Is a peek into the future worth your privacy in the present? That concern was pushed to the spotlight this week with the resurgence of FaceApp, a smartphone app that uses artificial intelligence to transform your current face into your younger and older selves. Concerns about FaceApp rose Wednesday even as Big Tech faced more scrutiny on Capitol Hill and the European Union stepped up plans to probe Amazon.
In Washington
Facebook endured a second day of criticism from Congress over its plan to create a digital currency as senior House Democrats asked Facebook to scale back the project and threatened legislation that would block big tech companies from getting into banking.
Facebook’s massive market power and its record of scandals, fines and privacy breaches were on trial at a hearing Wednesday of the House Financial Services Committee. Lawmakers from both parties insisted they cannot trust the social network giant.
Lawmakers grill Big Tech over lack of competition, Facebook’s digital currency
“I think you’re pretty low on the trust spectrum right now, and understandably,” Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas, told David Marcus, the Facebook executive leading the project. It was Marcus’ second straight day of tough questioning by lawmakers.
Among their concerns is the risk that the new currency, to be called Libra, could be used for illicit activity such as money laundering or drug trafficking. Lawmakers also worry that the massive reserve created with money used to buy Libra could supplant the Federal Reserve and destabilize the financial system, and that consumers could be hurt by Libra losses.
The committee’s leader, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., has asked Facebook to suspend its plan for the new currency until regulators and lawmakers have a chance to fully review it. She renewed that demand to Marcus.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., asked that Facebook commit to starting with a pilot project with no more than a million users, overseen by the Federal Reserve.
If Facebook cannot meet that request, Maloney said, “then Congress should seriously consider stopping this project from moving forward.”
In Europe
The EU said it is investigating whether Amazon uses data from independent retailers to gain an unfair advantage, a decision that could lead to changes in how the internet’s biggest marketplace works.
The move echoes similar antitrust actions against Google and Microsoft that have led to billions in fines. It also contrasts with U.S. lawmakers’ slower approach to the issue, as they start discussing how to curb the growing power of the tech industry’s titans. A Tuesday hearing in Washington looked into whether the companies’ business practices run afoul of century-old laws originally designed to combat railroad and oil monopolies. Any U.S. action is still a long time away.
Under political attack, Facebook exec defends its cryptocurrency
The EU’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, said she’s taking a “very close look” at Amazon’s dual role as marketplace and retailer.
In addition to selling its own products, Amazon allows third-party retailers to sell their goods through its site. Last year, more than half of the items sold on Amazon worldwide were from third-party sellers.
In doing so, Amazon collects data about activity on its platform that, the EU says, it might be able to use to favor its own products for sale. In particular, the EU will look at how Amazon determines which trader is selected as the default seller of an item that a customer wants to buy.
The EU opened a preliminary probe into the issue last year, and Vestager said it has shown that “Amazon appears to use competitively sensitive information – about marketplace sellers, their products and transactions on the marketplace.”
About FaceApp
People raised fears on Twitter and other social media sites that on iPhones, FaceApp would be able to see and upload all your photos, including screenshots with sensitive financial or health information or photos of kids with the names of their schools in the background.
That’s not actually true, but the scuttle serves as a good reminder to think twice before downloading new apps.
Even large, mainstream apps routinely collect user data. But many trendy-at-the-moment apps are guilty of mining user data as a primary purpose. Some personality quizzes on Facebook and similar services collect user information as a business, opening people up to breaches such as in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
On Wednesday, the ranking Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, wrote in a letter to the FBI and Federal Trade Commission that he’s concerned FaceApp could pose “national security and privacy risks for millions of U.S. citizens.” The New York Democrat is asking the two agencies to assess the situation.
As for FaceApp, the app grabs a photo only if you specifically select it to see your face change, security researcher and Guardian Firewall CEO Will Strafach said
