The End of Privacy as We Know It?

These young reporters must be fans of NPR ...this style of interviewing has long been a staple of NPR reporting... re privacy...young people don't care...in fact they want recognition, they seek out exposure, even compete for it--any attention is better than no attentions which = loneliness for many people...if giving up privacy means more likes, who cares about a lock down on personal details...

This is very heavily biased reporting. A private startup company that does a great deal to solving crime by scanning images posted to the internet which is a public tool. Sure there is issues implicated like how it is controlled but the reporters made this to be a one-sided argument. When the founder agreed to be interviewed, you put him under alot of suspicion. Introducing him as being dubious with your own background check reporting he grew up in Australia yet he did not have an Australian accent. He left when he was 19 and now somewhere in his 30's. Living in the USA does effect an accent greatly. (I know after a year there it did quite a bit to me also.) That they are monitoring their site as it is being developed you raised concern when law enforcement entered the reporters photo and the company gave a followup phone call to the police out of concern. This is valid concern and reporting may come under biased scrutiny. The narrative was one of suspicion with a mysterious soundtrack and bad sound recording during his interview. He made a very pertinent point about how it is only available to police as a very effective security tool likening it to guns and how everybody has access to those in America. Yet your overriding narrative could only put forth a one-sided argument. You may also think that when I sought to make a comment here on your forum I needed to submit my social media details that now you may profile.

Can someone help me with something, what was the soundtrack for this episode ? The one that started playing towards the end, before Barbaro made the closing part. Thanks.

In 1992 I formed a company to deal with what I anticipated as "the modern internet" that could someday destroy privacy so completely that existence as we knew it would slowly sink into a "Roil of fear" - unsureness, loathing, or worse. The company "UDR, Underwriters Digital Research." was to defeat this Roil. A Roil is aqueous, muddy by disturbing its sediment with filth. UDR Research is not sold to business - it is used to protect the population retail thought. Today a Roil refers even to an orator or anyone who upsets protestors and its opposition to upset one, the other, or all sides with a message that results in anger or disorder. The epitome of Roiling is to enrage both sides of an issue or argument which, indeed, could end in turmoil, civil disturbance, or harm. In our case it was such Roiling from loss of privacy and ownership of information, need, rumor or negatives becoming positives for the person or persons involved. Today the Web has become a Roil as we feared - but worse, it is a Roil so powerful that it upsets almost everything it seems to solve because the cost is a mega-superfluous and tough attack on privacy, patents, emotions, self-control, avarice and more. These are the dark aims of the Web today. Yes, the Internet is a source of knowledge, sharing, and communicating - These are the "honey" spread on the burnt toast of confusion, so extreme that nothing seems to make assuring sense. In 2020 all people and societies are in growling danger as a result.

Great work Kashmir. I've been following the Privacy Project for about a year now. It's a tangled web of confusion and illusion at best. But we need the reporting like yours to try to keep up with this infliction of cyber madness.

I am usually a fan of the daily but I was shocked that Kashmir did not go into detailed questioning when it came to the issue with her photo being used. I find it disturbing that originally they couldn't find anything with her photo and the fact that each person that tried to use it with her photo was called immediately and also restricted from using the app after that happened. Her questioning was vague and she laughed it off and was almost flirting with in the interview. Focus on your job and get useful information. Who is monitoring this? She is not a thorough reporter. Disappointed Listener!

Can anyone summarize this for me

The episode was an interesting introductory case, but I am lacking a larger perspective on the surveillance tech. A lot of companies/states already has this "quite simple" technology up and running so I am lacking the perspectives of how this tech related to for instance China. Would love a broader piece on this topic.

Greatly enjoyed this daily episode. Excellent reporting from Kashmir, being willing to travel and chat with anyone to finally get information on a company that can, as of now, legally engage in this activity.

This was an eye opening report and interview. The creator of this tool came across naive and not altogether sharp when it comes to the possible negative affects of such a tool. China is already using face recognition to control the public and I wouldn't put it past our current federal administration to use it to their advantage either. One question that came up in my head though, when they scrape for images are they able to get into social media pages that have been secured as private?

This show was intriguing, but did not tell us much about the actual tool. It seems Linux-based. Linux is an operating system on which many opensource software packages run. I smell that the creator used a pre-existing AI tool box and linked it to images available on social media. I would be surprised if he created his own database of images. Rather, he must have linked his application to the data bases storing the images. I am not familiar with how this data is secured, but assumed that access is controlled by username/passwords, rsa-keys and the likes. In any case, the Zucks of this world must be able to control access to their data bases. As to the creator and the propriety of his creation, he surely is not the only one developing such face-recognition software, and if he accomplished something unique, reverse engineering would give it away. The internet is a public park with little places to hide.

The dissemination of this tech illustrates our increasing dependence on whistleblowers.

I'm of two minds with this privacy frenzy. It's gotten so that losing your phone, or having it break, means losing all your personal contacts' phone numbers and addresses. In a flash, you might have no way of contacting your real life friends and family...unless they're into social media. Can't very well call information anymore from a pay phone, can you? Btw, that scenario happens to be one of my recurrent nightmares--lost somewhere, sans phone. What a world!

At the end of the show you outlined the major headlines of the day, as usual. Of course you spoke about the New Hampshire primary and its associated polling. You mentioned that mayor Pete and Bernie are polling close together in first and second place and that Joe Biden has dropped to fourth place. You never said the name of the person who’s polling in third place. I wonder why that person was not worthy of mention by name? Why would you mention the fourth place candidate by name, but not the third-place candidate?

I would say this is an invasion of privacy, except for the fact that all this information is actually public, put out there by us. They’ve are mining public information just like CCTV and putting out an APB did, except instead of people doing it manually a computer is doing it.

Is there a transcript of this episode? While the subject is compelling and I want very much to learn the results of their investigations, the relentless vocal fry makes it unlistenable. I would like to finish the piece by reading.

Interviewer and interviewee, both with grating vocal fry, sound so unpleasant that I just bailed. Vocal fry is a fad, bad for the vocal chords, and awful to listen to.

In case anyone is interested in looking up the creator of the Clearview app... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Ton-That

How did you not call this episode Face Repercussions.

Great episode! I like how Privacy is getting more and more of a focus in "mainstream" media. I am a longtime The Daily listener, and NYT online subscriber. I do enjoy your content a lot thanks for the work you do. I have a suggestion tho, maybe not on The Daily but for the NYT in general. I am CEO of a Company developing Privacy Tools. Our products are designed to help people stay private online. In the context of this episode it would help to minimize the digital footprint one would have online, and therefore minimizing information like personal income or similar based on metadata analysis. if you are interested please reach out. our Privacy network is on Kickstarter right now, and we start launching it in Summer. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/safingio/spn

This is a fascinating (and alarming) episode, thank you. A small (and well-intentioned) plea, though: the end of the episode where the New Hampshire front-runners were projected, you listed Buttigieg and Sanders neck in neck for first, SKIPPED the third-place candidate's name all together, and then listen Biden as coming in fourth. I'm sure you don't mean to participate in the erasure of the female candidates, but omitting Warren's name was noticed. It matters. Women are running for President. I understand that right now the news is being framed in a way to pit the rivalry between Buttigieg and Sanders as The Story™ (and likewise to highlight the surprising lack of traction Biden is receiving at the top of the primaries), but given your long convo with Dean Baquet just last week about HOW stories are framed and the responsibility journalists have to not let their own bias color their reporting (and consequentially the opinions of your listeners/readers), it is worth noting that the omission of Warren's name from the conversation among news is. . . significant. It is noticed and it has real-world repercussions. Love what you do and am a avid listener. Thanks for all the hard work you put in to make a truly great show.