Tag: Choice

Categories
Business

To Be Tracked or Not? Apple Is Now Giving Us the Selection.

To Be Tracked or Not? Apple Is Now Giving Us the Choice.

Given a choice, would any of us want to be followed online to see more relevant digital ads?

We’ll find out in a moment.

On Monday, Apple plans to release iOS 14.5, one of the most anticipated software updates for iPhones and iPads in years. It includes a new privacy tool called App Tracking Transparency that gives us more control over how our data is shared.

Here’s how it works: when an app wants to track our activities in order to share information with third parties such as advertisers, a window will appear on our Apple device asking for our permission. If we say no, the app will have to stop monitoring and sharing our data.

A pop-up window might sound like a little design tweak, but it has caused an uproar in the online advertising industry. Above all, Facebook has gone on the warpath. Last year the social network launched a website and ran full-page ads in newspapers denouncing Apple’s privacy policy as harmful to small businesses.

A big motivator, of course, was that the privacy settings could affect Facebook’s own business. If we don’t let Facebook follow us, it will be more difficult for the company to see what we are shopping for or what we are doing in other apps, making it more difficult for brands to target us with ads (Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook) Executive, has denied his company’s business is being affected by Apple’s policies.)

“This is a big step in the right direction, if only because it makes Facebook work up a sweat,” said Gennie Gebhart, director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit.

But she added, “A big question is, will it work?”

Ms. Gebhart and other privacy professionals said Apple’s new feature may not be enough to end dodgy tracking on iPhones. It could just make developers and ad tech firms find loopholes so they can keep tracking people in different ways, she and others said.

I’ve been testing early versions of iOS 14.5 for about two months to get used to the new privacy controls and other new features. Few developers have tested the pop-up with the public, so my understanding of how well the privacy feature works has been limited.

However, I’ve found that iOS 14.5 has other important new features as well. One of them is the ability to use Siri to work with a music player other than Apple Music like Spotify. That’s a big deal: in the past, you could only ask Siri to play songs through Apple Music, so the voice assistant wasn’t that useful for those who preferred other music services.

Here’s what you need to know about Apple’s new software:

It’s important to understand how tracking works in apps.

For example, let’s say you’re using a shopping app looking for a blender. You look at a Brand X mixer and close the app. Later on, ads for this mixer will be shown on other mobile apps like Facebook and Instagram.

Here’s what happened: The shopping app hired an ad tech company to embed trackers into the app. These trackers checked information on your device to identify you. If you’ve opened other apps that work with the same ad tech company, those apps were able to identify you and serve you ads for Brand X’s mixer.

With Apple’s new data protection feature, you can decide if this should happen. Now when you open some apps, a pop-up window will appear: “Allow [App Name] to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites? “You can choose between ‘Don’t track the app’ or ‘Allow’.

Let us help you protect your digital life

If we select “Don’t Track App”, two things happen. The first is that Apple is preventing the app from using an Apple device identifier, a random sequence of letters and numbers assigned to our iPhones that is used to track our activity across apps and websites. The second is that we are telling the app developer that, by and large, we do not want our information to be tracked and in any way shared with anyone.

That seems easy. But # 2 is where things get a little complicated too.

Ad tech companies already have many ways to follow us beyond Apple’s device identifier. For example, advertisers can use a method called fingerprinting. This involves looking at seemingly innocuous features of your device – like screen resolution, operating system version and model – and combining them to determine your identity and track you across different apps.

According to data protection researchers, it is difficult for Apple to block all tracking and fingerprints taking place on iPhones. This would require knowing or predicting any new tracking method that an ad tech company is developing.

“From a tech point of view, there’s not much you can do” to stop such tracking, said Mike Audi, founder of Tiki, an app that lets you see what other apps are doing with your data.

However, the change in data protection is still significant, as we are expressly asked for consent. If we tell apps that we don’t want to be tracked and continue to do so, Apple can ban the perpetrators from the App Store.

The pop-up window also makes it easier for people to discover privacy controls, said Stephanie Nguyen, a researcher who has studied user experience design and privacy. In the past, iPhone owners could prevent advertisers from tracking them, but the tools to do that were buried in settings that most people didn’t look at.

“The option was available before, but really, wasn’t it?” Ms. Nguyen said. “It’s a big change – making it visible.”

Starting this week, all apps with tracking behavior must include the App Tracking Transparency pop-up in their next software updates. That means we’ll likely see a small number of apps asking for permission to track us initially, with the number increasing over time as more apps are updated.

Apple’s new software also includes two other interesting new features: the ability to play audio with Siri using a third-party app like Spotify, and the option to quickly unlock an iPhone while wearing a mask.

For many, these will feel long overdue. Siri has generally only worked with Apple Music for music playback since 2015. This is annoying and inconvenient for those who want to use the voice assistant to play songs with other music apps. The change comes because the antitrust investigation decides whether Apple suppresses competition by giving preference to its own apps.

You don’t need to change any settings for Siri to work with other audio services. If you usually listen to music using a third-party app like Spotify, over time Siri will simply find that you prefer that app and act accordingly. (Audio app developers need to program their apps to support Siri. If they haven’t already, this won’t work.) So if you always use Spotify to play music, you can say, “Hey Siri, play the Beatles ”to play a Beatles playlist on Spotify.

The other new feature helps in solving a pandemic problem. For more than a year now, wearing a mask has been especially annoying for owners of newer iPhones with face scanners to unlock the device. That’s because the iPhone camera couldn’t see our covered cups. Apple’s iOS 14.5 finally offers a mechanism to unlock the phone while in a masked state, although it does require wearing an Apple Watch.

Here’s how it works: when you scan your face and the phone finds that it can’t recognize you because your mouth and nose are blocked, it will check that your Apple Watch is unlocked and nearby. The Apple Watch practically acts as proof that you are the one trying to unlock your phone.

For this to work, update the software on your iPhone and Apple Watch and open the Settings app on your iPhone. Scroll down to “Face ID & Passcode”. Go to “Unlock with Apple Watch” in this menu and enable the option to unlock with your Apple Watch if the image scanner detects your face with a mask.

The next time you’re at the grocery store and look at your phone, your watch will vibrate once and unlock your phone. Sweet relief.

Categories
Politics

Biden’s Alternative for Pentagon Faces Questions on Ties to Contractors

Biden’s Choice for Pentagon Faces Questions on Ties to Contractors

WASHINGTON – Three weeks ago a naval ship launched a military contractor’s experimental missile off Hawaii to intercept and destroy a decoy pretending to be an incoming nuclear weapon for the first time in space.

The same company, Raytheon Technologies, that accomplished the feat was selected for another contract this year in a program that could cost up to $ 20 billion to build a new generation of nuclear-armed cruise missiles for the United States .

And Raytheon, whose 195,000 employees make warplanes, weapons, high-tech sensors, and dozens of other military products, has sold billions of dollars in weapons and radar systems to allies in the Middle East in recent years, some of which have been used to help To wage war in Yemen.

Now, Raytheon could soon have another differentiator: one board member, retired Army General Lloyd J. Austin III, has been named the next Secretary of Defense by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Raytheon isn’t General Austin’s only connection with military contractors. He was also a partner in an investment firm that bought small defense firms. And his move from the arms business to a leadership role in the Pentagon continues a pattern that President Trump has begun in recent years.

Mr Trump elected James N. Mattis, also a retired four-star general, who then served on the board of General Dynamics, another major military entrepreneur, as its first secretary of defense. Mark T. Esper, a former Raytheon chief lobbyist, succeeded Mr. Mattis.

This is a departure from the norm. Defense ministers who had served prior to Mr Trump’s tenure – at least three decades until President George Bush’s tenure – did not come directly from boards or executive suites of contractors, although some, like Ashton Carter, President Barack Obama’s last Secretary of Defense, did served as an industry advisor.

Mr. Biden’s decision to appoint General Austin has raised a new wave of questions about the corporate relationships of people Mr. Biden selects to serve in his administration.

These links are especially relevant when it comes to the Pentagon, which spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year on weapons and other supplies. During Mr. Trump’s tenure, the military budget increased by about 15 percent, reaching $ 705 billion in the last fiscal year. This is one of the highest values ​​in constant US dollars since World War II.

“It is important for the defense minister to bring independence of thought into this role, and it is deeply worrying when a candidate comes straight from one of the major military contractors,” said Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the arms control association, who pointed out urges reducing nuclear weapons and military spending.

He added, “I would note that Raytheon has a tremendous financial stake in upcoming decisions by the Biden administration, Congress and the Secretary of Defense.”

At Raytheon, officials are said to be excited about the prospect of a board member becoming secretary of defense, according to a person who works with the company. However, that person and another person working with Raytheon warned that the appointment could result in an undesirable audit of the company.

Even members of Mr. Biden’s own party had urged Mr. Biden to refrain from nominating anyone for the job of Secretary of Defense who came directly from the military business world.

“US national security should not be defined by the bottom line of Boeing, General Dynamics and Raytheon,” Democrat Representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin said in a statement last month.

As Secretary of Defense, General Austin would have to sell any stock he holds in Raytheon or other defense companies, or companies that do business in the industry, and would most likely be prohibited from directing contract decisions or other “special matter” directly affecting companies with whom he has had financial relationships for the past two years if Mr. Biden follows the ethical guidelines first adopted by Mr. Obama.

General Austin joined Raytheon Technologies in April as part of a merger between Raytheon Company, known as a manufacturer of Patriot and Tomahawk missiles, and United Technologies, a manufacturer of commercial and military jet engines and avionics. General Austin joined the board in June In 2016 after leaving the military.

According to Raytheon records, General Austin owned more than $ 500,000 in Raytheon stock as of October. As a member of the United Technologies board of directors, General Austin received a total of $ 1.4 million in stock and other compensation over a four year period.

Raytheon is now one of the largest military contractors in the world. Raytheon boasts in an earnings report to Wall Street that it has a record federal government order book totaling $ 73 billion.

His aggressive drive over the past five years to sell billions of dollars in precision-guided bombs and bomb parts to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which weaponized civilians in a catastrophic war in Yemen, sparked an outcry from human rights groups and some members of Congress who repeatedly tried to block sales.

But Raytheon, who pays an army of well-connected lobbyists, overcame the opposition and sold the weapons – thanks in part to his close relationship with the Trump administration.

General Austin was also a partner in an investment firm called Pine Island Capital, which he joined on the board of directors in July. The company was recently on a buying spree from small military contractors including Precinmac Precision Machining, which sells specialty parts for missile launch systems and machine guns.

By the time General Austin joined Pine Island, Pine Island said he was “already fully committed, working with us on new investments and bringing his experience and judgment to our portfolio companies,” including InVeris Training Solutions, the virtual gun firing training service offers.

General Austin, Anthony J. Blinken, the election of Mr. Biden as Secretary of State, and Michèle A. Flournoy, who had been Mr. Biden’s other nominee for Secretary of Defense, were made clear because of their connections with the Pine Island team competed in the past few months prior to the sale of $ 218 million worth of stock in preparation for buying other defense industry targets.

Pine Island has a partnership with WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm founded in part by Mr. Blinken and Ms. Flournoy. Another Raytheon board member, former Pentagon official Robert O. Work, was also involved with WestExec and advised Mr Biden’s transition to national security planning.

While WestExec advised at least one defense contractor, a WestExec spokeswoman did not respond to questions about whether Raytheon was a customer, stating that the company has nondisclosure agreements with many customers and “does not comment on potential customers.”

When asked about General Austin’s relationships with defense companies, Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s transition, said, “Every cabinet member will comply with all disclosure requirements and strict ethical rules, including withdrawals as appropriate.”

He added that General Austin and Mr. Blinken, if confirmed, would sell all of Pine Island’s shares.

It’s not clear how much equity they have in Pine Island.

Mandy Smithberger, a director of the Project on Government Oversight, which tracks federal contract decisions, said the problem with hiring former industry executives as senior Pentagon officials is broader because they often bring with them an industry-friendly mindset.

As a result, Mr Biden’s administration may find it more difficult to make the tough decisions that will be necessary as the United States faces large budget deficits and growing demands for public health programs to increase to better prepare for the next global world to be pandemic.

“The defense industry is already way too close to the Pentagon, and if the Biden administration is to reform the department the way we know, that must change,” Ms. Smithberger said. “What is in the best interests of our national security may not be the same as what is in the best interests of the defense industry.”