Privacy

Every Step You Fake: A Comparative Analysis of Fitness Tracker Privacy and Security

/ Christopher Parsons

Every Step You Fake CoverCanadians, and many people around the world, are increasingly purchasing and using electronic devices meant to capture and record their relative levels of fitness. Contemporary fitness trackers collect a broad range of data, and can include the number of floors climbed, levels and deepness of sleep, how many steps taken and distance travelled over a day, heart rates, and more. All of this data is of interest to the wearers of the devices, to companies interested in mining and selling collected fitness data, to insurance companies, to authorities and courts of law, and even potentially to criminals motivated to steal or access data retained by fitness companies.

Given the potential privacy implications associated with fitness trackers, Andrew Hilts (Open Effect/Citizen Lab), Jeffrey Knockel (University New Mexico/Citizen Lab), and I investigated the kinds of information that are collected by the companies which develop and sell some of the most popular wearable fitness trackers in North America. We were motivated to specifically understand:

  • Whether data which are technically collected by the wearable devices was noted in the companies’ privacy policies and terms of service and, if so, what protections or assurances individuals had concerning the privacy or security of that data?
  • If fitness and other collected data was classified as ‘personal’ data by the companies in question?
  • Whether the information received by the individual matched what a company asserted was ‘personally identifiable information’ in their terms of service or privacy policies.

Our analysis depended on a mixed methodology of technical research, policy analysis, and legal/policy testing. Some of our core findings included:

  • All studied fitness trackers except the Apple Watch were vulnerable to Bluetooth MAC address surveillance
  • Garmin, Withings, and Bellabeat applications failed to use transit-level security for one or more data transmissions, leaving user data exposed.
  • The Jawbone UP application routinely sent out the user’s precise geolocation for reasons not made obvious to the user.
  • Fitness tracking companies gave themselves broad rights to utilize — and in some cases, sell — consumer’s fitness data
  • Data collected by fitness tracking companies did not necessarily match with what can be obtained through an access request.

This research was funded by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s Contributions Program, with additional contributions from the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, at the University of Toronto. Open Effect has created a webpage dedicated to the report and its impacts.

Download the Report (Alternate Link)

Public Submission on IMSI Catchers

/ Christopher Parsons

5047039173_36fbdc9523_oOn October 14, 2015 the Pivot Legal Society in British Columbia filed a complaint with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) of British Columbia concerning the Vancouver Police Department’s (VPD) refusal to disclose any documents concerning the department’s use of IMSI Catchers. IMSI Catchers, also known as Cell Site Simulators or Mobile Device Identifiers, are designed to impersonate cellular telecommunications towers. The devices are used to collect identifiers and potentially content transmitted from mobile phones in the device’s vicinity. In response to Pivot Legal Society’s complain Tamir Israel (from CIPPIC) l and I intervened on behalf of Open Media to argue that VPD ought to be compelled to disclose documents they possessed concerning their use of IMSI Catchers.

Our intervention begins by outlining how IMSI Catchers technically function. Next, we demonstrate how the test for investigative necessity advanced by VPD simply does not apply to responsive records in light of the significant general information regarding IMSI Catcher use. Finally, we argue that even if disclosure of responsive records will, to some degree, undermine the utility of IMSI Catchers as an investigative tool, disclosure must still occur. Confirmation of IMSI Catcher use is a necessary precursor to informed public debate and to the proper legal constraint of an invasive surveillance tool and is therefore in the public interest.

Download the Intervention (Alternate Link)

Authors

Tamir Israel

Tamir is staff lawyer with the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, where he conducts research and advocacy on various digital rights-related topics, with a focus on online privacy and anonymity, net neutrality, intellectual property, intermediary liability, spam, e-commerce, and consumer protection generally.

Christopher Parsons

Dr. Christopher Parsons received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Guelph, and his Ph.D from the University of Victoria. He is currently the Managing Director of the Telecom Transparency Project and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Citizen Lab, in the Munk School of Global Affairs.

Photo credit: Mobile Phone Tower by Michael Coghlan (CC BY-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/8FZoUM

The Limits of Tower Dump Privacy Protections in Canada

/ Christopher Parsons

290822052_cccfe6d6ee_oOn January 14, 2016, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that “tower dumps” – the mass release of data collected by cellphone towers at the request of law enforcement agencies – violate privacy rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In response, Justice Sproat outlined a series of guidelines for authorities to adhere to when requesting tower dump warrants in the future.

I wrote about this case for PEN Canada. I began by summarizing the issue of the case and then proceeded to outline some of the highlights of Justice Sproat’s decision. The conclusion of the article focuses on the limits of that decision: it does not promote statutory reporting of tower dumps and thus Canadians will not learn how often such requests are made; it does not require notifying those affected by tower dumps; it does not mean Canadians will know if data collected in a tower dump is used in a subsequent process against them. Finally, the guidelines are not precedent-setting and so do not represent binding obligations on authorities requesting the relevant production orders.

Read the Article [NOTE: PEN Canada website no longer contains this article — see it, below]

The Limits of Tower Dump Privacy Protections

By Christopher Parsons

On January 14, 2016, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that “tower dumps” – the mass release of data collected by cellphone towers at the request of law enforcement agencies – violate privacy rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Christopher Parsons is a postdoctoral fellow and managing director of the telecom transparency project at Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, at the University of Toronto. Read on for his break-down of this decision and its limits.

The Limits of Tower Dump Privacy Protections

When travelling with your mobile phone it routinely — often a few times second — communicates with the neighbouring cellular towers so that it can send, or receive, communications. Each such communication will geolocate the mobile device and send unique identifying information.

Authorities use production orders to compel telecommunications companies to disclose mobile tower-related retained data. Data from these so-called ‘tower dump warrants’ can be used to identify persons suspected of committing a crime. But they can also result in signification infringements of Canadians’ privacy because of the sheer volume of information that can be disclosed, which includes affected persons’ subscriber information and billing records. It was exactly this issue of over breadth that led TELUS and Rogers to challenge a tower dump order for an aggregate total of 43,000 persons’ information. The challenge was finally decided in January of 2016.[1]

Decision Highlights

Justice Sproat declared that the Peel Regional Police’s production orders “authorized unreasonable searches and so breached the s. 8 Charter rights of the Rogers and Telus subscribers.” He also outlined the following guidelines for authorities to adhere to when requesting tower dump warrants in the future:

  1. Provide a statement or explanation that demonstrates the officer seeking the order is aware of the principles of incrementalism and minimal intrusion, and tailored the requested order with that in mind.
  2. Explain why all the named locations or cell towers, and all the requested date and time parameters, are relevant to the investigation.
  3. Explain why all the types of records sought are relevant.
  4. Identify details or parameters which could be used to target the production order to conduct narrower searches and produce fewer records.
  5. Request a report based on the specific data instead of requesting the underlying data itself.
  6. Justify any requests for underlying data, when it is requested.
  7. Confirm that the types and amounts of data being requested can be meaningfully reviewed.

Justice Sproat declined to prohibit authorities from requesting ‘large’ amounts of data on the basis that the authorities and authorizing judge alike may be uncertain of the data required to conduct an investigation. He also declined to offer guidelines addressing how long authorities could retain data provided by telecommunications companies; legislatures, not courts, had to make that decision. Moreover, he maintained that legislatures, not courts, had to determine whether tower dumps be ‘last resort’ investigative techniques.

Importantly, the guidance Justice Sproat provided does not set precedent. As such, the guidelines are not binding obligations on authorities requesting production orders.

Sproat’s Limitations

The decision may limit authorities’ request for Canadians’ personal information. Such narrowed targeting will constitute a victory for Canadians and their privacy interests.

The decision and guidelines will not improve Canadians’ understanding of how often such requests are actually made. Authorities needn’t publicly report on how often, or to what effect, tower dump orders are useful for investigating or resolving criminal incidents. Moreover, those affected by tower dumps will not be notified of their data being collected by authorities unless charged with a crime. And finally, Canadians will not know if their data is used, later, for purposes unrelated to the original tower dump investigation: the unique identifiers and billing information might, as an example, be subsequently used to identify persons later detected at public events or protests by combining newly collected surveillance data with that previously disclosed by telecommunications providers.

So while Canadians have enjoyed a significant victory concerning their privacy rights they are no more aware of actually being affected by such requests unless charged with a crime. And this data might ultimately be used against them in subsequent investigations or government surveillance. Consequently, Canadians are still left to trust, without being able to verify, that our personal information is being accessed and retained appropriately by authorities. This privacy victory, in other words, has not come with an ounce of real transparency for the public at large.

Citations

[1] R. v. Rogers Communications, 2016, ONSC 70.

Photo credit: cell tower next to the casita by dasroofless (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/rGxgj

Why We Need to Reevaluate How We Share Intelligence Data With Allies

/ Christopher Parsons

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Last week, Canadians learned that their foreign signals intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), had improperly shared information with their American, Australian, British, and New Zealand counterparts (collectively referred to as the “Five Eyes”). The exposure was unintentional: Techniques that CSE had developed to de-identify metadata with Canadians’ personal information failed to keep Canadians anonymous when juxtaposed with allies’ re-identification capabilities. Canadians recognize the hazards of such exposures given that lax information-sharing protocols with US agencies which previously contributed to the mistaken rendition and subsequent torture of a Canadian citizen in 2002.

Tamir Israel (of CIPPIC) and I wrote and article for Just Security following these revelations. We focused on the organization’s efforts, and failure, to suppress Canadians’ identity information that is collected as part of CSE’s ongoing intelligence activities and the broader implications of erroneous information sharing. Specifically, we focus on how such sharing can have dire life consequences for those who are inappropriately targeted as a result by Western allies and how such sharing has led to the torture of a Canadian citizen. We conclude by arguing that the collection and sharing of such information raises questions regarding the ongoing viability of the agency’s old-fashioned mandates that bifurcate Canadian and non-Canadian persons’ data in light of the integrated nature of contemporary communications systems and data exchanges with foreign partners.

Read the Article

Authors

Tamir Israel

Tamir is staff lawyer with the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, where he conducts research and advocacy on various digital rights-related topics, with a focus on online privacy and anonymity, net neutrality, intellectual property, intermediary liability, spam, e-commerce, and consumer protection generally.

Christopher Parsons

Dr. Christopher Parsons received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Guelph, and his Ph.D from the University of Victoria. He is currently the Managing Director of the Telecom Transparency Project and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Citizen Lab, in the Munk School of Global Affairs.

Photo credit: Spies by Kieran Lamb (CC BY-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/416nVf

More Surveillance Powers Won’t Prevent Intelligence Failures

/ Christopher Parsons

Newspapers B&W (5)I co-authored a comment to the editors of the Globe and Mail, “More Surveillance Powers Won’t Prevent Intelligence Failures,” in response to Christian Leuprecht’s article “Pointing fingers won’t prevent intelligence failures“. Leuprecht asserts that further intelligence sharing is critical to prevent and avoid attacks such as those in Paris, that more trust between intelligence agencies to facilitate international intelligence sharing is needed, and that more resources are needed if particular individuals subject to state suspicion are to be monitored. He also asserted that governments need the powers to act against targeted individuals, and that unnamed ‘critics’ are responsible for the weakening of intelligence agencies and, by extension, for the senseless deaths of innocents that result from agencies’ inabilities to share, monitor, and engage suspicious persons.

The co-authored comment rebuts Leuprecht’s assertions. We point that there is more intelligence collected, now, than ever before. We note that some of the attackers were already known to intelligence and security services. And we note that it was intelligence sharing, itself, that led to the targeting and torture of Maher Arar. In effect, the intelligence community is failing in spite of having the capabilities and powers that Leuprecht calls for; what is missing, if anything, is the ability to transform the intelligence collected today into something that is actionable.

The full comment, first published at the Globe and Mail, is reproduced below:

More Surveillance Powers Won’t Prevent Intelligence Failures
Re: “Pointing Fingers Won’t Prevent Intelligence Failures” (Nov 25):

The horrific attacks in Paris have led to a wave of finger-pointing – often powerfully disassociated from the realities of the failures (Pointing Fingers Won’t Prevent Intelligence Failures – Nov 25). The answer from security agencies is inevitably to request more surveillance and more capacity to intrude into citizens’ lives.

These requests are made despite the historically unprecedented access to digital information that security agencies already enjoy and repeated expansions of security powers. Clearly “more security” is not the answer to preventing all future attacks.

The intelligence failure in Paris painted a familiar picture. Many of the attackers were known to French officials, and Turkish intelligence agencies sent repeated warnings of another. Yet in their rush to blame communications technologies such as iPhone encryption and the PlayStation (claims since discredited), security agencies neglect the lack of adequate human intelligence resources and capacities needed to translate this digital knowledge into threat prevention. Also absent is attention to agency accountability – the unaddressed information-sharing problems that caused the mistaken targeting and torture of Maher Arar.

The targets of terror are not only physical, but also ideological. Introducing a laundry list of new powers in response to every incident without regard to the underlying causes will not prevent all attacks, but will leave our democracy in tatters.

Vincent Gogolek, Executive Director, BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (BCFIPA)

Tamir Israel, Staff Lawyer, Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), University of Ottawa

Monia Mazigh, National Coordinator, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG)

Christopher Parsons, Postdoctoral Fellow, Citizen Lab at Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto

Sukanya Pillay, Executive Director & General Counsel, Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA)

Laura Tribe, Digital Rights Specialist, OpenMedia

Micheal Vonn, Policy Director, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA)

Photo credit: Newspapers B&W (5) by Jon S (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/ayGkBN

Half-Baked: The Opportunity To Secure Cookie-Based Identifiers From Passive Surveillance

/ Christopher Parsons

rkBJB0J-300x225Andrew Hilts and I have released a new paper that is titled “Half-Baked: The Opportunity To Secure Cookie-Based Identifiers From Passive Surveillance.” Cookie-based identifiers are used by websites to deliver advertisements as well as collect analytics information about website visitors. Incidentally, intelligence agencies such as the NSA, GCHQ, CSE, and other Western signals intelligence bodies use the same identifiers to track the activities of individuals and their devices as they access, and use, the Internet. The paper respond to a series of basic questions: To what extent do major online properties encrypt the advertising, cookie, and other digital identifiers used by the NSA and other intelligence agencies to track users and their devices around the globe? Since the Snowden revelations began have providers actually encrypted more, or less, of these identifiers?

Full Abstract

Documents released by Edward Snowden have revealed that the National Security Agency, and its Australian, British, Canadian, and New Zealand equivalents, routinely monitor the Internet for the identifiers that are contained in advertising and tracking cookies. Once collected, the identifiers are stored in government databases and used to develop patterns of life, or the chains of activities that individuals engage in when they use Internet-capable devices. This paper investigates the extent to which contemporary advertising and analytics identifiers that are used in establishing such patterns continue to be transmitted in plaintext following Snowden’s revelations. We look at variations in the secure transmission of cookie-based identifiers across different website categories, and identify practical steps for both website operators and ad tracking companies to take to better secure their audiences and readers from passive surveillance.

Download the Paper

This post first appeared on the Telecom Transparency Project website.