Index

A Spy In Your Pocket

The Lack of Privacy Protections in the U. S. is abhorrent.

I admit it, I am a dinosaur. I take notes by hand with a pen or pencil, not at a keyboard. That’s what I learned all those decades ago, and trying to take notes at a keyboard just interrupts my train of thought.

When the so-called smart pens came out, I thought I was in heaven. These pens take what you write, and send it to your phone or computer as graphics. With some processing, the computer can turn that into text. Voila, notes that you can use in documents.

Smartpens become spies

Smartpens in general require a piece of software or phone app to get the data out of the pen, whether or not you convert it to text. These applications require you to login to them, even to extract the data from the pen. This makes them a potential spy when used. Without the app, the device is an expensive ballpoint pen, and nothing more.

Neolab made some of the less expensive smartpens, and their software could read my handwriting mostly correctly. I used it for corporate meeting notes for several years, and it worked pretty well. I had to use a login on their systems to convert the handwriting to text, of course. All of the other smartpens available required logins too - a potential privacy violation, but one easily tracked if it happened. Given the time and work it saved me, it was a small tradeoff. I didn’t think of Neolab as potentially hostile, given the company is in South Korea.¹

If Neolab has a privacy policy, I was never able to locate it. This is completely in line with the way they treated me. They no longer keep your data on their servers, and have eliminated the login from their apps. You have to use either a Google or Apple login to use the application, and they moved my existing data over to Google without my permission. Their formerly useful tool is now a spy if I use it, and Google has my whole history and all future work without my consent, and without any sort of contractual obligation to me. My data is now available to Faux Noise if Google decides they want to sell it, and I have nothing I can really say. Neolabs gave them the data.

I have complained to Neolab about this, and basically got “tough shit” - they kept trying to pretend it was a technical problem until I bluntly told them that it was a bad business decision made without consent of the customer. If I had never opened and used the pens, they might have thought about returning my money, but shutting off my use of the pen is not cause to refund my money in their minds. I seem to be thoroughly screwed.

I am pretty sure that this is a violation of the GDPR, and is also probably a California privacy law violation as well. Since I am not protected by either of those sets of statutes, I am fresh out of luck. If you are lucky to have some legal protection, now is the time to check and see if you think your privacy - and your ability to use your tool - is protected from this sort of garbage.

My data is already out there, so I am out of luck. I don’t have the money to pay lawyers to fight this, and since the data Google was given has no practical value any more, I have no real reason to waste money on it. Individual privacy has no value in most of the United States. As an example, HIPPA, a law that supposedly protects our medical data, has no enforcement.

An Alternative, At Least for Now

There is an alternative that I am pretty sure is covered by GDPR laws, though. It is quite a lot more expensive that the smartpens. reMarkable of Norway² makes a tablet that, while it requires a login on their servers to convert your handwriting, should at least be legally covered. First off, you can see your data without using any other app - it is on the device you created it on, so you can read and edit it as you desire. If you use their service, their privacy policy claims that they keep your data safe, and I have had no reason to doubt that. I have and use both versions of their tablet and have had no complaints about their service. The only complaints I have had have to do with their stylus - one broke, and the other was attached to the tablet magnetically and vanished the first week I had it. The devices and data service have been exemplary.

No Laws, No Privacy

To my knowledge, we in the states are not protected against Neolab’s sort of privacy violations except for the weak coverage in California. I envy the E. U. for the GDPR, even though it has some serious gaps - at least they are trying. Fascist corporate pirates own the Congress, so we have essentially zero chance of getting anything serious in the way of data and privacy protections for the foreseeable future. We have to depend on other countries’ laws for what little protection we can get.

Some of Europe’s GDPR regulating bodies took a look at Office365 it and said no way, it doesn’t work under our regulations. While this is not enforced yet, it is at least a step in the right direction for them, especially since there are equivalent open-source office software packages out that do not leak data. I am sure that Micro$haft will fight it as long as they can. They seem to be able to come up with privacy-invading things faster than regulators can push back anyway. My solution to that has been drop Windoze and all other Micro$haft software from my computers and from my life except where I have to use it because there is no Linux version available, like to do taxes.

Maybe some day the U. S. will have some legally-defended privacy of some sort, but for now the fascists will do their best to prevent it. Culture wars garbage is too high of a priority for them because it is the only way they can even pretend to get elected. I just hope that maybe my grandkids when they grow up will be able to breathe without someone legally stealing a record of every breath.

Footnotes:

1: Their website lists their address as “#1501, Mario Tower, Guro-Dong 222-12, Guro-Gu, Seoul, Korea 08389”

2: Their website lists their address as “Biermanns gate 6, 0473, Oslo, Norway”