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Julia Angwin Profile picture
@JuliaAngwin
Sep 22, 2020 • 7 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
Journalism is supposed to afflict the comfortable.

So we built an app for that.

Introducing Blacklight – a privacy tool that lets you scan any website and see how you are being surveilled. Built by the incomparable @suryamattu.

themarkup.org/blacklight/
@suryamattu Blacklight was born from a conversation @suryamattu and I had updating the privacy series “What They Know” that I led ten years ago at @wsj.

What did we find? The Tl;DR: surveillance has become creepier and more difficult to stop.

themarkup.org/blacklight/202…
@suryamattu @WSJ Using Blacklight, @ASankin found that some of the most sensitive websites on the Internet - banks, medical clinics, child safety – were sharing their users personal data with third parties.

SunTrust Bank was sending user passwords to a 3rd party!

themarkup.org/blacklight/202…
What can you do? @ASankin surveyed the options and found that one of the best things you can do to protect yourself is to stop using Google Chrome.

Firefox, Safari and Edge all offer better privacy protections.

themarkup.org/ask-the-markup…
@ASankin In case you were wondering: The Markup comes up totally clean on Blacklight!

This is the first time in my ten years of covering privacy that I have worked at a place that values data privacy.

All I had to do to get here was found the damn place! lol
As we always do, we have published a detailed methodology for how we built Blacklight, as well the code we used for collection and analysis.

github.com/the-markup/bla…
github.com/the-markup/bla…
github.com/the-markup/inv…

themarkup.org/blacklight/202…
Blacklight would not have been possible without the foundational privacy work and guidance we received from @s_englehardt, Gunes Acar, @random_walker, @jonathanmayer, @hoofnagle, @ashk4n and the team at @duckduckgo.

Thank you!

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More from @JuliaAngwin

Julia Angwin Profile picture
Jul 16
Huge investigation from @proof__news today: We reveal the trove of YouTube videos that are being used to train AI models (including Anthropic's Claude).

Yes, it includes all your favorite YouTubers - from @hankgreen to @MrBeast to @khanacademy.

proofnews.org/apple-nvidia-a…
Were your favorite YouTubers' videos secretly used to train AI? Search the dataset that we compiled here:
proofnews.org/youtube-ai-sea…
We launched our YouTube channel today, too. After all, what better way to report on YouTubers' videos being used without their consent than with a YouTube video?

Read 5 tweets
Julia Angwin Profile picture
Jun 13, 2023
🧵Amidst rampant surveillance, one bastion of privacy remains – end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp. But dangerous laws are being proposed in US, UK, EU & beyond to force those apps to scan your messages.

My latest for @nytopinion nytimes.com/2023/06/13/opi…
Feeling a sense of deja vu? Yes, you have heard this story before. But it’s worse this time.

Previously, the FBI sought a “master key” that could unlock encrypted content with a search warrant. But they lost after a showdown with Apple in 2016. /2

apple.com/customer-lette…
A luminary lineup of crypto & infosec experts including @rossjanderson @mattblaze @WhitfieldDiffie @matthew_d_green @schneierblog @djweitzner successfully argued that there was no way to keep safe a “master key” that could unlock all encryption. /3

cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/…
Read 15 tweets
Julia Angwin Profile picture
Feb 4, 2023
I’m sad to report that I am leaving @themarkup to pursue other projects, which I will announce soon. It was an honor and a privilege to found @themarkup five years ago to create an investigative newsroom that integrated engineers and journalists. /1
My goal was to use the best of tech – computation, automation, machine learning – to investigate the human impacts of tech. And to do it using the scientific method as our compass rather than the fuzzy concept of “objectivity.” /2
The amazing thing is that it worked! Our precise methodologies allowed us to uncover everything from Google and Amazon self-preferencing to bias in mortgage approval algorithms. These investigations had impact from the halls of Congress to courtrooms across the country. /3
Read 15 tweets
Julia Angwin Profile picture
Jan 14, 2023
Let’s talk about consent. Do you feel like you ever properly consented to being surveilled online constantly, having a profile built of your interests and having that profile made available to anyone who could pay for it?

EU regulators don’t think so either. /1
Earlier this month @edpb fined Meta €390 million for not getting proper consent before profiling FB & IG users. It was hailed a huge victory for EU’s landmark privacy law, GDPR, but sadly it may not change how you are profiled. /2
The problem is that GDPR enforcement is not in the hands of the EU, but in the member states. And most Big Tech cases land at the Irish regulator @DPCIreland because that is where many tech European headquarters are based. /3
Read 8 tweets
Julia Angwin Profile picture
Jul 30, 2022
The U.S. is closer to passing a federal privacy law than ever. But there’s a catch: it sets a “ceiling” and not a “floor” for state & local privacy laws.

In this week’s newsletter @cam_kerry says that's “the price of getting strong protections.” /1

themarkup.org/newsletter/hel…
But Ashkan Soltani, head of the new privacy agency in California, where a strong privacy law would go into effect next year, tells me the trade-off “is a trap.”

The federal bill “locks into amber” rules that prevent future innovation to protect privacy. /2 Image
The federal bill would also delay privacy enforcement for about two years. California was set to begin enforcing next year, while the fed bill would give the FTC time to prepare guidance and rulemaking.

“I think two years is a reasonable amount of time,” @cam_kerry said. /3
Read 4 tweets
Julia Angwin Profile picture
Jun 22, 2022
In light of the recent US settlement with Facebook, I want to tell y’all a story about how hard it is to make change in our algorithmic world, why you need a village of researchers, and why law enforcement agencies need to get better at tech. /1

nytimes.com/2022/06/21/tec…
Six years ago, @terryparrisjr & I bought an ad on Facebook, targeted to only white people looking for housing, using a drop-down menu blocking ads from being seen by different “ethnic affinity groups.” Experts said this violated the Fair Housing Act. /2

propublica.org/article/facebo…
Facebook said it would fix it with an algorithm blocking the use of race in housing, employment & credit ads.

I wondered why it needed an algorithm and didn’t block other protected categories such as age and gender. But FB claimed a win. /3

about.fb.com/news/2017/02/i…
Read 13 tweets

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