Gareth Corfield writes:
Earlier this week suicide prevention and counselling charity the Samaritans launched an app that scans Twitter timelines and alerts users whenever anyone appears to be depressed. Yet the backlash against this creepy automated scanning is astonishing – and the Samaritans appear to be ducking their legal obligations.
Read more on The Register, where Gareth really outlines some of the concerns and attempts to convince Samaritans that their good idea is well… beyond creepy.
It’s not clear to me whether the app really does violate law, and I’ll be interested to see what the ICO says after his review. In the interim, because the Samaritans have not responded as privacy advocates hoped they would, some have taken this to the next level, as this recent tweet indicates:
It’s clear @samaritans won’t listen. Please sign the petition to get @twitter @safety to turn off #SamaritansRadar https://t.co/twFjaW3WMg
— Tentacle Sixteen (@latentexistence) November 2, 2014