News articles to spark thought

“For a very low price, data enrichment companies allow you to take a single piece of information on a person (such as a name or email address), and expand (or enrich) that user profile to include hundreds of additional new data points of information […] such as household sizes, finances and income, political and religious preferences, and even a person’s preferred social activities.”

“In most cases, ascertaining a home location and an office location was enough to identify a person. Consider your daily commute: Would any other smartphone travel directly between your house and your office every day?”

“It sounds cliché, but it’s true: If strong encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have strong encryption.”

“This isn’t just a guide to spotting when something is fake. It’s a system for slowing down and thinking about information — whether that information is true, false, or something in between.”

“Internal documents leaked to journalists described how the app-based search platform could block internet users in China from seeing web pages that discuss human rights, peaceful protests, democracy and other topics blacklisted by China’s authoritarian government.”

“Like a mercurial lover, the machine keeps us needy and guessing; we can never be sure how to stay in its good graces. Indeed, the app manufacturers increasingly build in artificial-intelligence machine-learning systems so that they can learn from us how to randomise rewards and punishments more effectively.”

“The big story is as you’d expect: that everything you do online is logged in obscene detail, that you have no privacy.”

“You could imagine a future where people are watching to see if their friends’ credit is dropping and then dropping their friends if that affects them. That’s terrifying.”