ubuntu-privacy team mailing list archive

[vexorian <1054776@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Given recent revelations , I think the discussion regarding the ethics
leaving some scopes in the  default and even their inclusion in the
repositories repositories should be revisited.

If you want me to be more explicit:

- We know that youtube is part of PRISM.
- We don't know if Amazon joined PRISM or not. The only big US company we know refused to "cooperate by making NSA access easier" is twitter. Amazon is still a US-located company and thus is bound to the law and court orders that allow this , and so is twitter.

I think this should be a concern to non-US citizens using Ubuntu. In the
case of Amazon, searches are made from Canonical's servers. But that may
not be enough of a protection. NSA could target specific communications
between Canonical and US servers. If they knew a special individual is a
ubuntu user they could listen to the home searches of all users in order
to attempt to datamine them. I think that the scope of PRISM and the
extremes that we now know NSA is capable of should make Canonical
reconsider these decisions as they now have risks much higher than
Amazon learning what sort of porn you like.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1054776

Title:
  Don't include remote searches in the home lens

Status in Unity Shopping Lens:
  New
Status in “unity-lens-shopping” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Recent news (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/online-shopping-
  features-arrive-in-ubuntu-12-10) indicates that the home lens will, by
  default, search Amazon for products to put in the 'More suggestions'
  section. This means that regular searches for local applications and
  files are transmitted to a remote server, which I believe breaks an
  expectation of privacy. It also seems somewhat tasteless for my
  operating system to be advertising things I might want to buy.
  Finally, the idea that Ubuntu is now ad-supported has brought
  considerable negative PR on tech news sites like Slashdot and Hacker
  News.

  All of these problems could be easily avoided if the shopping lens
  were separate, rather than showing results in the home lens.  The
  shopping results would still be very convenient when the user wanted
  to see them - they could opt in with a single click, as we currently
  can with the video lens, for example.

  To anticipate one likely response: I understand that this feature can
  be removed by uninstalling the package. I believe it should be opt-in,
  not opt-out, and I also think the feature is useful, so I don't want
  to remove it completely from my system.

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