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This weekly blog is to explore the news around the larger issues around Digital Health, data security, data privacy, AI / ML. technology, social media and related matters.
I will also try to highlight ADHA Propaganda when I come upon it.
Just so we keep count, the latest Notes from the ADHA Board were dated 6 December, 2018 and we have seen none since! Its pretty sad!
Note: Appearance here is not to suggest I see any credibility or value in what follows. I will leave it to the reader to decide what is worthwhile and what is not! The point is to let people know what is being said / published that I have come upon.
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'I feel naked without it': 99 per cent of smartphone users experience 'nomophobia'
January 3, 2021 — 12.00am
New research suggests nearly all Australian smartphone users experience "nomophobia" – or fear of being without their mobile phones - and more than one in eight have severe symptoms associated with illegal or dangerous behaviour.
A national survey of more than 2800 smartphone users found 99 per cent exhibited some degree of nomophobia. While 37 per cent had only mild symptoms, nearly half experienced the phobia in the moderate range and 13 per cent had a severe case.
Nomophobia includes the fear of not being able to communicate, losing connectivity, not being able to access information and giving up convenience.
Lead researcher Fareed Kaviani, a PhD candidate at Monash University, said nomophobia was different to fear of leaving the house without your wallet or keys because it was associated with compulsive use.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1c578e60-c2ee-4e39-854b-2c91f0f9ead1
Australia’s Proposed New Online Trolling Laws: Labelled Toughest in the World
Criminal Defence Lawyers Australia
Online bullying, threating, intimidating, abusing and revenge porn are proposed to carry heavy fines of up to $111,000 for individual people, and more than $500,000 fine for corporations including Facebook and Twitter, for failing to take down such offensive material, or for failing to disclose the identities of the perpetrators.
Many millions of Australians communicate via social media, conduct their businesses and jobs.
While the technology provides great advantages, it also provides a platform for tragedy, namely online or cyber bullying or trolling. Arguably, the law must draw the line between free speech and maintaining the ability to express your views or opinions.
Victims of online abuse need protection, and “a lack of legislation in the online space affects us all- even if you are not online”, says sports news presenter Erin Molan.
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From Zoom to Quibi, the tech winners and losers of 2020
By BARBARA ORTUTAY and MAE ANDERSON
December 30, 2020 — 11.45am
We streamed, we Zoomed, we ordered groceries and houseplants online, we created virtual villages while navigating laptop shortages to work and learn from home. In many ways, 2020′s pandemic-induced isolation threw our dependence on technology into overdrive, snipping away at our real-life connections while bringing digital relationships to the fore.
But for every life-changing Zoom, there was at least one soon-forgotten Quibi. Here's a look at the year's tech winners and losers.
LOSERS
Virtual Reality
As the world adjusted to a new stuck-at-home reality, the pandemic could have been virtual reality’s chance to offer an escape. With the use of special headsets and accouterments like gloves, the technology lets people interact with a 360 degree view of a three-dimensional environment, seemingly a good fit for people stuck indoors.
But people turned to easier-to-use software and games that they already had. Few rushed to spend hundreds of dollars on a clunky new headset or tried to learn the ropes of virtual reality meeting software. And no VR games broke into the mainstream. So virtual reality, on the verge of success for decades, missed its moment, again.
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What Big Tech does in the shadows: Shunning social media won't protect your privacy
Sacha Molitorisz
Academic and author
December 30, 2020 — 12.03am
Imagine you’re someone who doesn’t like social media, and who doesn’t want a social media presence. Problem is, social media can build a profile of you anyway. Maybe it already has. That’s because of the interconnected nature of our data. You appear in photos that other people post; you feature in other people’s conversations; and anyway, digital companies can accumulate data about you from other sources. They can buy it, and they can "infer" it.
Profiles of non-users are known as "shadow profiles". Researchers have shown that they’re easy to build, as long as a social network is big enough. For its part, Facebook denies having them, but does admit to collecting data on non-users to keep users safe. And shadow profiles are just one of the major challenges when it comes to protecting privacy in a digital age.
Currently, a major reform of Australia’s privacy law is underway. Indeed, it’s part of a range of media law initiatives and reforms, many stemming from the ACCC’s Digital Platforms Inquiry. Other initiatives include: the news media bargaining code, which saw legislation introduced to Parliament this month and looks set to make Google and Facebook pay for news content; the development of a voluntary code of practice to combat mis- and dis-information; and defamation law reform. To cap it all, late last month the federal government released its "Media Reform Green Paper", which seeks to link spectrum and licensing reform to investment in Australian content and local news.
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How conspiracy theories led a 'fringe scientist' to escape quarantine
By Harriet Alexander
December 29, 2020 — 5.35pm
Trapped under quarantine and ravaged by allergies in a Perth hotel room, Jenny D'Ubios slid into an internet vortex of conspiracy theories in the week before her Boxing Day escape.
The self-described "fringe scientist" shared with her Facebook followers articles about the dangers of 5G, a post by an anti-fluoride group that suggested coronavirus was a hoax, a video about the COVID-19 test (which was blocked by Facebook) and support for Reignite Democracy Australia, an activist group that sprang up in protest against the Melbourne lockdown.
Anti-COVID testing, anti-COVID vaccination and heavily populated by COVID-deniers, Reignite Australia was a group that clearly spoke to Ms D'Ubios and emboldened her to take drastic action against her confinement. By her seventh day in quarantine, she was spitting with fury.
"Everyone in the world is lazy and fearful," she said in a video posted to Facebook.
"They're going to use the army to mass vaccinate you for a 0.03 per cent contraction rate of a virus that doesn't exist with a 99 per cent healing rate. I'm done having to suffer because people won't stand up for their rights.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=40e338f0-5807-495b-9c11-b6b48d2e167d
Australian privacy law reforms: insights from the OAIC's submissions
While much will depend on the final form of any legislative amendments, those amendments will inevitably increase the administrative and financial costs associated with compliance with the Privacy Act for businesses.
Further to our recent article about the Federal Government's review of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Office of the Australian Information Commission (OAIC) last week made its submission to the Federal Government.
The OAIC broadly supports the Federal Government's proposed review of the Privacy Act and has identified four key foundations to the review – the opportunity to:
- encourage global interoperability;
- enable privacy self-management;
- ensure organisational accountability; and
- align privacy regulation with community expectations.
Impact on individuals
Recent studies[1] suggest that most individuals are uncomfortable with privacy policies and only accept them because the cost of opting out (typically the inability to obtain the goods or services) is too high.
The OAIC's recommendations seek to empower individuals by:
- ensuring that individuals are able to exercise meaningful choices and control by understanding how their personal information is being handled through notice and consent;
- when personal information is collected from an individual, and that information is used or disclosed, requiring the entity to ensure that the use or disclosure is fair and reasonable;
- introducing an independent third-party certification scheme to allow individuals to quickly assess the data protection offered by the entity;
- prohibiting the scraping of personal information from online platforms, inappropriate surveillance or monitoring of individuals through audio or video functionalities on an individual's devices, profiling and monitoring of children, and certain uses of AI technology to make decisions about individuals; and
- granting individuals a direct right of action to enforce breaches of the Privacy Act or the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), coupled with a statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy.
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Facebook, Amazon surpass Australian government revenue
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Dec 28, 2020 – 2.59pm
The combined revenue of Facebook and Amazon has surpassed that of the Australian federal government for the first time in history, heightening security concerns around the rapidly growing power of technology companies in areas of information and commerce.
Facebook and Amazon brought in a combined $US391 billion ($518 billion) in revenue for the last reported 12 months, while the federal government's actual revenue collection for financial year 2020 was $469 billion.
The rate of revenue increase for the tech giants is faster than that of the government and comes as they display their growing power, rolling out end-to-end encryption across platforms at the same time as rejecting up to one in five data disclosure requests from Australian law enforcement bodies.
Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs Michael Pezzullo has expressed his concern over the growing strength of the tech giants and their threat to institutions and the prosperity of nations.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c3adfcd8-58f3-45d0-8ef9-ca205d23b484
Directors and officers will face increased exposure for cyber related incidents
22 December, 2020
In what has been dubbed 'big cyber game hunting', companies the world over are experiencing an increase in the volume and severity of cyber-attacks.
The direct financial impact, supply chain interruption and reputational harm that often flows means that companies and their officers are facing increased scrutiny in the aftermath of an incident.
Business interruptions losses, mega fines and share price drops are providing the ideal feeding ground for onlookers. Regulators, shareholders and the public watch on to examine what directors and officers did or did not do to prevent such events, or to mitigate the impact of the event on the company.
We predict that in 2021 there will be a rise in the number of claims under non-cyber policies which have as their genesis in a cyber related incident.
Over the years, the US has seen a number of cyber related securities class actions which seek to recover losses suffered by shareholders after a cyber security incident. Given the volume of cyber incidents being experienced by companies outside the US, it is only a matter of time before we see this trend follow in other jurisdictions.
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Comments more than welcome!
David.
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