Big tech companies must protect customer data from legal backdoors

Cloud extraction allows law enforcement agencies to take huge amounts of your data from the Cloud via a legal back door. If law enforcement seize your phone or take it from a victim of crime, they can extract  tokens or passwords from the device which lets them get access to data from apps such as Uber, Instagram, Slack, Gmail, Alexa and WhatsApp. 

In so doing, law enforcement agencies can avoid official channels through cloud companies such as Google, Apple and Microsoft. There is no check on what they take.

Summary of Privacy International's research

• Law enforcement are increasingly using cloud analytics
• This can be used to obtain vast quantities of your customers' data outside the normal legal frameworks for obtaining customer data in the course of criminal investigations e.g. via warrant to Amazon.
• Emotion and facial recognition can be applied to customers' data
• Cloud analytics software is being used without any transparency and in the absence of clear, accessible and effective legal frameworks
• There is a risk of abuse and misuse of customer data and miscarriage of justice

Demands to big tech companies to protect customer data

We believe these companies need to do more to protect their customers data so we've written to them asking them to tell us what their position is on the use of these creepy new technologies that also include facial recognition and the ability to continual track you without your knowledge.