Report of the Independent Surveillance Review
41
cannot give fully explicit or specific consent to uses of data that they do not, indeed
cannot, understand. And with the development of ‘e-health’, ever-greater volumes of
personal lifestyle data are being produced by consumers using wearable technology
devices. For example, using in-built sensors in iPhones, Apple’s ResearchKit open-source
software framework lets researchers create apps to ‘gather new types of data on a scale
never available before’.41 In these circumstances, there is even less clarity for the user
over how their data will be used and repurposed by these commercial entities.
Figure 4: Word Length of Terms and Conditions of Popular Internet Services.42
Website/Service
PayPal
Hamlet
Apple iTunes
Macbeth
Windows Live
Apple iOS 5
Facebook
Google All-Inclusive
Apple iCloud
Amazon Kindle
Amazon.co.uk
Twitter
2.44
Total Words
36,275
30,066
19,972
18,110
14,714
13,366
11,195
10,640
10,724
7,115
5,212
4,445
In order to collect data on their customers, commercial organisations must seek
permission from users to do so. However, some argue that agreeing to terms is not
evidence of explicit, informed consent. Many will hastily agree to T&Cs as they are eager
to unlock the opportunities that agreeing to them offers. For example, an experiment
into the dangers of public WiFi use in 2014 saw six users agree to T&Cs requiring them
to give up their first-born child in exchange for free WiFi.43 T&Cs and privacy agreements
can often be extremely lengthy and written in legalistic language (see Figure 4); this
makes it difficult for the user to fully understand how his or her data will be collected
and used. A report commissioned by Belgium’s National Data Protection Authority44
concluded that Facebook’s revised T&Cs gave users a false sense of control over their
41. Apple, ‘ResearchKit’, <https://www.apple.com/uk/researchkit/>.
42. Rich Parris, ‘Online T&Cs Longer Than Shakespeare Plays – Who Reads Them?’, Which?
Conversation, 23 March 2012, <http://conversation.which.co.uk/technology/length-ofwebsite-terms-and-conditions/>.
43. Tom Fox-Brewster, ‘Londoners Give Up Eldest Children in Public Wi-Fi Security Horror
Show’, Guardian, 29 September 2014.
44. Brendan Van Alsenoy et al., ‘From Social Media Service to Advertising Network: A Critical
Analysis of Facebook’s Revised Policies’, draft version 1.2, 2015, <http://www.law.
kuleuven.be/icri/en/news/item/facebooks-revised-policies-and-terms-v1-2.pdf>.