[PLUG] Big Data Surplus (Surveillance Capitalism)

[Mike C.]

> All major operating systems now include a checkbox for "anonymous usage
and metrics reporting". It records mouse/keyboard inputs, I/O logging data,
and other HID related activities and reports it to a server to "help
> improve the quality of the service". This is literally biometric data....
>

Yes. And I generally don't mind providing anonymous usage data in the event
of a catastrophic failure of the app.

And you're right, it's "biometric", even though I and I'm sure many others
don't think of it that way. I was going to challenge your statement, but
quickly discovered that biometric data can be physiological and/or
behavioral. "Behaviometrics" as researchers call it.

>And the thing I thought most interesting was the vendor neutral tone of
the video.
>

I didn't pick up on that. Probably b'cuz I immediately jumped to the well
known usual suspects.

> It's possible that there is a single data center, or
> cluster of data centers dedicated to the task, and all of these
supposedly competing vendors are part of the same infrastructure. A single
company whose flagship product is habit-based ad campaigns.
>

Starts to wander in to the tin-foil hat zone, but when I did a quick search
on "anonymous usage and metrics reporting", on of the top results was for
"The Chrome User Experience Report."

"The Chrome User Experience Report is powered by real user measurement of
key user experience metrics across the public web, aggregated from users
who have opted-in to syncing their browsing history, have not set up a Sync
passphrase, and have usage statistic reporting
<https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/whitepaper.html#usagestats>
enabled.
The resulting data is made available via:

   1. PageSpeed Insights
   <https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/>, which
   provides URL-level user experience metrics for popular URLs that are
known
   by Google's web crawlers.
   2. Public Google BigQuery project
   <https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/dataset/chrome-ux-report:all>, which
   aggregates user experience metrics by origin, for all origins that are
   known by Google's web crawlers, and split across multiple dimensions
   outlined below."



>
> Now I'm itching to buy a Purism device just to see if they have the same
little checkbox. I would literally bet someone $50 that Purism is
collecting HID metrics while adhering to their commitment of privacy and
security.

Yes, I'm very interested to learn more about Purism and HID metrics.