[evross]

Here is how I think about surveillance.

Suppose your boss decides they want to run a quiet experiment on you.

They tell you to install an employee clock-in app on your personal phone and that you will be paid for your commute time if the app runs in the background.

Access to GPS, other sensors, etc. are required to install.

The privacy policy tells you that your privacy is important to your boss, and that your data will only be used for analytics purposes and will only be processed by third parties for viewing and juicy gossip purposes.

Your boss then can see in real time on his laptop what shops you go to, what time you go to sleep, what worknights per month you go to a bar. Where you go on your weekends.

If this feels a bit bad, then it shows your data has value to you.

(Replace boss with -coworker, -aquaintance, -online corporation(s)... )

[heavenlyblue]

I believe what we should be developing instead is the software that provably generates semi-random paths and inputs to the phone's accelerator API that fake your true location.

[trumped]

that possibly could be easily detectable... it might be better to have hardware switches that would allow you to disable all sensors individually whenever you want some privacy... there are many sensors on my phone that I never need but possibly could leak some information, yet I can't disable them... Also, I just installed an app on my phone that didn't require any permissions, yet the company was able to send me a text message... Android permissions suck a lot, still.

[eurticket]

Sounds like a new phone company that focuses on this design

[TomMarius]

But no one at Facebook is personally looking at your data, it's automated and the employees don't have access.

[chopin]

Is there an independent audit of this claim? Similar things happened at Uber and we have nothing but Facebooks word for it.

I take it that not every employee has access. No employee having access seems unbelievable.

[TomMarius]

Well right now it's a requirement of GDPR, which they claim to follow. No one has confirmed it so far, but they should. Employee having direct access would be a serious breach of security that has to be reported to authorities.