Privacy Summer Reads

Photo by Link Hoang on Unsplash

Now is the best time to slow down and take a break. The weather is good, the school year is did not start yet and many countries across the globe are open for travel. Summer is the best time to pick up on reading.

We want to share a few long-reads from our Team’s Privacy Reading List.

1. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been in action for two years in the EU and has been accompanied by a vigorous PR campaign to support its implementation. But how concerned are Europeans about their personal data online really? The Fundamental Rights Survey, conducted by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights in 2018 and 2019, asked people in EU member states about their views on sharing personal data and their awareness of GDPR. “A relatively impressive 69% … know about the GDPR. A similar number know their national data protection supervisory authority (71%). But only around half are familiar with some of the details — for example that they have the right to access their personal data held by companies,” writes Jennifer Baker, EU Policy Correspondent at CPO Magazine. She concludes that “Europeans are definitely data protection-aware, but not to the degree often hyped in some circles.” Although awareness is high, a lot of people still struggle with exercising their privacy rights on a more practical level, for instance with changing privacy settings across devices. Read a summary of the study’s results or access the full report here.
2. In the future faking someone’s voice or making a synthetic image of a person may create a dangerous world where deception is the norm. Synthetic media technologies, commonly referred to as ‘deepfakes’, is an emerging field with a lot of potential. These technologies could also have a positive impact on our lives, but only if there are precautions in place. For now, synthetic media technologies are still in their infancy. Facebook’s Deepfake Detection Challenge attracted more than 2,000 participants who submitted around 35,000 models trained on data sets provided by the company. The best model was able to detect whether a video was a deepfake with 65% accuracy when tested on a set of 10,000 previously unseen clips. “Even very high-quality deepfakes have some flickering between frames,” says the contest winner Selim Seferbekov. However, using algorithms to catch these inconsistencies requires a lot of computing power and large, varied training data sets. While engineers are trying to re-invent detection algorithms, we can help them limit the risk stemming from the malicious use of deepfakes by exercising our privacy rights, keeping smaller amounts of personal data online and ensuring our online data is stored in a controlled and secure environment.
3. Last but not least, our team recently came across a series of book reviews on the subject of privacy and security, both fiction and non-fiction. Here is the 2019 edition of “Notable Privacy and Security Books” along with an archive of recommended books dating back to 2008. Posts are authored by Prof. Daniel J. Solove, the John Marshall Harlan Research Professor of Law at George Washington University. Prof. Solove teaches computer-based privacy and data security. Jointly with Paul Schwartz, he organises the International Privacy + Security Forum in Washington, D.C. This reading list is regularly updated.

You can find more inspiring stories and interesting long-reads in our Privacy Issue Newsletter #24. This and other articles of the #Privacy_Issues publication, unless specified otherwise, are a product of joint creative energy of the team behind the Privacy Issues project. To receive regular updates on latest developments in the field of data protection and privacy with regards to product design, development, marketing and more, sign up for our Newsletter here.