{"id":904,"date":"2012-12-11T21:16:12","date_gmt":"2012-12-11T21:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=904"},"modified":"2013-01-08T13:25:40","modified_gmt":"2013-01-08T13:25:40","slug":"leaving-ubuntu-the-last-straw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=904","title":{"rendered":"Leaving Ubuntu: the last straw?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fsf.org\/blogs\/rms\/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do\">post<\/a> by Richard Stallman raises an issue that I, and others, raised some time ago regarding the behaviour of the Ubuntu &#8216;dash&#8217; feature in Ubuntu 12.10 and later.  I&#8217;m posting here after reading Stallman&#8217;s post and also Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon&#8217;s responses <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonobacon.org\/2012\/12\/07\/on-richard-stallman-and-ubuntu\/\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonobacon.org\/2012\/12\/10\/on-being-childish-an-apology\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>(I know Jono from his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lugradio.org\/\">Lugradio<\/a> days, but I hope he won&#8217;t take this post personally.)<\/p>\n<p>The issue surrounds a feature introduced to the Ubuntu &#8216;dash&#8217; in Ubuntu 12.10 (released in October).  The feature has become known as the &#8220;shopping lens&#8221; and has generated a great deal of controversy.  It works as follows:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>A user types a search string into the dash;<\/li>\n<li>This search string is used to search local files\/documents\/music\/video etc.<\/li>\n<li>This search string is used to return search results from Amazon<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The dash always did step 2 above, but the recent introduction is that of step 3.  I&#8217;ve tested this behaviour on a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.10 (codenamed &#8216;Quantal Quetzal&#8217;).  After starting the newly-installed system, opening the dash and typing &#8216;terminal&#8217; (because I want to launch the command-line terminal), I am returned various search results:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A link to the Gnome Terminal application: this is actually what I want;<\/li>\n<li>About 5 or 6 hits on Amazon for various releases of the movie &#8216;The Terminal&#8217; starring Tom Hanks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This has happened because my dash search terms have been sent over the network to Canonical&#8217;s servers (Canonical distributes Ubuntu) and onwards to Amazon.  This is a major privacy issue.  Search terms entered into the dash, since its inception, have always (and only) been directed to local resources: local applications, local documents, local media.  Sending local search terms across the Internet is not acceptable, especially since it&#8217;s done without consent.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine if the search term was something less innocuous.  Perhaps it relates to a sensitive medical matter (you&#8217;re searching for your own document named with the condition) and suddenly you&#8217;re seeing online results for that query.<\/p>\n<p>And, and this is the clincher, if you click through to any of those search results and end up buying something (e.g. &#8216;The Terminal&#8217; on DVD), then Canonical get a cut of that sale from Amazon.  That is, this is a money-making scheme.  Blog posts such as <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.canonical.com\/2012\/12\/07\/searching-in-the-dash-in-ubuntu-13-04\/\">this one by Cristian Parrino<\/a> present the online search using buzzwords and talk of &#8220;improving the experience&#8221; without any mention of the monetisation that Canonical are introducing.<\/p>\n<p>This is exactly the issue Richard Stallman raises and he&#8217;s right on the money: this is an invasion of privacy.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong: I&#8217;m not against anyone making money, but it should be made clear that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening.<\/p>\n<p>Jono and others have attempted to defuse this situation and various changes have been made to how the dash implements these searches, but I believe they are insufficient for the following reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The feature can be disabled.&#8221;  Yes, it can.  But only if you know about it and know how to switch it off;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The feature can be uninstalled.&#8221;  Yes, it can, but again only if you know that it exists and know how to uninstall the appropriate package;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;There&#8217;s a privacy policy link displayed at the bottom of the dash when searching.&#8221;  Yes, there is: this was added in response to early feedback about the online search.  While welcome, this is insufficient: it&#8217;s not very prominent and there&#8217;s nothing which forces the user to see it.  In fact, I believe this was only introduced because there was a <a href=\"http:\/\/news.softpedia.com\/news\/Ubuntu-s-Shopping-Lens-Might-Be-Illegal-In-Europe-298143.shtml\">concern that the online searching might be illegal under EU law<\/a> in the form it took prior to the policy being made available;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Everyone has their own idea about privacy, some people don&#8217;t care so much about this.&#8221;.  That may well be true, but that&#8217;s not the point: many users will <em>simply be unaware that this is even a privacy issue in the first place<\/em>!  Ubuntu is designed to be used by non-technical users and those users are unlikely to be aware of how their search terms will be used;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;[References to how people freely share their data in other online applications such as Google search and Facebook]&#8221;  Not relevant.  With such applications, it&#8217;s <em>very clear<\/em> that content\/posts will be shared with others.  One should <em>not<\/em> expect, however, a search for a local document to leak out online!\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Canonical&#8217;s response has been a case of not taking the issue seriously enough, in my opinion.  I guess we&#8217;ve reached the point where Canonical are, by their own admission, starting to &#8216;monetize&#8217; desktop Ubuntu for general users.  I respect Jono&#8217;s opinions in such discussions, but remember that (despite commenting on his blog that &#8220;does not neccessarily represent the views of my employer&#8221;), he is a Canonical employee.<\/p>\n<p>Looking at the online-search feature objectively, it&#8217;s an excellent idea and well-implemented technically: however, the feature should be <em>explicitly opt-in<\/em> the first time someone tries to use it.  That is, unless someone has unequivocally stated that they want to use the feature, it should not send anything across the network.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sufficiently unhappy about this to probably switch away from Ubuntu at my next hardware change, although I&#8217;m on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS until then and it (thankfully) lacks the online-search feature.<\/p>\n<p>Overall I&#8217;m disappointed that Ubuntu\/Canonical have done this; disappointing that Ubuntu\/Canonical don&#8217;t consider it a serious privacy problem and that they won&#8217;t consider it as an <em>opt-in<\/em> feature.  Were that to be done, all my complaints with it evaporate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update 8 January 2013<\/strong>: found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2012\/12\/30\/linux_in_2012\/\">this article<\/a> discussing some of the same issues, amongst other matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent post by Richard Stallman raises an issue that I, and others, raised some time ago regarding the behaviour of the Ubuntu &#8216;dash&#8217; feature in Ubuntu 12.10 and later. I&#8217;m posting here after reading Stallman&#8217;s post and also Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon&#8217;s responses here and here. (I know Jono from his Lugradio days,&#8230;&nbsp;(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=904\">read more<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=904"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":912,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions\/912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}