The Game

Contents

• Instructions
• Technical details
• Scenario (spoiler!)
• Mechanisms
• Who are we?
• Qui sommes-nous ?

Our second observation is the growing importance of privacy and personal data protection issues for citizens. Over the last few years, democratic scandals revealed by associations or institutions, have alerted public opinion to the need to address these issues. Lawsuits with varying verdicts, and sometimes in legislative changes came after.

This collective demand for reliable information and practical technical solutions remains strong today. Gao&Blaze is a way for us to contribute to providing more accessible knowledge.

Our third observation is that despite the already important—and growing—use of these devices and the risk of privacy violations, they remain among the most opaque functioning, both technical and software.

Without even mentioning here the components whose audit is deliberately complex, such as baseband chips, many of these devices are extremely complicated to disassemble, and therefore to study. The same logic is at work for software, both for the operating system and for applications, with codes that are mostly proprietary and selectively hidden from users. If alternatives are slowly appearing to overcome these problems, they remain partial and still largely marginal.

Our fourth observation concerns the relative lack of documentation dedicated to methods for protecting privacy when using a smartphone, compared to that available for using a computer, particularly for web browsing.

Even if the situation has improved recently, these devices remain unprotective concerning personal data and the use of truly preventive mobile applications still very marginal. This imbalance can be explained by the newness of these devices, the shortage of functional and easy-to-deploy tools and the fragmentation of systems. Thus, the demand for solutions accessible to the majority of the public remains strong and globally unsuitable or unsatisfied.

This scarcity reserves technical and practical solutions for an already informed and experienced public. Moreover, this documentations are often written in English, further limiting their accessibility to those who don’t use this language. On the other hand, mobile games are very successful and seem to us to be interesting to mobilize in this context.

Finally, our fifth observation concern economic and social inequalities in the use of smartphones. Studies show that poorer and less educated people have more smartphones than computers and use them longer.

We postulate that these populations are also the least aware of privacy issues, the least able to understand the terms of use and operation of the sites and applications they use, and the least able to configure their devices and software as they would like.

Moreover, the devices that offer the most security from a personal data perspective are also the most expensive. The most affordable ones simply do not allow the use of certain protective tools, such as full encryption.

Finally, we hypothesize that less informed people are also the most likely to be subject to automated decisions or manipulations that negatively affect their lives, based on the collection and processing of their personal data and that of their relatives.

Thus, we see here a consequence of economic and social inequalities in this field: the most fragile populations are at the same time the most exposed to surveillance, the least able to protect themselves and the most likely to be negatively affected.

Faced with these observations, we submitted the Gao&Blaze project to the Fondation MAIF pour la recherche in response to a call for projects on the prevention of risks related to personal data. Although our proposal was not selected, the MAIF Foundation nevertheless agreed to co-finance its realization in partnership with the Prévention MAIF, as well as to participate in the general follow-up of the project and in the construction of the research protocols.

Gao&Blaze is now part of the toolkit used in the framework of the actions organized by the members of the Prévention MAIF association to raise awareness and inform the general public about data protection issues.