Yes, indeed, Jim...
Willow
On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 12:51 PM Jim Farmilo <akfarmilo2@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
My covey of friends in the late sixties used to say at the end of a storyWillow
"I don't know if this is true or not but it might as well be".
No matter how little or how much we accept modern "conveniences", we give
up choice and options... independence... every time. Cake mix: gave up
fresh eggs, butter, extra vanilla you really like for the convenience of
open box, stir, bake. Purchase from Amazon: gave up visual inspection,
personal sizing, supporting local community. Phone apps of all kinds: gave
up personal interactions, gave up privacy.
Where is the line? The danger, as this story illustrates, is that we give
up more than we realize and allow a lot of "others" to manage our lives.
None have our individual best interests at heart.
..Jim
On Jun. 11, 2022 2:16 p.m., Willow Arune <walittleboots9@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[image: NYTimes.com/Canada]
<https://www.nytimes.com/canada?te=1&nl=canada-letter&emc=edit_cnda_20220611>
June 11, 2022
‘A Mass Invasion of Privacy’ but No Penalties for Tim Hortons
[image: Author Headshot]
<https://www.nytimes.com/by/ian-austen?te=1&nl=canada-letter&emc=edit_cnda_20220611>
By Ian Austen
<https://www.nytimes.com/by/ian-austen?te=1&nl=canada-letter&emc=edit_cnda_20220611>
One way to figure out how deeply Tim Hortons is woven into Canada’s fabric
is a cross-border comparison. If McDonald’s, perhaps its closest analogue
in the United States, wanted to have the same per capita reach in that
market as Tim Hortons boasts in Canada, it would have to roughly triple its
13,000-plusAmerican outlets.
“What happened in Tim Hortons is also happening elsewhere,” Daniel
Therrien, the federal privacy commissioner, said.Ian Austen/The New York
Times
Despite being foreign owned since 2014
<https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/burger-king-to-buy-tim-hortons-for-11-4-billion/?te=1&nl=canada-letter&emc=edit_cnda_20220611>,
Tim Hortons still waves the Canadian flag as vigorously as it can. But last
week, a scathing report
<https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/opc-actions-and-decisions/investigations/investigations-into-businesses/2022/pipeda-2022-001/?te=1&nl=canada-letter&emc=edit_cnda_20220611>
by
the federal privacy commissioner and three of his provincial counterparts
laid out in great detail how Tim Hortons ignored a wide array of laws to
spy on Canadians, creating “a mass invasion of Canadians’ privacy.”
“As a society, we would not accept it if the government wanted to track
our movements every few minutes of every day,” the federal privacy
commissioner, Daniel Therrien, said in his last official news conference.
“It is equally unacceptable that private companies think so little of our
privacy and freedom that they can initiate these activities without giving
it more than a moment’s thought.”
The vector for Tim Hortons’ large-scale snooping, according to the report,
was its mobile phone app, which was downloaded 10 million times in the
three years following its introduction in 2017. At first, the app had
typical retail functions involving payment, loyalty points and placing
orders.
Continue reading the main story
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But the privacy commissioners found that in 2019, Tim Hortons slipped in a
new feature. With the help of Radar, a geolocation software company based
in the United States, it turned the GPS systems in customers’ phones into a
corporate snooping tool. Many apps, of course, ask users for permission to
access their phones’ GPS while they’re actively using the apps for
potentially useful features like locating the nearest outlet of a store,
bank or restaurant.
The Tim Hortons app, however, went far beyond that, tracking users around
the clock anywhere in the world — even when the app was closed. It recorded
not only their geographic location, but whether that location was a house,
factory or office and even, in many cases, the name of the building they
were in. It even, according to the report, recorded whether they were
popping into rival coffee shops. The continuous tracking took place despite
users being told that they would only be tracked while using the app.
Originally, the report found, Tim Hortons intended that the system would
track individuals to send them specific promotions, like coupons for a Tim
Hortons stand if they were, say, at an arena for a hockey game. It dropped
that plan to monitor individuals but did use the data, in an aggregated
form, to look for patterns and changes in where and when Canadians picked
up their double-doubles.
The report goes on to detail a wide range of other deficiencies, like
inadequate protection of the data the app was harvesting, and deceptions in
privacy statements.
Continue reading the main story
<https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=50&emc=edit_cnda_20220611&instance_id=63800&nl=canada-letter&productCode=CNDA®i_id=58601195&segment_id=94867&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F866f37ce-f955-5ad0-8b00-6caea09e466f&user_id=a787d2ae9e18c260fce8499c5e0a2efd&fbclid=IwAR3vgVFygj7HLT5eKkCZrNI_3hbN97WRulgiTWc2qNDKXk3EuVLaBWxyZ2E#a11y-skip-universal-1>
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The tracking system was only shut down in June 2020 after the joint
privacy investigation began. It was prompted by an article in The
National Post
<https://financialpost.com/technology/tim-hortons-app-tracking-customers-intimate-data?te=1&nl=canada-letter&emc=edit_cnda_20220611>
by
James McLeod, who discovered that the app was constantly documenting his
whereabouts, even when he was overseas on vacation.
When the report was released, Mr. Therrien and the other privacy
commissioners made it clear that Tim Hortons had breached the privacy of
Canadians to an extraordinary extent.
“Geolocation data is incredibly sensitive because it paints such a
detailed and revealing picture of our lives,” he said, adding that “the
risks related to the collection and use of location information remain
high, even when ‘de-identified,’ as it can often be re-identified with
relative ease.”
While there are some class actions against Tim Hortons underway, the
company has not been fined or penalized under federal or provincial privacy
laws.
Continue reading the main story
<https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=50&emc=edit_cnda_20220611&instance_id=63800&nl=canada-letter&productCode=CNDA®i_id=58601195&segment_id=94867&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F866f37ce-f955-5ad0-8b00-6caea09e466f&user_id=a787d2ae9e18c260fce8499c5e0a2efd&fbclid=IwAR3vgVFygj7HLT5eKkCZrNI_3hbN97WRulgiTWc2qNDKXk3EuVLaBWxyZ2E#a11y-skip-universal-2>
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The Tim Hortons app recorded its users’ movements.Ian Austen/The New York
Times
The app remains available for download on both iPhones and Android phones.
(I asked Apple and Google if the tracking software violated their app store
policies or if they had taken any action against Tim Hortons. Neither
company got back to me.)
In an email, Tim Hortons said that it began its own privacy review in 2020
and is implementing all of the recommendations in the privacy commission’s
report.
“We’ve strengthened our internal team that’s dedicated to enhancing best
practices when it comes to privacy and we’re continuing to focus on
ensuring that guests can make informed decisions about their data when
using our app,” the company said.
Mr. Therrien and outside experts have long argued that Canada’s privacy
laws, or its system for enforcing them, are in need of substantial
revision. It took a journalist to discover what Tim Hortons was doing, the
official investigation dragged on for nearly two years and, ultimately,
there were no penalties. Only Quebec’s privacy office currently has the
power to impose fines, but the maximum penalty it could have imposed on Tim
Hortons, whose corporate parent had sales of $2 billion in 2020, is 10,000
Canadian dollars.
“The laws have no teeth,” Jill Clayton, the information and privacy
commissioner for Alberta, told the news conference.
Mr. Therrien said that the Tim Hortons case is not an isolated example —
it’s just the one that was exposed.
“It is clear that what happened in Tim Hortons is also happening elsewhere
in the collection-of-information ecosystem,” he said. “Are there sufficient
safeguards? Clearly not.”
--
Willow
I learn a little every day, most of which I forget the day after...
--
