You work in tech. You regularly have to input some form of MFA, whether passkey or a rolling code MFA from something like Google Authenticator or Authy. You work from home, and slack is the primary form of communication, with email becoming a distant secondary form. Time AFK (Away From Keyboard) is possible if you have your #smartphone, and you panic if it's not within reach.
How do you go to a #dumbphone, in this scenario? I would like to ditch my smartphone, carry a camera on #bike trips, reduce my #addiction to the internet a bit, reduce the #surveillance of my activity a bit.
My main concern is work requirements for communication and MFA. I am curious about things like #grapheneos, #fairphone, dumbphones. I have a Google #Pixel, an older model, and definitely don't want something newer that has more #AI integration, surveillance.
Have you done this? How did it go? Please boost.
Ce moment où tu découvres que ta webcam de PC portable dispose d'un cache pour masquer/désactiver la caméra, mais que la caméra infrarouge de la même webcam n'est, elle, jamais masquée ni désactivée...
HP Pavilion...
#surveillance#privacy
Tell Seattle City Council to ban surveillance pricing — and reject all amendments that add loopholes, weaken enforcement, and carve in surveillance technologies
Click here to bring up a draft mail to Seattle City Council in your email program — or see the other suggestions below
Surveillance pricing (also known as algorithmic price-based discrimination) is where corporations use vast quantities of personal data to set individualized prices … in other words, charge you more if they think they can get you to pay more. That shouldn’t be legal, and Seattle’s proposed Fair Pricing and Transparency ordinance would prohibit it. The City Council will vote on the ordinance on Tuesday, and industry lobbyists are trying every trick in the book to weaken or kill it – including mass spam texts. Guy Oron’s Seattle Is Poised to Ban Supermarket Algorithmic Price Discrimination has more, including great quote from QFC cashier and florist Kristen Wilder, Maya Morales of Washington People’s Privacy, Kerem Levitas of the Mayor Wilson’s office, and bill lead sponsor Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck.
A very broad coalition supports this ordinance – including grocery workers, consumers, dozens of community, faith, human rights, and tech justice groups. But lobbyists have a lot of influence, and they’re pushing amendments that would add loopholes, weaken enforcement, and legitimize the use of surveillance technologies. So we need to push back hard and tell the Council to pass the bill without any harmful amendments.
If you’re in Seattle, please contact your councilmember. Phone numbers, email addresses, and a district finder are on the Seattle City Council page. Here’s a draft you can use to start with. Feel free to customize it however you want (we’ve got some suggestions below) or even start from scratch and write your own – the more different voices they hear, the better! But if you’re pressed for time, or can’t think of what else to say, it’s completely fine to use the script as is (just remember to include your councilmember’s name at the top and yours at the bottom).
Subject: Ban surveillance pricing – and reject all amendments that undermine protections by adding loopholes, weakening enforcement, and carving in surveillance technologies
Dear Councilmember [COUNCILMEMBER’S LAST NAME],
As a constituent, I’m asking you to pass the Fair Pricing and Transparency Ordinance without any amendments that undermine its protections. Retailers and delivery services shouldn’t be allowed to use our personal data to charge some people more than others. Industry lobbyists don’t care about consumers, just their profits, so don’t give in to their pressure to add loopholes or weaken enforcement. Consumers and grocery workers support this bill and so do dozens of community, faith, labor, human rights, immigrant rights, and tech justice organizations.
Please oppose any amendments that will weaken it – including Amendment F, which carves in the use of surveillance technologies for fraud prevention and fraud detection. This amendment gives big tech companies a roadmap for how to get around the protections in this bill. And, it also rolls out a red carpet for use of these technologies to target immigrants, people receiving government benefits, and anybody else the federal government sees as an enemy.
Click here to bring up a draft in your email program, or just cut-and-paste the text.
You can also use the Action Network campaigns from UFCW 3000 or Transit Riders Union, Lavender Rights Project, Queer Power Alliance, WA People Power, and WA Working Families Party (see, I wasn’t kidding about that very broad coalition) which have longer emails with a different emphasis. It’s fine to contact your councilmember more than once!
If you want to customize your message …
Adding a sentence or two about why you care so much about this issue makes your message more powerful. Anecdotes are great (politicians love anecodotes), or feel free to cut-and-paste as many of these talking points as you want.
Grocery prices are climbing out of control, to the point where people are literally going into credit card debt to purchase food.Surveillance pricing enables businesses to extract as much profit as possible from consumers – for example, an investigation into Instacart found that their pricing algorithm led to some consumers spending $1200 more on groceries each year.The mass texts sent out to Seattle residents by industry lobbyists are not only full of disinformation, they are also an example of the very unsettling surveillance of use of private data that is at issue hereThe ordinance is very clear: discounts, deals, offers are all allowed, as long as they’re not hyper-specifically targeted to an individual using their personal data. The same loyalty programs that grocery stores have been running for decades before the use of surveillance pricing are not impacted by this ordinanceThis ordinance protects legitimate sales, coupons, and loyalty discounts. It does not prevent businesses from offering transparent discounts or rewarding customers. It guards against something fundamentally different: individualized pricing based on being tracked and profiled.This ordinance will prohibit retailers from using third-party sources of data about us to manipulate our prices – sources like big tech profiling companies, data brokers, and AI companies that amass huge amounts of data about people.We all deserve the same, transparent base prices from retailers when we shop! Especially for something as basic and essential as groceries.Bonus action: Follow up with a call!
Following up on your email with a phone call increases the impact because it underlines how much care about this issue . Also, if you’ve taken the time to customize the letter with a personal experience or point of view, a phone call can make it more likely that they’ll read your mail. It’s fine to just leave a message, and especially if you’ve already emailed your phone message can be very short, something like
“I’m [your name], a constituent. Please pass the Fair Pricing and Transparency Ordinance without any corporate amendments. I already emailed you about this, and wanted to make sure you know how much I care about this vote.
Or go into as much detail as you want.
Click here to bring up a draft mail to Seattle City Council in your email program -- or see the other suggestions below
Surveillance pricing (also known as algorithmic price-based discrimination) is where corporations use vast quantities of personal data to set individualized prices ... in other words, charge you more if they think they can get you to pay more. That shouldn't be legal, and Seattle's proposed Fair Pricing and Transparency ordinance would prohibit it. The City Council will […]
Tell Seattle City Council to ban surveillance pricing — and reject all amendments that add loopholes, weaken enforcement, and carve in surveillance technologies
Click here to bring up a draft mail to Seattle City Council in your email program — or see the other suggestions below
Surveillance pricing (also known as algorithmic price-based discrimination) is where corporations use vast quantities of personal data to set individualized prices … in other words, charge you more if they think they can get you to pay more. That shouldn’t be legal, and Seattle’s proposed Fair Pricing and Transparency ordinance would prohibit it. The City Council will vote on the ordinance on Tuesday, and industry lobbyists are trying every trick in the book to weaken or kill it – including mass spam texts. Guy Oron’s Seattle Is Poised to Ban Supermarket Algorithmic Price Discrimination has more, including great quote from QFC cashier and florist Kristen Wilder, Maya Morales of Washington People’s Privacy, Kerem Levitas of the Mayor Wilson’s office, and bill lead sponsor Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck.
A very broad coalition supports this ordinance – including grocery workers, consumers, dozens of community, faith, human rights, and tech justice groups. But lobbyists have a lot of influence, and they’re pushing amendments that would add loopholes, weaken enforcement, and legitimize the use of surveillance technologies. So we need to push back hard and tell the Council to pass the bill without any harmful amendments.
If you’re in Seattle, please contact your councilmember. Phone numbers, email addresses, and a district finder are on the Seattle City Council page. Here’s a draft you can use to start with. Feel free to customize it however you want (we’ve got some suggestions below) or even start from scratch and write your own – the more different voices they hear, the better! But if you’re pressed for time, or can’t think of what else to say, it’s completely fine to use the script as is (just remember to include your councilmember’s name at the top and yours at the bottom).
Subject: Ban surveillance pricing – and reject all amendments that undermine protections by adding loopholes, weakening enforcement, and carving in surveillance technologies
Dear Councilmember [COUNCILMEMBER’S LAST NAME],
As a constituent, I’m asking you to pass the Fair Pricing and Transparency Ordinance without any amendments that undermine its protections. Retailers and delivery services shouldn’t be allowed to use our personal data to charge some people more than others. Industry lobbyists don’t care about consumers, just their profits, so don’t give in to their pressure to add loopholes or weaken enforcement. Consumers and grocery workers support this bill and so do dozens of community, faith, labor, human rights, immigrant rights, and tech justice organizations.
Please oppose any amendments that will weaken it – including Amendment F, which carves in the use of surveillance technologies for fraud prevention and fraud detection. This amendment gives big tech companies a roadmap for how to get around the protections in this bill. And, it also rolls out a red carpet for use of these technologies to target immigrants, people receiving government benefits, and anybody else the federal government sees as an enemy.
Click here to bring up a draft in your email program, or just cut-and-paste the text.
You can also use the Action Network campaigns from UFCW 3000 or Transit Riders Union, Lavender Rights Project, Queer Power Alliance, WA People Power, and WA Working Families Party (see, I wasn’t kidding about that very broad coalition) which have longer emails with a different emphasis. It’s fine to contact your councilmember more than once!
If you want to customize your message …
Adding a sentence or two about why you care so much about this issue makes your message more powerful. Anecdotes are great (politicians love anecodotes), or feel free to cut-and-paste as many of these talking points as you want.
Grocery prices are climbing out of control, to the point where people are literally going into credit card debt to purchase food.Surveillance pricing enables businesses to extract as much profit as possible from consumers – for example, an investigation into Instacart found that their pricing algorithm led to some consumers spending $1200 more on groceries each year.The mass texts sent out to Seattle residents by industry lobbyists are not only full of disinformation, they are also an example of the very unsettling surveillance of use of private data that is at issue hereThe ordinance is very clear: discounts, deals, offers are all allowed, as long as they’re not hyper-specifically targeted to an individual using their personal data. The same loyalty programs that grocery stores have been running for decades before the use of surveillance pricing are not impacted by this ordinanceThis ordinance protects legitimate sales, coupons, and loyalty discounts. It does not prevent businesses from offering transparent discounts or rewarding customers. It guards against something fundamentally different: individualized pricing based on being tracked and profiled.This ordinance will prohibit retailers from using third-party sources of data about us to manipulate our prices – sources like big tech profiling companies, data brokers, and AI companies that amass huge amounts of data about people.We all deserve the same, transparent base prices from retailers when we shop! Especially for something as basic and essential as groceries.Bonus action: Follow up with a call!
Following up on your email with a phone call increases the impact because it underlines how much care about this issue . Also, if you’ve taken the time to customize the letter with a personal experience or point of view, a phone call can make it more likely that they’ll read your mail. It’s fine to just leave a message, and especially if you’ve already emailed your phone message can be very short, something like
“I’m [your name], a constituent. Please pass the Fair Pricing and Transparency Ordinance without any corporate amendments. I already emailed you about this, and wanted to make sure you know how much I care about this vote.
Or go into as much detail as you want.
