Of course this setting is only half realistic:

• Every policeman would have to have a smartphone and use it during work time
• Every policeman would have to install the app of the criminal
• The criminal can distinguish between policemen and other people using the app (should be possible with data mining)
• The criminal can decide weather the policeman is currently working or in leisure time

But it should show and demonstrate the dangers…

To conclude:

We have to disallow policemen to use private smart phones during work! Or if they do so they must not install any applications from a source they don’t trust. And here is the crucial point. Who to trust and who not? Trust usually is created through social ties. So if the app is there and some policemen like the service and recommend it to their coworkers trust is created. Who does really ask about the source of an app and about who is running/owning the data servers. A service that is well known on the web can easily run by 2 or 3 people and even if they are nice it is easy to manipulate or blackmail them in order to get access to these very sensitive data.
And on another more technical topic: We need a decentralized mobile space. There has to be a frequency on which people are able to set up their own transmitters and create decentralized mobile networks. It is a shame that those frequencies are all owned by companies creating centralized services.
By the way this would be a good solution since it would also enable the police to have their own decentralized mobile networks giving them privacy against third parties!

Disclaimer:

I never thought I would write an article in this paranoid way telling people what is possible and where the risks are. I almost feel like a member of ccc, anonymous or finally like a real pirate. But one year of PhD in a very data driven environment having social networks, information retrieval and the web as a focus really makes me understand more and more what is possible (in particular easy to achieve). Also the low awareness of society about these dangers (probably due to the complex technologies) overwhelms me and makes me feel like I have to act and at least inform people.
To bad that mostly people who are already aware of these topics read my blog. Maybe I have to go geek and create this app to demonstrate the functionality in order to really rise awareness. There are just too many interesting things to do during a PhD program so I think this time only writing about this has to be sufficient.

Data liberation front needs to be improved

What happens if Page & Brin aren’t there anymore?

All this comes at a very high price.

Since I started blogging and working on my PhD, I also started to use Twitter. So I wanted to download a Twitter app from the Android app market. It is incredible that the official Twitter app asks permission to access my phone’s address book. Remember, my phones address book is just a copy of my Gmail address book. I see how it helps Twitter to increase their service but to me, it became just too easy to share very sensitive data with companies that you might not (?) trust. I wonder whether the service Twitter offers to us will really improve that much if we share our private address book with the company. In my opinion, the small improvement we get does not justify their need to access my private address book. What would I have to promise someone to have a copy of his address book?

Can I escape?

I decided not to install the Twitter app. But does that really make sense? I guess most people don’t mind. After all, it is Twitter, a well known brand, that asks for the data. Additionally, Twitter is a communication service, so it makes sense to share this kind of data. However, even if I don’t share, Twitter can still guess the entries of my address book. Most of my friends who use Twitter with an android phone will probably accept the terms and condition of the Twitter app. Does not installing the app really help to protect my and my friends(!) privacy?
It is amazing that I am thinking right now about the consequences of blogging my experience of interviewing with Google when exactly this company creates structures that make us all sit in a glass house! I am very sure that this is intentionally like this. Please don’t missunderstand me. My first impression of Android is very good and I knew before that it encourages you in several ways to share data with anyone. Still, Android is probably one of the most useful tools which were brought to customers within the last ten years. I am only pointing out that things are changing very fast these days.

Which Android apps do I need?

So far I have:

• Google Maps
• Gmail
• Google Search
• Google Voice Recognition
• Google Reader
• Google News
• Tweetdeck (without sharing my address book !)
• Ankidroid
• Google Docs
• Google Calendar

What else would you suggest? And no, I don’t want a Facebook app. (-:

Eli Parisers reply to my mail

It’s a good catch — I wasn’t aware that AddThis was doing that. In the long run, we’re hoping to move away from that plugin for a number of reasons, but it’s fine to point out if you’d like — it does underscore the point that one can miss this happening under one’s own nose.

1. Our Search History.
2. Our location – verfied -> more information
3. the browser we use.
4. the browsers version
5. The computer we use
6. The language we use
7. the time we need to type in a query
8. the time we spend on the search result page
9. the time between selecting different results for the same query
10. our operating system
11. our operating systems version
12. the resolution of our computer screen
13. average amount of search requests per day
14. average amount of search requests per topic (to finish search)
15. distribution of search services we use (web / images / videos / real time / news / mobile)
16. average position of search results we click on
17. time of the day
18. current date
19. topics of ads we click on
20. frequency we click advertising
21. topics of adsense advertising we click while surfing other websites
22. frequency we click on adsense advertising on other websites
23. frequency of searches of domains on Google
24. use of google.com or google toolbar
25. our age
26. our sex
27. use of “i feel lucky button”
28. do we use the enter key or mouse to send a search request
29. do we use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through search results
30. do we use advanced search commands  (how often)
31. do we use igoogle (which widgets / topics)
32. where on the screen do we click besides the search results (how often)
33. where do we move the mouse and mark text in the search results
34. amount of typos while searching
35. how often do we use related search queries
36. how often do we use autosuggestion
37. how often do we use spell correction
38. distribution of short / general  queries vs. specific / long tail queries
39. which other google services do we use (gmail / youtube/ maps / picasa /….)
40. how often do we search for ourself

Uff I have to say after 57 minutes of brainstorming I am running out of ideas for the moment. But this might be because it is already one hour after midnight!
If you have some other ideas for signals or think some of my guesses are totally unreasonable, why don’t you tell me in the comments?
Disclaimer: this list of signals is a pure guess based on my knowledge and education on data mining. Not one signal I name might correspond to the 57 signals google is using. In future I might discuss why each of these signals could be interesting. But remember: as long as you have a high diversity in the distribution you are fine with any list of signals.

Apple:
“6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to assist it in finding my location today?
This data is not the iPhone’s location data-it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.
7. When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes continue updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple’s crowd-sourced database?
It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below).”

This is redicoulus! This is no bug!

I have been developing software for many years. There are bugs in software developement. In this case it is very obvious that someone acted with full awareness of what he was doing. Thanks to this article and this piece of software I was able to extract the geo data from Nasir Naveed’s iPhone. Have a look at the table that he made available.

Apple is lying and distributing wrong information.

In their press release they state the following:

Apple:
“3. Why is my iPhone logging my location?
The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.”

Note the lie that location tracking with GPS can take several minutes! If that was true how come every GPS in a car is working right away? Modern GPS in cars are able to quickly calculate the locations even in moving objects that are changing location quite frequently.

Apple is receiving your profile of motion

Apple:
“5. Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
No. This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data.”

It is true that for most research cases I can all of a sudden think of Apple does only need the anonymous data. but let’s be realistic. Even if Apple really would send over this data in an anonymous way. They could still do a meshup with the usual data they collect (your phone calls) and would probably be able to identify you quickly. In any case they have never asked your persmission!

Apple is obviously not even thinking to change its politics

Apple:
“In the next major iOS software release the cache will also be encrypted on the iPhone.”

ok tht is the coolest part! In Future iOS Apple will still store the data on your phone. They will probably still send it back to the Apple servers. But don’t wory, the data on your phone will be encrypted so that no one else but Apple can access the data! (not even yout) Thank you Apple! You must really be telling the truth when you say:

10. Does Apple believe that personal information security and privacy are important?
Yes, we strongly do. For example, iPhone was the first to ask users to give their permission for each and every app that wanted to use location. Apple will continue to be one of the leaders in strengthening personal information security and privacy.

Help to stop Apple spreading missleading information

It is very sad to see how a lot of big news sites are just skimming Apples press release and thereby help Apple to spread wrong and confusing information. Please pass on what you have discovered right now and don’t let Apple win over your privacy. Just use your Facebook account or Twitter.
Btw I don’t know about the law in other coutries but in Germany you have a two year warrenty for your product. So if this really is a bug this means that you could probably return your iPhone and get back your money. Have you ever considered to change away from your iPhone or have been unsatisfied? Well now is great moment to change!

Please send me your i phone’s location data

In the quoted blog  article and piece of software it is explained how you can extract your moving behaviour from your I phone. Apple has this data without even asking you. I am a researcher and I can think of many scientific usecases. So please do not only share your data with Apple but also with some people here in University. Just attach the logfile you extract from your iPhone to an email to r.pickhardt@gmail.com. I promise I will anonymize your data and only share it within the scientific community.
Btw you can find the full press release here

Google is filtering and personalizing search results

Eli is pointing out a thing some people might have already noticed. If two different people search for the same thing on Google it is very probable that the search results will be very different. Google is doing this without telling the user that it is acutally filtering the results based on what the algorithm thinks the user might like. According to Eli Pariser Google is using 57 signals to determine the interest of us. Among those we find:

• Our Search History.
• Our location
• the browser we use.
• The computer we use
• The language we use
• find my list of almost 57 signals google might use to filter

Of course this kind of personalization has its good sides. When I am about to buy a new notebook computer y I definitely want to see different Websites if I live in Germany or in the US. This could be due to tax and shipping fees. Which means that I am most probably interested in local stores and not in oversea shops. Still this personalization and filtering is a huge potential for serious problems. Let me ask a few questions:

• What happens if Google misinterprets our 57 signals?
• What happens if I only receive results from a certain type?
• What if I rely to the fact that I have access to all kind of information?
• …

We might think we get all the information we need. But in reality we are becoming blinded by the filters Google is using. We have no chance to determine what other information is filtert and potentially available for a certain topic. On the other hand due to the amount of information we need filters and computers to help us. But the systems should be more transparent!

Facebook is also filtering the newsstream from your friends:

I have always been thinking Facebook’s huge success is strongly correlated to the fact that there is hardly Spam on Facebook and the information economy is very smart and user friendly. The attention of users to status updates is very high making facebook a great place for every company to do online and viral marketing. This of course contributes to Facebook’s reach. In fact the information architecture on Facebook is even so smart that your 20’000 followers on Facebook might not receive your status updates since Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm decides it is not relevant to your fans or friends. Edgerank might not have 57 signals but it still takes into consideration:

• who your fans are friend with
• what other news they like
• how heavy they have interacted with you in the past
• the time passed since your last status update
• …

Great news isn’t it? Just compare this with my statement in a recent blog post about creating newsletters as a musician in order to communicate with your fans and not solely rely on other services like Facebook or MySpace.
You don’t believe the Facebook thing? There is a video about the EdgeRank algorithm used by Facebook to determine which status updates should reach us and which shouldn’t. Feel free to have a look and thanks to the guys from Klurig Analytics for producing such a great video resource:

So what can we do?

1. We should join the discussion in order to pursue Google, Facebook and others to become more transparent.
2. We should be aware of the fact that a lot of information might not reach us.
3. Even though more and more information is made available through the Internet we should not become lazy and rely on all these great web services.
4. Last but not least you can help to spread the information about this topic! As we have seen only if a lot of people spread the information it breaks through the filtering system. And this topic is worth to be spread!

Again thanks a lot to Eli Pariser to start this discussion!