. 

The Home Office yesterday defended the need to keep its surveillance powers up to date with changing internet technology, and said full details of the plans would be published this year as part of a new Communications Data Bill. 

Officials said the internet was rapidly revolutionising communications and it was vital for surveillance powers to keep up with technology in order to fight serious crime and terrorism.
DNA database

Britain's crime-fighting DNA database was the world’s first, in 1995, and is now the world’s largest. 

Originally samples were taken from those arrested but destroyed if they were not convicted. Today anyone who is arrested - even if innocent - has DNA taken without consent, even if it has nothing to do with the case. It is added to the database, and stays there forever. It is virtually impossible to have it removed. 

Unsurprisingly, new entries are being added at the rate of more than a million a year. continues here 

The EU and the US are edging closer to a deal ensuring data privacy as the two increasingly share sensitive information on their citizens such as credit card details and travel histories in the fight against terrorism. 

A senior EU official said on Tuesday, July 2 the European Union could strike a deal with the United States next year to protect personal data collected on their citizens to bolster the fight against terrorism but warned that important questions still needed to be resolved.

"The work is not over yet, there's still more to be done, but we may look forward I think, if things continue to go well, to an international agreement probably some time next year," Jonathan Faull, director of the European Commission's justice and interior affairs department said at a news briefing in Brussels.

Faull said he and US officials have been holding informal talks over the past 18 months to draft common standards on how data such as credit card details, e-mails or passenger travel records should be handled by authorities.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Faull said the pact would cover data transferred for law enforcement purposes only.

"It's very much in our interests to pin our American friends down to a set of agreed, common -- we hope binding -- principles. We are 70-80 percent of the way there," Faull told reporters in Brussels. But he warned: "The remaining discussions will not be easy."  

Data privacy way to building trust

The EU and the US have been in talks on the sensitive issue of data protection and sharing ever since US officials demanded access to passenger name records (PNR) on flights from the EU to the US in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

While both the EU and the US want to further push data sharing among police and counter-terrorism officials, there is acknowledgement the topic is a sensitive one and both sides say they need to cooperate on data privacy to build trust.

In recent years, privacy advocates and rights groups in Europe have strongly criticized deals with Washington including one giving it access to private data on air passengers travelling to the US and the right to keep the information for 15 years. Another allowed the US government to consult records of Swift, a consortium that tracks global bank transfers, including those of European customers in anti-terrorism investigations.

Reacting to criticism by European lawmakers and rights groups that data-sharing deals lacked privacy protection, a panel of EU and US justice officials set up more than a year ago has sought to assuage fears about privacy erosion.

In a report, the panel concluded that a binding deal on data privacy would be the best way to boost cooperation in fighting crime and terrorism. continues here