This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on the
controversy surrounding Google's "SafetyCore" that they are pushing onto
Android phones without notification or permission from users, that many
observers are saying is akin to spyware. As always, there may have been
minor wording variations from this script as I presented this report
live on air.
- - -
So yeah this is quite an interesting situation, because it involves
not only what Google is doing right now to Android phones and other
Android devices, but also invokes much wider concerns about our
control over what's on the smartphones that most of us indeed have
with us almost all the time, and that includes not just Android
devices but Apple iOS devices like the iPhone as well.
So in the case under discussion right now, you need to know that
Google can push apps and software changes to Android devices without
user interactions. And by that I mean new stuff can be loaded onto
your phone without your knowledge or permissions. And most of the time
these are relatively routine updates to internal Android system
functions that are benign and useful and generally not controversial.
But what's happening now is that Android users who carefully monitor
what's on their devices have been noticing something called "safety
core" showing up on their devices without their knowledge, and it's
usually done in such a way that most ordinary users wouldn't notice it
or know where to find it if they wanted to try remove it.
Now it turns out that Google late last year actually announced some
new so-called safety features they had planned for Android, but they
were not very specific about how those would work or how they would be
implemented. The safety core that Google is slipping into Android is
apparently a foundational mechanism for these features and others.
Now some of these features seem to relate to functions like helping
users determine if chat type messages they receive are from whom they
claim to be from, though right now it appears that the system Google
has developed for this is rather complicated and not very likely to be
understood or easily usable by many nontechnical users.
But the aspect of safety core that has really upset people, and why
it's being so massively bashed with so many users asking how to remove
it (which isn't always simple), is because of a specific aspect of
safety core that is indeed being widely described as seeming very
close to being spyware. And this is an upcoming supposedly "optional"
feature that will scan your photos on your device looking for
"sensitive" photos and warn you about them. There's indications that
for now "sensitive" as defined is mostly related to nudity, sex, etc.,
but of course that list could be expanded by Google at any time.
Now as soon as you start getting involved with scanning users' photos,
you're gonna open yourself up to major controversies and concerns.
Google asserts -- and I have no reason to disbelieve them -- that this
scanning is all on device and only reports to you. To which many
observers are adding two important words: "for now".
Because obviously, once you have a photo scanning engine living on
people's phones, it becomes relatively straightforward to push changes
that would report to Google or authorities in whatever country of
whatever political persuasions that ordered Google to do this, perhaps
without informing users. And of course the list of "sensitive" items
that would trigger these actions could be updated on users' phones at
any time, again perhaps without their knowledge.
And to be clear, the kinds of items that could turn up on that
scanning list could end up quite numerous and varied, given the
different motivations of authorities in different countries and in
different political parties in power at any given time in those
countries.
It is apparently generally possible to remove -- or at least disable
-- the new Android safety core, but as I mentioned it's not
necessarily straightforward to do -- though ironically you can use
Google search to learn specifics on this.
But more broadly again, going beyond the specifics of safety core, the
big issue IS how much control we have over our own devices. And the
answer right now seems to be, much of the time, far less than most
users of these devices realize or would reasonably expect.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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