Lauren Weinstein on Nostr: This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on the controversy ...
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.
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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.
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L
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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.
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L