That's especially true for "AI girlfriends" or "AI boyfriends," according to new research.

An analysis into 11 so-called romance and companion chatbots, published on Wednesday by the Mozilla Foundation, has found a litany of security and privacy concerns with the bots.

Collectively, the apps, which have been downloaded more than 100 million times on Android devices, gather huge amounts of people's data.

They use trackers that send information to Google, Facebook, and companies in Russia and China; allow users to use weak passwords; and lack transparency about their ownership and the AI models that power them.

Since OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT on the world in November 2022, developers have raced to deploy large language models and create chatbots that people can interact with and pay to subscribe to.

Mozilla research

The Mozilla research provides a glimpse into how this gold rush may have neglected people's privacy, and into tensions between emerging technologies and how they gather and use data.

It also indicates how people's chat messages could be abused by hackers.

Many "AI girlfriend" or romantic chatbot services look similar. They often feature AI-generated images of women which can be sexualized or sit alongside provocative messages.

Mozilla's researchers looked at a variety of chatbots including large and small apps, some of which purport to be "girlfriends." Others offer people support through friendship or intimacy, or allow role-playing and other fantasies.

"These apps are designed to collect a ton of personal information," says Jen Caltrider, the project lead for Mozilla's Privacy Not Included team, which conducted the analysis.

"They push you toward role-playing, a lot of sex, a lot of intimacy, a lot of sharing."AI chatbot

For instance, screenshots from the EVA AI chatbot show text saying "I love it when you send me your photos and voice," and asking whether someone is "ready to share all your secrets and desires."

Concerns mount up

Caltrider says there are multiple issues with these apps and websites.

Many of the apps may not be clear about what data they are sharing with third parties, where they are based, or who creates them, Caltrider says.

She adds that some allow people to create weak passwords, while others provide little information about the AI they use. The apps analyzed all had different use cases and weaknesses.

Take Romantic AI, a service that allows you to "create your own AI girlfriend." Promotional images on its homepage depict a chatbot sending a message saying,"Just bought new lingerie. Wanna see it?"

The app's privacy documents, according to the Mozilla analysis, say it won't sell people's data.

However, when the researchers tested the app, they found it "sent out 24,354 ad trackers within one minute of use."

Romantic AI, like most of the companies highlighted in Mozilla's research, did not respond to WIRED's request for comment. Other apps monitored had hundreds of trackers.

Lack of clarity

In general, Caltrider says, the apps are not clear about what data they may share or sell, or exactly how they use some of that information.

"The legal documentation was vague, hard to understand, not very specific—kind of boilerplate stuff," Caltrider says, adding that this may reduce the trust people should have in the companies.

It is unclear who owns or runs some of the companies behind the chatbots.

The website for one app, called Mimico—Your AI Friends, includes only the word "Hi."

Others do not list their owners or where they are located, or just include generic help or support contact email addresses.

"These were very small app developers that were nameless, faceless, placeless," Caltrider adds. Read more

• Matt Burgess is a senior writer at WIRED focused on information security, privacy, and data regulation in Europe.

Lowe serves both as the Catholic Bishop of Auckland and President of the New Zealand Bishops' Conference.

The fake social media accounts impersonating Lowe have surfaced on Meta's Facebook and Messenger platforms and, in responding to the data breach, Lowe wishes it to be known that he will not send friend requests or contact anyone through social media.

The NZCBC also warns that his email account may have been falsified.

Commenting on the NZCBC Facebook post, Bernard Liddington suggests the fake account was obvious as the gender was erroneously listed as female.

In another comment, Stephen Kennedy quipped "So he's not coming for tea tomorrow night? But I'm making my special potato bake just like he asked."

Mark Chang commented with a tongue-in-cheek remark, "All part of God's plan, surely?"

At the time of writing, another person linked the data breach with Satan.

The Bishops' Conference recently ran a campaign to help people stay safe online.

They suggested people learn more about Facebook privacy, do a Facebook privacy check-up and manage their Facebook privacy settings.

Facebook and its associated applications - Instagram, WhatsApp, and its most recent application, Threads (a Twitter clone) - are owned by the parent company, Meta.

These applications are free to use. However, Meta monetises user data to cover costs and provide shareholders with a healthy return.

Unfortunately, fake Facebook and Instagram accounts are common, and Meta has faced numerous privacy concerns stemming partly from its revenue model.

For example, Ireland's Data Protection Commission imposed a €1.2 billion fine last month against Facebook's parent, Meta, for failing to comply with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation laws.

According to one source, Meta profits by selling users' information and through targeting ads, attracting advertisers to its vast trove of data like vultures to carrion.

Donald Trump's successful use of Facebook data played a part in his election as President of the United States.

Facebook has always assured its users that their information is shared only with their consent and is anonymised before being sold to marketers. However, issues such as data breaches, platform vulnerabilities and the compromise of individual identities and private data regularly occur.

In response to escalating privacy concerns, some government agencies and groups with sensitive data on their work computers have prohibited the use of personal Meta accounts on work computers and mobile devices.

Tech journalist Leo Laporte describes Meta as "capricious". "If it's free, then you're the product" he often says when discussing Facebook's privacy issues.

Sources

• NZ Catholic Bishop's Conference Facebook
• Twit.tv
• Wikipedia
• How Facebook uses big data
• Washington Post
• Security Now - Steve Gibson

The most public of the targets was Msgr Jeffrey Burrill, who was general secretary for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops when he was outed in such a sting a couple of years ago.

This story reveals an ongoing problem for both priests and bishops.

Progressive Catholics were uncomfortable with the revelations. Michael Sean Winters (National Catholic Reporter) said the sting was "creepy." James Martin SJ (America) noted on Twitter that it targeted gay priests rather than all the unchaste people who work for the Church.

Both observations are true, but is there anything more to say about the ethics of the sting itself?

Conservatives defended the sting on moral grounds. But their moral analyses were largely consequentialist.

R. R. Reno, the editor of First Things, emphasized the importance of promoting clerical sexual integrity. The stings provide "useful and important information." He analogized the sting to reporting a drunk priest you see stumbling out of a bar.

Maybe—but only if you put a hidden camera monitored by the ecclesial vice squad at every bar within a hundred miles of his rectory.

Francis X. Maier, the former speechwriter for Archbishop Charles Chaput, took a similarly consequentialist stance, fuming over the priests' violation of their promise to remain celibate.

He also noted that the means used to detect the priests were not against the law and observed that, in any case, everyone is invading other people's digital privacy these days. This was ironic, given Maier's work as a pro-life activist.

Treating priests as targets, not as fellow Christians

The fact that certain procedures are legal doesn't make them moral. And the fact that a practice is rampant doesn't mean that it is fit for Catholics. And as Reno surely would attest in other circumstances, we need to pay attention to the morality of the means, not just the morality of the ends we seek.

So the question is this: Is it moral to spend millions of dollars to turn peoples' cell-phone data into a tracking device for wayward clerics?

One problem is the money spent on this surveillance project.

Would not it have been better to devote this money to the corporal works of mercy? A defender could respond that the sting is a spiritual work of mercy, in that it permits the Church to identify and admonish the sinner. But does such an argument really work?

In the Catholic tradition, admonishing a sinner presupposes a face-to-face relationship between the admonisher and the admonished, a relationship that is premised on equality in Christ.

But the sting treats the unnamed people at the end of the data like targets, not like brothers in Christ. The process does not admit of equality, just as there can be no equality between a hunter and his prey.

Maier claims that priests who break their promises of celibacy don't have a right to privacy.

This claim is distorted, both morally and theologically. Morally, it is putting the cart before the horse. You can only tell who's breaking those promises by violating that right.

Theologically, the Church recognized some right to privacy for sinners by abandoning the requirement for public atonement in the fourth century.

Moral danger for all

The right to privacy may sometimes be exaggerated, and it can certainly be abused. But that doesn't mean it is not real.

Freedom from the constant, prying eyes of other people is essential to developing and maintaining a sense of selfhood.

If we do not recognize the claim that other people have to be free of our scrutiny, then we treat them as objects for study, manipulation, and destruction—not as human beings equal in dignity to ourselves.

The sting distorts the relationship between the Catholics who fund and run it and the priests who fall within its ambit — which was potentially all priests. The moral danger to the self-appointed members of the purity committee is substantial.

How does it affect their own relationship to the Church to see its priests as guilty of sexual sin until proven innocent?

How does it affect their relationship with Christ to see themselves not as fellow sinners needing redemption (even if one's own sins are of a different sort), but as self-appointed police officers and judges?

There is also a moral danger to the priests, and to those who might wish to become priests.

• Will the fact that they live their lives in a context of pervasive suspicion and scrutiny, including electronic scrutiny, crush their spirits and erode their freedom in Christ?
• How will such priests interact with parishioners?
• Will they see them as fellow sinners in need of redemption, or as potential spies?
• How will they structure their lives?
• Will this lead them to avoid some sins (especially sexual ones) more than others (say, gluttony and waste)?
• Will an anxious obsession with not being suspected of committing sexual sin make them more likely to ignore sins of omission in their lives, including the duty to reach out to those at the margins?

The bishops need to act decisively. If they do not, their priests will become weapons and targets in the competing Panopticons of the culture wars. After all, if they put their minds to it, progressives can track and embarrass priests as easily as conservatives.

Unreasonable searches affect everyone - not just the guilty

The bishops' first task is distinguishing morally legitimate from morally illegitimate ways of obtaining compromising information.

Stumbling upon a priest on Grindr is different from de-anonymizing data.

Their second task will be deciding how to handle illegitimately obtained information. Here, in my view, is where the Church might helpfully borrow from the state.

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits "unreasonable" searches and seizures. It recognizes that unreasonable searches affect everyone—not just the guilty. But without enforcement, such a prohibition is no more than a paper tiger.

Consequently, the provision is interpreted as preventing the government from introducing evidence obtained directly or indirectly from such a search into a criminal trial. The government is thereby disincentivised from conducting searches without a warrant, except in certain extreme circumstances.

The bishops should adopt similar disincentives for lay sleuths.

They should strongly condemn any violation of priestly privacy, and they should declare that they will not allow priests whose activities were discovered in an unethical manner to be targeted or punished.

The only exception, in my view, should be activities involving minors.

Some might say that this approach goes too easy on priests who break their promises of celibacy.

I disagree—just as I disagree with those who say the Fourth Amendment goes too easy on those who commit crimes.

The point of the Fourth Amendment is not to say that committing crimes is okay. It is to say that in using its considerable power to chase criminals, the government must observe reasonable limits.

If that is what members of a state bound together by earthly ties owe one another, consider how much stronger the obligations are among members of the body of Christ.

• Cathleen Kaveny teaches law and theology at Boston College.
• Published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

It ratted out Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill, the general secretary of the U.S. bishops' conference, and he had to step down.

According to The Pillar, Burrill "visited gay bars and private residences while using a location-based hookup app in numerous cities from 2018 to 2020."

While pundits and activists might see an opportunity to opine about Catholic hypocrisy, what we should all be asking ourselves is what kind of a dirty turncoat would be in possession of, and then share, that kind of information about a person.

Per The Pillar: "According to commercially available records of app signal data obtained by The Pillar, a mobile device correlated to Burrill emitted app data signals from the location-based hookup app Grindr on a near-daily basis."

So the rat was Burrill's cell phone (or maybe a tablet)—and for two years it was keeping daily tabs on him, compiling a dossier on his actions, a dossier that could be sold to anyone with the money.

It's not Grindr's fault, or if it is, it's endemic to the mobile economy.

The terms of service of nearly every program allow the company to gather any data it likes and use it as it sees fit.

Your actions, behaviours, interests, hopes, aspirations, and dreams are all fair game to be gathered and resold.

This data is of tremendous value to advertisers and others.

As cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier said all the way back in 2010, "don't make the mistake of thinking you're Facebook's customer, you're not—you're the product."
Your phone is not your tool

And a decade before that, Microsoft had published "10 Immutable Laws of Computer Security." The first law stated simply that "If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore."

By that logic, "your" cell phone is owned by a collective of hundreds or thousands of different entities, some of which—or whom—you don't even know about.

You may have given your phone away to Facebook and Twitter (and Grindr?), but other people may have stolen your phone.

In 2014, it was revealed that the National Security Agency was secretly reading and storing data gathered legitimately by the Angry Birds game app.

The Guardian recently reported that NSO Group, an Israeli surveillance company, has sold hacking spyware called Pegasus to groups all over the world.

Pegasus allows operators to read messages and email, look at photos, record calls, and even surreptitiously listen to microphones.

Designed to fight criminals and terrorists, it has been used against human-rights activists, journalists, and lawyers. You wouldn't even know if someone had pirated a copy and deployed it against you.

Your phone is not your tool

At best, your phone is a partner with mixed loyalties; while you use it, it is using you to serve its other masters.

This partnership may still be valuable, but that's a personal decision for each person.

In the long run, the bargain may prove Faustian.

What can be done?

The obvious solution is to prohibit the collection of unnecessary data.

While a cell phone needs to know where I am right now so that I can make and receive calls, there's no reason that it should remember where I was two hours ago, let alone two years.

Weather apps might need to know which city I'm in, but not which bars I frequent or in whose apartment I spend the night.

Words With Friends doesn't need my age, my birthday, my location, my contact list.

But while those programs don't need that information to work, the companies behind them need that information to make money.

Remember: once I've installed the app, it's no longer my phone anymore.

Maybe a technical solution would work? Upgrade the phone somehow to prevent apps from collecting data I don't want them to?

Unfortunately, technical solutions are only as good as the programmers, and the bad guys can hire skilled programmers as well.

Apple is generally considered a gold standard for security among commercial cell phone providers, but NSO Group (among others) have found ways to easily bypass Apple's security and extract or install whatever they want.

In a privacy arms race, the advantage is always to the attackers, because they only need to be successful once.

If Big Tech can't solve our problem for us, maybe Big Government can?

Many companies have been fined for violating European Union privacy and data access laws.

In December 2020, Irish regulators fined Twitter for doing so, but the fine was less than $600,000, barely a slap on the wrist for a major multinational company that made more than a billion dollars in the first quarter of 2021.

Furthermore, fines can be assessed only after a violation has occurred and after a lengthy assessment and adjudication process, which allows companies ample opportunity for political lobbying.

Fining Grindr five years from now will not restore Burrill's reputation and or give him back his job.

Indeed, many of the most egregious privacy violations are completely legal in the United States.

Grindr not only collects personal data, but sells it, and it is upfront about the possibility of such sales in its terms of service.

There are no easy solutions, and the hard solution, unfortunately, falls upon us, the users.

We have all been told the platitudes:

• Don't install the software you don't need.
• Read the terms of service before you click "agree."
• Turn off any information-sharing that isn't related to your needs.
• Turn off "location sharing" at the hardware level. And remember Schneier's dictum: you are the product.

But the harder issue is not just for us as users, but for us as members of society. Burrill was presumably good at his job, or he wouldn't have held it.

Whether he visited gay bars or not is—or should be—irrelevant to whether he can serve the needs of the conference of bishops. Learning that he did visit such bars should not affect our judgment of him as a person or his worth as an employee.

If anyone is to be condemned for this act, the obvious candidate is The Pillar, the organization that obtained the data from Grindr, knowing that the people whose data was bought would almost certainly prefer to keep their activities private.

Would the staff of The Pillar be happy to share all the intimate details of their personal lives with the world?

• Patrick Juola holds the Joseph A. Lauritis, C.S.Sp. Endowed Chair in Teaching and Technology in the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics at Duquesne University. He has authored two books and more than 100 scientific publications and serves as the director of the Evaluating Variations in Language (EVL) lab.
• This article was made possible through a partnership between Commonweal and the Carl G. Grefenstette Center for Ethics in Science, Technology, and the Law at Duquesne University.
• Republished from La Croix International with permission

The Privacy Commissioner tells Mediawatch RNZ was unethical and he wants action - but RNZ insists the public interest was well served.

Waikato District Health Board's operations were paralysed by the cyberattack back in May which took weeks to recover from.

To make matters worse, data including private medical records were harvested by the hackers who demanded money to hand it all back.

When they didn't get a ransom, the attackers leaked data to the media in June and then put more stolen data online and told media organisations how to find it. Read more

The social media giant has rolled out a new prayer request feature, a tool embraced by some religious leaders as a cutting-edge way to engage the faithful online.

Others are eyeing it warily as they weigh its usefulness against the privacy and security concerns they have with Facebook.

In Facebook Groups employing the feature, members can use it to rally prayer power for upcoming job interviews, illnesses and other personal challenges big and small.

After they create a post, other users can tap an "I prayed" button, respond with a "like" or other reaction, leave a comment or send a direct message.

Facebook began testing it in the U.S. in December as part of an ongoing effort to support faith communities, according to a statement attributed to a company spokesperson.

"During the COVID-19 pandemic we've seen many faith and spirituality communities using our services to connect, so we're starting to explore new tools to support them," it said.

The Rev. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas, a Southern Baptist megachurch, was among the pastors enthusiastically welcoming of the prayer feature.

"Facebook and other social media platforms continue to be tremendous tools to spread the Gospel of Christ and connect believers with one another — especially during this pandemic," he said.

"While any tool can be misused, I support any effort like this that encourages people to turn to the one true God in our time of need."

Adeel Zeb, a Muslim chaplain at The Claremont Colleges in California, also was upbeat.

"As long as these companies initiate proper precautions and protocols to ensure the safety of religiously marginalized communities, people of faith should jump on board supporting this vital initiative," he said.

Under its data policy, Facebook uses the information it gathers in a variety of ways, including to personalize advertisements. But the company says advertisers are not able to use a person's prayer posts to target ads.

The Rev. Bob Stec, pastor of St. Ambrose Catholic Parish in Brunswick, Ohio, said via email that on one hand, he sees the new feature as a positive affirmation of people's need for an "authentic community" of prayer, support and worship.

But "even while this is a ‘good thing,' it is not necessary the deeply authentic community that we need," he said.

"We need to join our voices and hands in prayer. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with each other and walk through great moments and challenges together."

Stec also worried about privacy concerns surrounding the sharing of deeply personal traumas.

"Is it wise to post everything about everyone for the whole world to see?" he said.

"On a good day we would all be reflective and make wise choices. When we are under stress or distress or in a difficult moment, it's almost too easy to reach out on Facebook to everyone."

However, Jacki King, the minister to women at Second Baptist Conway, a Southern Baptist congregation in Conway, Arkansas, sees a potential benefit for people who are isolated amid the pandemic and struggling with mental health, finances and other issues.

"They're much more likely to get on and make a comment than they are to walk into a church right now," King said. "It opens a line of communication."

Bishop Paul Egensteiner of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Metropolitan New York Synod said he has been dismayed by some aspects of Facebook but welcomes the feature, which bears similarities to a digital prayer request already used by the synod's churches.

"I hope this is a genuine effort from Facebook to help religious organizations advance their mission," Egensteiner said.

"I also pray that Facebook will continue improving its practices to stop misinformation on social media, which is also affecting our religious communities and efforts."

The Rev. Thomas McKenzie, who leads Church of the Redeemer, an Anglican congregation in Nashville, Tennessee, said he wanted to hate the feature — he views Facebook as willing to exploit anything for money, even people's faith.

But he thinks it could be encouraging to those willing to use it: "Facebook's evil motivations might have actually provided a tool that can be for good."

His chief concern with any Internet technology, he added, is that it can encourage people to stay physically apart even when it is unnecessary.

"You cannot participate fully in the body of Christ online. It's not possible," McKenzie said. "But these tools may give people the impression that it's possible."

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, said he understood why some people would view the initiative skeptically.

"But in the moment we're in, I don't know many people who don't have a big part of their prayer life online," he said. "We've all been using the chat function for something like this — sharing who we are praying for."

Crossroads Community Church, a nondenominational congregation in Vancouver, Washington, saw the function go live about 10 weeks ago in its Facebook Group, which has roughly 2,500 members.

About 20 to 30 prayer requests are posted each day, eliciting 30 to 40 responses apiece, according to Gabe Moreno, executive pastor of ministries. Each time someone responds, the initial poster gets a notification.

Deniece Flippen, a moderator for the group, turns off the alerts for her posts, knowing that when she checks back she will be greeted with a flood of support.

Flippen said that unlike with in-person group prayer, she doesn't feel the Holy Spirit or the physical manifestations she calls the "holy goosebumps." But the virtual experience is fulfilling nonetheless.

"It's comforting to see that they're always there for me and we're always there for each other," Flippen said.

Members are asked on Fridays to share which requests got answered, and some get shoutouts in the Sunday morning livestreamed services.

Moreno said he knows Facebook is not acting out of purely selfless motivation — it wants more user engagement with the platform. But his church's approach to it is theologically based, and they are trying to follow Jesus' example.

"We should go where the people are," Moreno said. "The people are on Facebook. So we're going to go there."

AP video journalist Emily Leshner contributed. Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

• Holly Meyer and David Crary are authors of RNS.
• First published by RNS. Republished with permission.

But some experts say the level of detail included in the story suggests that whoever provided the information has access to large datasets and methods of analysis that could have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars—or more.

"When I first heard that this was happening, my mouth hit the floor," Zach Edwards, the founder of the boutique analytics firm Victory Medium, told America.

A data expert, Mr Edwards previously helped a Norwegian consumer rights group bring a complaint against Grindr in 2020 that alleged that the gay hookup app violated European privacy laws by leaking users' personal data.

The company was eventually fined more than $11 millionearlier this year by the Norwegian Data Protection Authority.

Mr Edwards described the level of detail revealed in the data points included in The Pillar article as "alarming."

Zach Edwards the founder of the boutique analytics firm Victory Medium, described the level of detail revealed in the data points included in The Pillar article as "alarming."

The Pillar has not said where it obtained the data about Msgr Jeffrey Burrill, who resigned shortly before the story about his use of the app was published.

The editors of The Pillar, J. D Flynn and Ed Condon, did not reply to an email from America asking who provided the data.

Mr Edwards said that acquiring data that appears to have been collected over at least three years could be costly and may have required a team of researchers to sort through it to identify specific individuals tied to the data.

He estimated that the "database and deanonymization efforts" used to obtain details about Monsignor Burrill could have "run into the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars."

The article in The Pillar contained allegations that a phone associated with Monsignor Burrill regularly logged onto Grindr, a dating app used by gay men, during periods of several months in 2018, 2019 and 2020 from his home and office in Washington, D.C., as well as from a family lake house in Wisconsin and from other cities, including Las Vegas.

"The inclusion of [Monsignor Burrill's vacation destinations] speaks to a level of tracking obsession," Mr Edwards said.

"Every Catholic should hope that's the case because that is the only scenario that's not a dystopian nightmare."

It is possible, he said, that a person or organization held a grudge against Monsignor Burrill and tracked only his data.

But he worries that the data appears to have been shopped around since 2018 and that whoever has access to it now probably has more information to release.

Mr Edwards estimated that the "database and deanonymization efforts" used to obtain details about Monsignor Burrill could have "run into the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars."

"It either is a larger organization tracking multiple priests and we have more shoes that are going to be dropping" or it was focused only on Monsignor Burrill, he said. He can imagine a situation in which the data could be used to blackmail or extort church leaders.

The specificity of geography included in The Pillar story suggests that whoever provided the information to the publication had access to an unusually comprehensive dataset that would have gone beyond what is normally available to advertising firms.

"That's a really expensive, dangerous data sale," he said.

Large, "deidentified" data sets like this—information that does not contain names or phone numbers—are often sold in aggregate for advertising purposes or even to track mass travel during epidemics.

The data used as the basis for The Pillar story appears to have tracked Monsignor Burill through a process known as re-identification, which some experts said may have violated contracts from third-party vendors, who routinely prohibit the practice.

Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, an applied mathematics professor at Imperial College, London, who has studied the ease with which individuals can be identified through supposedly pseudonymized data, told America the report in The Pillar was "quite vague on the technical details."

But he said that, in general, a researcher or team of analysts can identify an individual with access to just a few data points.

He gave as an example a fictional person living in Boston: That person's mobile device may send a signal from an M.I.T. classroom in the morning, from a Harvard Square cafe in the afternoon, then in the evening from a bar in the Back Bay followed by a signal from a home in South Boston.

The specificity of geography included in The Pillar story suggests that whoever provided the information to the publication had access to an unusually comprehensive dataset that would have gone beyond what is normally available to advertising firms.

"A few of these places and times are going to be sufficient" to match other information a researcher might know about an individual that taken together makes it possible to identify the user of the mobile device, Mr Montjoye said.

That other information could include real estate records, social media posts or even published agendas.

Even in large cities with millions of people, it is not difficult to use just a few data points to identify an individual as "very few people will be at the same places at roughly the same time as you."

The co-founders of The Pillar defended their story against criticism that called the story journalistically unethical, saying in a statement that they "discovered an obvious correlation between hookup app usage and a high-ranking public figure who was responsible in a direct way for the development and oversight of policies addressing clerical accountability with regard to the Church's approach to sexual morality."

Daniella Zsupan-Jerome, the director of ministerial formation at St. John's University School of Theology and Seminary in Collegeville, Minn., said more and more surveillance and tracking technology will not produce righteous men fit for ministry.

Instead, she said, it will contribute to a culture of suspicion and perpetuate the lack of trust in the Catholic Church.

"Why not invest instead in formation processes that insist on a culture of honesty, transparency and integrity of character?" she said, adding that if and when religious leaders are found to have moral failings, there is a need to create space for conversation among the faithful.

"Sadly, many of us have had the experience of finding out scandalous information about a priest or pastoral leader. This is a shocking experience, often coupled with a sense of betrayal, sadness, grief, anger, disgust and even despair," she said.

"Communities experiencing this need spaces for turning together for conversation, honest sharing, and gathering to lament and grieve the loss of trust that occurred."

Hours before The Pillar published its report, the Catholic News Agency published a story stating that the organization had been approached by a person in 2018 who "claimed to have access to technology capable of identifying clergy and others who download popular ‘hook-up' apps, such as Grindr and Tinder, and to pinpoint their locations using the internet addresses of their computers or mobile devices."

The story said that C.N.A. declined to accept information from this person.

In a statement, Grindr called The Pillar's report an "unethical, homophobic witch hunt" and said it does "not believe" it was the source of the data used. The company said it has policies and systems in place to protect personal data, although it didn't say when those were implemented.

Mr Edwards, who has been critical of Grindr's privacy protections, said, "This is about the worst thing that could ever possibly happen to their business." Continue reading

There are reasons to think it heralds a new and even uglier era in American Catholicism.

As Catholics were still reeling from Pope Francis' abrogation Friday (July 16) of his predecessor's guidance on the traditional Latin Mass, "Summorum Pontificum".

Indeed, while this author was struggling to finish an article about that event, The Pillar, a Catholic publication, released what it called "an investigation" in which data identifying Burrill's phone seemed to indicate he had frequently used Grindr, a popular dating app in the gay community, and that he had left geolocation tracks to and from gay clubs.

That is all we really learned from The Pillar's "investigation."

And, here is an important place to pause.

I am a sinner. So are you. So is Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill.

Not one of us has a personal life that would withstand the sort of scrutiny The Pillar has applied to Burrill.

Every single one of us has had a shameful moment we regret, and I suspect most of us must be caught up in cycles of sinfulness that we repeat less because we want to than because we are sinners and cannot help being sinners.

Like anyone else, Burrill's sins are between him and God.

Like any other priest, we can say his bishop belongs in that conversation too.

But unless there is some reason to think he has harmed someone else, I feel sure his sins are none of my business, as much as my sins are none of yours.

As a Catholic, I am bound to believe all of that.

I am not sure what the investigators at The Pillar believe.

I feel comfortably sure that before they embarked on their "investigation," they must not have thought about the Code of Canon Law, which states, "No one is permitted to harm illegitimately the good reputation which a person possesses nor to injure the right of any person to protect his or her own privacy." (Canon 220)

They must also not have thought about the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says, "everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbour's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favourable way" (Catechism 2478) because "detraction and calumny offend against the virtues of justice and charity." (Catechism 2479).

I can see plainly they did not heed St. Paul, who pointed the finger at himself as a sinner (1 Timothy 1:15) before pointing to others.

Whatever we may say of their practice of Catholicism, The Pillar's investigators paid little heed also to the canons of ethics for journalists.

How did they get their story?

The Society for Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics encourages journalists to "avoid using undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information" and admonishes that "Pursuit of the news is not a license for … undue intrusiveness."

What story did they get here?

That Burrill might have broken his vow of chastity and (consensually) used other people for impersonal sex?

The Code of Ethics also tells journalists to "avoid pandering to lurid curiosity, even if others do." And perhaps more importantly, it says, "avoid stereotyping."

There we also need to pay some attention.

The Pillar has less gotten hold of a story than it has published an innuendo.

And, the innuendo should worry us.

The Pillar writes that the data it has from Burrill's phone "suggests that he was … engaged in serial and illicit sexual activity," at the same time he was coordinating responses to the sex abuse crisis for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Although Pillar acknowledges "there is no evidence to suggest that Burrill was in contact with minors through his use of Grindr," the article goes on in the same paragraph to say his use of the app presents a conflict of interest in his role responding to sex abuse because such apps are sometimes used to solicit or traffic minors.

A few paragraphs earlier the article quotes another priest seeming to make a similar leap regarding Burrill's behaviour: that "regularly and glaringly failing to live continence" can become "only a step away from sexual predation."

That equivalence is the ugliest part — conflating consensual sexual behaviour (if Burrill even was part of any, which we do not know) with sexual abuse.

This is the hook on which the "story" hangs, a long-discredited link between sexual abuse and homosexuality. It is hard to call that something other than a slur and a sin against the LGBTQ+ community.

Not to mention, the article's allegations, if true, "out" Burrill's sexuality without his consent — a widely condemned practice.

And, all of that is a bit much to take.

But I fear in fact there is something worse.

I agree with what Monsignor Kevin Irwin wrote today in the National Catholic Reporter, that Pope Francis last week unmasked "the silent schism that has taken place and continues in the American Catholic Church."

We Catholics have been at each other's throats for decades, mostly quietly and with some veneer of restraint.

The façade has been falling, and those days might be over.

Now, The Pillar has opened the way further with this no-holds-barred exposé.

I do not say this idly.

After mere hours, the comments on The Pillar's tweet of the story already see people enthused about going after "bishops … engaged in questionable activity," and asking "what the laity should be doing (to) shine a light into all these dark corners."

We saw centuries ago what Christians — unburdened by their Christianity — in their conflicts with other Christians can look like. I fear we are seeing it again.

That is what schism brings.

That is where the spirit of division leads.

Pope Francis was not wrong to unmask what already is underway, but The Pillar is wrong to push this spirit of division even further along with what I only can call the worst sort of tittle-tattle tabloid journalism.

And, I fear we have not yet seen the worst.

A long ugly season awaits American Catholics.

No one is safe and — it seems — all is permitted.

• Steven P. Millies is associate professor of public theology and director of The Bernardin Center, at Catholic Theological Union.
• First published by RNS.
• The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a memo that Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill had resigned as its general secretary. This came after staff had learned on Monday of "impending media reports alleging possible improper behaviour."

The Pillar published an article on Wednesday that presented evidence the priest engaged in serial sexual misconduct.

The data captured by The Pillar highlights the invasive threat posed by mobile data.

Pillar said its analysis of the app data "correlated" to Burrill's cellphone. It shows he visited gay bars in several cities between 2018 and 2020 while using the app.

The article does not report that Burrill did anything illegal. However, homosexual acts are considered a sin according to Catholic teaching. Ordained priests are required to make a vow of celibacy.

It is not immediately clear how The Pillar obtained the data.

Brokered data is being used to identify the activities of cellphone users, confirming the long-voiced concerns of privacy experts.

A primary concern of privacy experts involves a concept known as "device fingerprinting". This is where a user can be identified, even when the data is supposed to be anonymous.

A tracker does this by looking for a unique and persistent way a person uses technology. The identity can be determined based on the location, time and activity, all of which can be collected through permission granted when the app is downloaded.

Security researchers have also found that apps are collecting more data than users are led to believe.

A report in 2019 found that more than 1,000 apps were taking data even after users denied them permissions, allowing them to gather precise geolocation data and phone identifiers.

In an article published Monday, the Catholic News Agency said it had received an offer in 2018 from individuals who claimed to have access to technology capable of tracking priests who download dating apps.

The news organization said it declined the proposal at the time. But it warned that "there are reports this week that information targeting allegedly active homosexual priests may become public."

Sources

• CNet
• Religion News
• The Pillar

In less than 24 hours their attack strategy has detonated in their own trenches and newly elected party leader Todd Muller has been scrambling to explain why.

New Zealand was only saved from an even more outrageous privacy breach because various media acted with proper restraint.

But while the political fates of Walker and Boag appear to be sealed, their legal exposure needs closer examination.

They are both guilty by their own admission of a serious breach of privacy - but are they guilty of a breach of the law? Given the official inquiry being undertaken by Mike Heron QC, the legal implications of what has happened will undoubtedly come into sharper focus.

Privacy is about trust

The principles of personal privacy are very important. They allow citizens to control their own lives and they control the power others have over citizens.

A respect for privacy allows a system of trust to develop between citizens and governing authorities.

That trust is especially important when it comes to the confidentiality of medical records. While there is no shame in any illness, at a time of paranoia, abuse and intolerance, discretion and security are paramount.

This extends to public health management. People being tested for COVID-19 and receiving medical assistance must be assured it is private - even more so at a time when the power to gather and collect information is so strong.

The law is vague

Unfortunately, it's not as clear in practice as it is in theory.

While privacy is important, it is not an unambiguous right of the type found in the New Zealand Bill of Rights. Rather, it sits between criminal law, civil law and other statutes such as the Privacy Act (currently being updated).

To help govern this area of information privacy there are generic rules and specific codes. The Health Information Privacy Code sets rules about the ways health information is collected, used, held and disclosed by health agencies.

These include ensuring information is not improperly disclosed. While there are some exceptions to the rule, the importance of information being used only for the purposes it was obtained, and not identifying individuals without their consent, is critical.

In theory, this all sounds good and should be sufficient for the Human Rights Tribunal to investigate a possible breach. The problem is that the Privacy Act - explicitly - does not apply to members of parliament in their official capacity.

What about whistleblowers?

One possible defence might be that an MP or other party was blowing the whistle on government incompetence.

The law in this area is designed to facilitate the investigation of serious wrongdoing. This covers alleged conduct by public officials that is grossly negligent or constitutes gross mismanagement.

Whether the Walker-Boag leak reaches such a standard is debatable. What is not debatable is the process set down in law for whistle blowers to follow. This includes first exhausting internal processes to resolve the problem. That would not appear to have happened in this case.

It's also highly questionable whether it would have been necessary to reveal the private health information of citizens to prove the point.

However, MPs don't require whistle-blowing protection when they are speaking in the House of Representatives as they have parliamentary privilege. Generally this means they can't be brought before the courts for what they say, and the privacy of individual citizens can be pushed to one side.

In any event, Walker did not use parliament to release the information, so the point is moot.

The Privacy Commissioner needs more power

Where to from here?

At the political level it will be for voters to use the ballot to express their opinion of what has just occurred.

But in terms of the law there are gaping holes that need to be fixed.

First, the right to privacy should be adopted unequivocally in law.

Second, greater powers should be given to the Privacy Commissioner to protect this right. When it is in the public interest, the commissioner should be able to instigate civil law actions for attempted or actual breaches of privacy.

Finally, members of parliament should only be allowed to override the privacy of fellow citizens when they are using parliamentary privilege.

At all other times they should be held accountable.

• Alexander Gillespie - Professor of Law, University of Waikato. He works primarily in international law, with specialties in international environmental; and the laws of war/international humanitarian law. Published in The Conversation.

Manual tracing is resource-intensive and ineffective. A number of countries, including Singapore and Australia, have adopted smartphone apps using Bluetooth.

New Zealand seems likely to follow a similar path.

These apps vary in detail but all work along more or less the following lines:

• Users download the app onto their smartphone and enable Bluetooth.
• Identifying information is required but converted into an anonymised ID.
• When a phone with the app installed comes within a specified distance, for a specified time, of another phone with the app, encrypted contact information is exchanged.

The exchanged information remains on users' phones for the period someone with the virus might have transmitted it to others.

At the end of that period - probably 14 to 21 days - the information is automatically deleted.

If one of the users is diagnosed with Covid-19, a health professional will give them a code which automatically sends a signal to all contacts on the app and the user's app may change colour, perhaps turning red.

When users receive such a signal (their app may also change colour, perhaps turning orange) they will be required to self-isolate or be tested. If they isolate, their app will return to its default colour (say, green) at the end of the specified isolation.

If they opt for a test, a health professional will give them a code which will turn their app green if negative, and red if positive.

As with all potentially intrusive technological initiatives, these apps raise important ethical issues addressed in the following guidelines.

Benefits must outweigh risks

Ultimately, the ethical justification of tracing apps rests upon their capacity to deliver significant benefits to communities and individuals in ways which respect legitimate concerns about consent, privacy, and fairness.

This means there is an obligation to identify benefits and risks. Risks must be recognised and accepted, mitigated as far as possible and outweighed by countervailing benefits.

Use must be voluntary

One significant difference between approaches to contact tracing is the extent to which they require user consent.

Australia and Singapore encourage but do not require citizens to use their apps and New Zealand seems certain to take a similar approach. The app will work on a person's phone only if they download it, enable Bluetooth and carry their phones with them.

The voluntary approach carries some risks, with uptake the most obvious barrier.

Estimates of uptake levels required to deliver the benefits of the app vary between 40 and 60 percent.

Below those levels, too many contacts of confirmed cases will not be registered and won't be contacted automatically.

Concerns about uptake have led some governments - Israel, Poland, South Korea - to set aside individual consent. But consent is the most obvious way we show respect for the moral agency of others and we should not set it aside lightly.

More practically, regulations that lose common support are rarely successful: compulsion is usually not very effective.

So consent is crucial: Those downloading and enabling such apps must explicitly consent to their functions, and must have access to clear and understandable information about how it works, and what they need to do if they receive a positive diagnosis or a signal indicating they have been in contact with an infected person.

To ensure consent is informed, there must be as much transparency as possible about how the apps work and about the processes they set in train.

Apps must not be used beyond Covid-19

There is a predictable and reasonable concern that such apps might be used for purposes other than Covid control.

For example, just who has this suspected drug dealer been in contact with in the past fortnight?

Guarantees must be provided such apps will be used only for Covid-19 management, and they must have a use-by date after which they will cease to function.

Ethical concerns

There are a cluster of related ethical concerns around privacy, confidentiality, and security. The apps and processes around their use must:

• be designed and implemented to minimise the impact on privacy, with guarantees around limited use;
• minimise the use of identifiable information and protect any identifiable information which is used;
• be designed and implemented in ways that prevent unauthorised access to information and misuse of the app or its processes.

Equity issues

The impacts of Covid-19 have not been felt equally across the community.

Tracing apps could exacerbate legitimate concerns for fairness and equity. For instance, socially and economically disadvantaged individuals and groups are less likely to have access to smartphones, but the benefits and burdens of these apps should be delivered equitably across the community.

Efforts must be made to identify and address likely inequities in the uptake and use of tracing apps to address social and economic disadvantage. Continue reading

On Monday, Edwards shared an email with the Ne Zealand Herald that he sent to a number of Facebook executives on Friday. Read more

Mark Zuckerberg might believe the world is better without privacy. He's wrong. It will be fantastically satisfying to see the boy genius flayed.

All the politicians—ironically, in search of a viral moment—will lash Mark Zuckerberg from across the hearing room.

They will corner Facebook's founding bro, seeking to pin all manner of sin on him. This will make for scrumptious spectacle, but spectacle is a vacuous substitute for policy.

As Facebook's scandals have unfolded, the backlash against Big Tech has accelerated at a dizzying pace.

Anger, however, has outpaced thinking.

The most fully drawn and enthusiastically backed proposal now circulating through Congress would regulate political ads that can appear on the platform, a law that hardly curbs the company's power or profits.

And, it should be said, a law that does nothing to attack the core of the problem: the absence of governmental protections for personal data.

The defining fact of digital life is that the web was created in the libertarian frenzy of the 1990s.

As we privatized the net, releasing it from the hands of the government agencies that cultivated it, we suspended our inherited civic instincts.

Instead of treating the web like the financial system or aviation or agriculture, we refrained from creating the robust rules that would ensure safety and enforce our constitutional values.

This weakness has long been apparent to activists toiling on the fringes of debate—and the dangers might even have been apparent to most users of Facebook.

But it's one thing to abstractly understand the rampant exploitation of data; it's another to graphically see how our data can be weaponized against us.

And that's the awakening occasioned by the rolling revelation of Facebook's complicity in the debacle of the last presidential campaign.

The fact that Facebook seems unwilling to fully own up to its role casts further suspicion on its motives and methods.

And in the course of watching the horrific reports, the public may soon arrive at the realization that it is the weakness of our laws that has provided the basis for Facebook's tremendous success.

If we step back, we can see it clearly: Facebook's business model is the evisceration of privacy.

That is, it aims to induce its users into sharing personal information—what the company has called "radical transparency"—and then aims to surveil users to generate the insights that will keep them "engaged" on its site and to precisely target them with ads.

Although Mark Zuckerberg will nod in the direction of privacy, he has been candid about his true feelings.

In 2010 he said, for instance, that privacy is no longer a "social norm." (Once upon a time, in a fit of juvenile triumphalism, he even called people "dumb fucks" for trusting him with their data.)

And executives in the company seem to understand the consequence of their apparatus.

When I recently sat on a panel with a representative of Facebook, he admitted that he hadn't used the site for years because he was concerned with protecting himself against invasive forces.

We need to constantly recall this ideological indifference to privacy, because there should be nothing shocking about the carelessness revealed in the Cambridge Analytica episode.

Facebook apparently had no qualms about handing over access to your data to the charlatans working on behalf Cambridge Analytica—expending nary a moment's time vetting them or worrying about whatever ulterior motives they might have had for collecting so much sensitive information.

This wasn't an isolated incident.

Facebook gave away access to data harvesters as part of a devil's bargain with third-party app developers.

The company needed relationships with these developers, because their applications lured users to spend ever more time on Facebook.

As my colleague Alexis Madrigal has written, Facebook maintained lax standards for the harvest of data, even in the face of critics who stridently voiced concerns.

Mark Zuckerberg might believe that world is better without privacy.

But we can finally see the costs of his vision.

Our intimate information was widely available to malicious individuals, who hope to manipulate our political opinions, our intellectual habits, and our patterns of consumption; it was easily available to the proprietors of Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook turned data—which amounts to an X-ray of the inner self—into a commodity traded without our knowledge. Continue reading

• Image: The Atlantic

That book was published in 1949. It is now 2017, and while we do not exactly have a Big Brother persona governing us, the Orwellian scenario is pretty much familiar.

And it is not by means of some ultra-fascist government or political party.

Rather, our loss of privacy and Big Brother's influence on us are brought about by none other than our penchant for sharing on social media.

What privacy?

In 2013 Vint Cerf, who is considered as the father of the internet, said that "privacy may actually be an anomaly."

Throughout history, people preferred communal settings in just about anything — the concept of solitude and privacy was something limited to monasticism.

Greg Ferenstein outlined the history of 3,000 years of privacy through 46 images.

You might notice that history agrees with Cerf — and the artworks and imagery at least showed how people did things on a communal nature.

It was only during the industrial revolution that we started to have a preference for privacy.

And with the rise of social media, that cycle means we are now moving again toward loss of privacy.

Imagine how much people have been sharing online, with friends and even the public.

This includes photos, status updates, locations, all that while tagging friends who may not be aware they are being connected with photos, events, and places.

It's not even limited to Facebook.

No matter how little you share, all the meta data involved in just about anything you do online can constitute your digital persona.

All of these digital crumbs, so to speak, paint a digital picture of us, which bots, machines, and even data scientists, can lead to our digital makeup.

Add to that the evolving technologies of facial recognition and machine learning — this means tech companies might know more about us than we do.

And this is extremely useful to anyone who needs to do any customer targeting.

Ask advertising agencies and marketers.

In fact, ask Facebook.

Did you know that the social network may have the capability to listen in even when we are not actively sharing information or using the mobile app?

Facebook may be listening

You heard that right.

Given the amount of permissions we give social networks when we install apps on our mobile devices, we might as well just hand them over privileged access to our personal lives.

With passive listening technologies, for instance, Facebook might be able to eavesdrop on conversations.

In 2016, a University of South Florida mass communications professor, Kelli Burns, shared her observations that the Facebook app delivered content based on things she mentioned in a conversation.

The idea that Facebook is passively spying has since been debunked, and Burns herself said her comments may have been taken out of context.

However, this does not preclude the fact that Facebook itself has admitted to using smartphones' microphones whenever necessary.

"We only access your microphone if you have given our app permission and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio," it said in a statement.

What can you do: continue reading

Monsignor Gerard Burns said his deepest concern about this bill is that it shakes the relationship of trust between the State and the citizens of Aotearoa New Zealand.

"Because a healthy society can only function on trust and because the State is more powerful than individual citizens, those citizens need to be able to know and trust that the State will not abuse its position. The range and extent of surveillance powers given to the State in this bill has a chilling effect on the ability of citizens to freely express their views, to associate and organize for social change, to defend the rights of others." said Burns.

He listed has his particular concerns:

• not sufficient oversight or remedies.
• potential and actual abuse of powers.
• access of foreign powers to intimate information about NZ citizens (via Echelon).
• waste, inefficiency and potential fraud in computing systems (intransparent budget).
• use of surveillance to continue economic and political inequality and injustice.
• no role for conscientious objection and whistle-blowing in the Bill.

In his submission Burns emphasised that his submission was being made in his capacity as a New Zealand citizen. They were, he said, his his personal views; they were not an official submission on behalf of his Church.

Source

• Image: Scoop Screenshot

To date, in the Republic, Northern Ireland and Britain it is respected under custom and practice, while in the US it is protected under two constitutional amendments.

Legislation to breach the seal of the confessional would be "unenforceable", "impractical", and "a distraction from the main issue", chief executive of the Catholic Church's child protection watchdog, the National Board for Safeguarding Children, Ian Elliott said last night.

A Presbyterian, he was not so much defending the Catholic Church as pointing out that "such legislation is unenforceable unless you bug the confessional", he said

Insistence on doing so would "only antagonise and distract from the main issue which is the protection of children. Why fight it, when we should concentrate on priorities?" he asked.

He recalled from his experience as lead child protection adviser in Northern Ireland that the advice of civil servants there was to respect the seal.

Dr Gerard Whyte, associate professor of law at Trinity College Dublin, said "the seal of the confessional enjoys some legal protection in civil law as well as under canon law and so it is more accurate to characterise the issue here as one of securing a balance between conflicting civil rights".

Continue reading the Irish Times' article: Confessional seal: what it means in irish legislation and abroad

Source

• Image: Offscreen