“Not used To the, privacy at risk”, is the warning of Snowden – The Republic

“do NOT use that app”. Has just been announced and already discussed. Because At the last Google app that combines the world of the chat with the one of the virtual assistants, it would be lacking in an aspect not of little account: the privacy. The warning comes from the Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who had the merit to discover all the surveillance of mass indiscriminate carried out by the national security Agency of the united states. An alert is launched on Twitter, the tone is ironic and cutting edge that often characterizes him: “Today available for free to download: Google Mail; Google Maps and Google surveillance,” she writes, “This is To not use it”.

To discuss, is the policy choice for the storage of the data. A line of conduct which would be different than what is promised by the company when it announced the service, during the conference dedicated to developers last may. According to the skyfall reported on the specialized website in technology, The Verge, in fact, it seems that initially Google is committed to store messages only temporarily and not identifiable, so as to limit any impact on the privacy of users. Of course, today the result is an app that automatically will keep all our conversations, in a permanent way. At least until we take the trouble to choose not to save them or delete them. In addition, as already happens on Hangouts and Gmail, the messages exchanged through The will be encrypted between the device and the server of Mountain View, but by using encryption which makes them still accessible to the algorithms of Google. This is not instead of encryption end-to-end, since in that case the text would be visible only to the two that they are talking about. A feature that the whistleblower has criticized from the outset: “The choice of Big G to disable encryption end-to-end default in the new chat app To the is dangerous and makes it insecure,” she tweeted. “Avoid it for now.”

“it Is decisions obviously motivated by the desire to integrate an assistant based on machine learning, i.e. automatic learning of the machines,” says Stefano Zanero, associate professor in the Department of electronics, information and bioengineering of Politecnico di Milano. But unfortunately necessary, according to the expert. “These systems learn about the large masses of data can’t be trained on the interactions of the individual. Do so in a way that is preserved, privacy is impossible and too complicated”. Google’s goal is, therefore, to use the data at its disposal to refine the smart part of the application: taking advantage of the ability to read our conversations, the artificial intelligence has the opportunity to better understand how to speak to human beings, to know what we want before it’s said. And to complete our phrases, for example. However, in the future, might as well use the same information to profilarci better (useful for tailor-made advertising), as suggested by the british newspaper The Independent. Not to mention that the conversations are in this way accessible to legal demands from the authorities, something that is not possible on iMessage or WhatsApp.

Read – Google: So we will talk about artificial intelligence

A way to defend themselves there is. And that is to try To selecting a particular mode: Incognito mode, where the messages are protected by encryption end-to-end (is not the panacea of all ills, but provides some protection). But in this case it is not possible to make use of the intelligent assistant, in practice, what makes the chat app feature. In short, you have to choose: or our secure, confidential, or ‘future smart’. Snowden, between the two options, it would not have doubts. Of the rest, has repeatedly stated publicly its messaging application is preferred, it is called the Signal, and his gear is based on cryptographic protocols, completely open source. “Use every day”, he did know, always on Twitter. @rositarijtano

Topics:

At the

google

artificial intelligence

Starring:

Edward Snowden

Stefano Zanero