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Thursday, January 28, 2021

WhatsApp's New Privacy Policy: Collecting Metadata and Its Implications

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Vaishnavi Krishna Mohan
Vaishnavi Krishna Mohan
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Vaishnavi Krishna Mohan

Article Title

WhatsApp's New Privacy Policy: Collecting Metadata and Its Implications

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Global Views 360

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January 28, 2021

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Representative Image WhatsApp

Representative Image WhatsApp | Source: Rachit Tank via Unsplash

According to WhatsApp’s new privacy policy, the app is set to collect “only” user’s Metadata. Metadata can reveal a lot more than merely the app usage of a person. Former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker stated, “Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata you don’t really need content.”

This article explores the ways in which WhatsApp is underselling the true estimation of the significance of Metadata.

Facebook owned WhatsApp recently announced the update of its privacy policy terms. 8th of February, 2021 was initially set as the deadline for users to either accept the new privacy policy or delete their account. By this time, most of us have already witnessed or been a part of the backlash that WhatsApp is experiencing. LocalCircles conducted a survey and the results indicated that 15% of India’s users are likely to move away entirely from the app while 36% will drastically reduce the usage and 67% of users are likely to discontinue chats with WhatsApp business accounts.

To reinstall trust in its users, WhatsApp released a clarification stating that the new policy update doesn’t compromise privacy of messages with friends and family. Furthermore, it explains that the update includes changes related to WhatsApp business accounts are optional too.

However, owing to severe backlash, WhatsApp has pushed the deadline to May 15 while they further clarify their policy updates.

It is true that WhatsApp cannot read our messages as it is end-to-end encrypted which implies that only a message’s sender and receiver can read it. The updated privacy policy intends to alert users that some businesses would soon be using Facebook-servers to store messages with their customers. By accepting the new privacy policy, users will be allowing WhatsApp to reserve all rights to collect your data and share it with the expansive Facebook and Instagram networks ‘regardless of whether you have profiles on those apps.’

A person using WhatsApp | Source: Andrés Rodríguez via Pixabay

By using WhatsApp, you may now be sharing your usage data, your phone’s unique identifier, your location when the location service is enabled, among several other types of metadata. A culmination of all your metadata is linked to your identity.

The value of metadata has been underestimated since the term isn’t clearly understood. Metadata is data about our data. For instance, in a cell phone conversation, the conversation itself isn’t metadata but everything except that is metadata. Data regarding who you called, how long you spoke for, where you were when you placed the call, where the other person on the line was and the time you placed the call. Consider a situation when every time you made a call to someone, you had to inform a particular person about who you called, how long you spoke for, when and where and all other details except the content spoken. This applies for every single call and everyone else’s metadata is also being recorded. The person owning the metadata can analyze and tell a lot about your personal life. Who you work with, who you spend time with, who you are close to, where you are at particular times and so on…

Kurt Opsahl, in his post in the Electronic Frontier Foundation, gives an example of how companies and governments collect intimate details about your life with the disguised use of the word called metadata. The following examples are an excerpt of his article:

“They know you rang a phone sex service at 2:24 am and spoke for 18 minutes. They know that you called suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge.

They know you spoke with an HIV testing service, then your doctor, then your health insurance company in the same hour.

They know you called a gynaecologist, spoke for a half hour, and then called the local Planned Parenthood's number later that day. But nobody knows what you spoke about.”

Metadata provides more than required context to know some of the most intimate and personal details of your lives.  When this data is correlated with the records of other phone calls, one can easily obtain a lot more data and track our daily routines. This is merely about phone calls. WhatsApp includes a lot more features and will collect metadata of chats, businesses and money transactions.

In WhatsApp’s words:

“We collect service-related, diagnostic, and performance information. This includes information about your activity (such as how you use our Services, how you interact with others using our Services, and the like), log files, and diagnostic, crash, website, and performance logs and reports.”

In addition to this, WhatsApp also collects information about IP address, OS, browser information and phone number.

Stanford’s computer scientists conducted an analysis to understand the extent of intrusion of privacy using metadata. The scientists built an app for smartphones. The app was developed to retrieve metadata of calls and text messages from more than 800 volunteers’ phone logs. The researchers received records of more than 250,000 calls and 1.2 million texts. Their inexpensive analysis revealed personal details of several people like their health records. Researchers were also able to learn that one of their participants owned an AR semi-automatic rifle with only metadata.

Gen. Michael Hayden | Source: Wikimedia

Gen. Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency once stated that “the U.S. government kill[s] people based on metadata.”

In 2016, Facebook was involved in the infamous data privacy scandal which centered around collection of personal data of over 87 million people by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting and strategic analyst firm. The organization harvested user data for targeted advertising, particularly political advertising during the 2016 U.S. election. While the central offender was Cambridge Analytica, the apparent indifference for data privacy to Facebook facilitated Cambridge Analytical and several other organizations.

In June 2018, Facebook confirmed that it was sharing data with at least 4 Chinese companies, Huawei, Oppo, Lenovo and TCL. Facebook was under scrutiny from the U.S. intelligence agencies on security issues as they claimed that the data with the Chinese telecommunication companies would provide an opportunity for a foreign espionage.

In September 2019, there were reports that the Indian government contemplated making it mandatory for companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, to share the public data of users.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) was planning on issuing new guidelines under the Information Technology Act which according to which tech giants would have been required to share freely available data or the public information that they collate in the course of their operations, including traffic, buying and illness patterns.

Europe is exempted from WhatsApp’s new privacy policy as EU antitrust authorities fined Facebook 110 million euros for misleading the regulators during the takeover of WhatsApp in 2014. EU’s strict privacy laws empowers regulators to fine up to 4% of global annual revenue of the companies that breach the bloc’s rules.

Your Metadata is extremely personal. By giving WhatsApp the authority to access it, you are giving access to several other organizations, businesses and it also makes you more vulnerable to third-party hackers and trackers. WhatsApp has given multiple assurances about its updated privacy policy being noninvasive. However, most of these assurances are cleverly worded and misleading statements. It is important to read through the fine print of the new policy before accepting it.

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February 13, 2021 8:54 PM

Black Lives Matter: Looking back at the journey of racial justice movement as a Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

The killing of George Floyd by a police officer in the state of Minnesota, has confronted the people of the United States in particular and the Western World in general about the existence of deep-rooted racism which has remained even after the Civil Rights movement and many decades of progress.

The years of racial discrimination led to the emergence of the Black Lives Matter (often abbreviated as BLM) movement. The BLM movement has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel peace prize as well.

This article explains the BLM movement, it's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize as well as its symbolics importance in the lives of the black people. In other words, it looks back at the journey of this racial justice movement as a Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

What is the Black Lives Matter movement?

The BLM movement started in 2013 after George Zimmerman—a white man—shot dead—black teen—Trayvon Martin—to death in 2012. The term “Black Lives Matter” was taken from the tweet of a woman named Alicia Garza, which turned into a trending hashtag and later into the name of the whole movement, co-founded by herself, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.

The movement aims at equality and racial justice for Black people and highlights the injustices and oppression against them.

Furthermore, there is also strong resistance from the police and usage of military weapons against the black protestors as compared to the white ones, a kind of systematic racism which was clearly visible during the Storming of the Capitol Hill.

When a black person named George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minnesota on 25 May last year, the movement gained momentum and there were solidarity protests not only in America, around the globe—including countries like the UK, France, Australia and Germany. There were even violent protests in some parts of the US, and in some places the right wing groups clashed with these protestors.

The Movement Growing Profusely

A pro-right wing ruling government, where the President himself was criticised for being racist on several occasions and the upcoming elections led to increasing dissent—furthering the growth of the movement. George Floyd became the face of the movement along with many other black people who lost their lives before due to systematic racism—some names in the unfortunately endless list were Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, . The movement also started getting the support of Hollywood celebrities, who supported the movement on their social media handles.

Amidst of all this, a similar killing of yet another black person, named Jacob Blake happened, which sparked the protests further.

“The group has called for defunding the police for at least five years”, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah told CNN. Some of the protestors believe that defunding the police could decrease such incidents.

In June, after pressure from BLMLA and massive protests, the Los Angeles City council unanimously approved a measure to develop an unarmed model of crisis response that would replace police officers with community-based responders for nonviolent calls.

Corrine Basabe, a black woman, started the George Floyd Justice Billboard Committee. Because of that, there are also billboards in cities like Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC, which are made for people to see regarding the Black Lives Matter movement and the killing of George Floyd. This way, many people driving through the roads could be reminded of what happened.

Featuring an oil painting by New York City artist Donald Perlis, a white, the billboards also include a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." His painting was also displayed in New York’s Times Square.

When asked what she hopes for BLM's future, co-founder Patrisse Cullors said she knows the movement will win. "I know this because our work is full of love, healing and dignity," she said. "And we centre Black people's humanity and life over our death and decimation."

Backlash

The movement faced backlash from various right-wing groups like The American Patriot and Proud Boys. There was a slogan “All Lives Matter” from the Anti-BLM protestors, which minimises the problems faced by the black community in their daily lives. The then President Donald Trump also refused to condemn the right-wing groups and he defended the police instead of supporting the Black people’s cause.

In Arizona, Rep. Walt Blackman, a Black GOP member of the Arizona Legislature labelled BLM as a “terrorist organisation” in an interview with Fox News Radio affiliate KFYI.

There are a lot of post-truth narratives defaming the BLM movement.

Nomination for Nobel Peace Prize

As mentioned earlier, the BLM movement has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel peace prize, for the way they spread and called for a systematic change in the world, through non-violent protests. It has been nominated by a Norwegian MP.

In his nomination papers, the Norwegian MP Petter Eide said the movement had forced countries outside the US to tackle racism within their own societies.

“I find that one of the key challenges we have seen in America, but also in Europe and Asia, is the kind of increasing conflict based on inequality,” Eide said. “Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice. They have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice.”

He said that one other thing that impressed him about the BLM movement was the way “they have been able to mobilise people from all groups of society, not just African-Americans, not just oppressed people, it has been a broad movement, in a way which has been different from their predecessors.” He has previously nominated human rights activists from Russia and China for the prize.

His written nomination concludes: “Awarding the peace prize to Black Lives Matter, as the strongest global force against racial injustice, will send a powerful message that peace is founded on equality, solidarity and human rights, and that all countries must respect those basic principles.”

Nominations for the Nobel peace prize are accepted from any politician serving at a national level, and they are allowed only 2,000 words to state their reasons. This year’s deadline was February 1, and the committee prepares a shortlist by the end of March. The winner is chosen in October and the award ceremony is scheduled for 10 December. The World Food Programme was the winner last year.

The movement deserves the nomination, and if it is declared the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, then it’s going to be a huge win for the Black people and will give a push towards an ideal where there will be no racism.

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