Crisp Insights into Digital Age ESG Developments – May 20, 2021

Amazon’s Ring is The Largest Civilian Surveillance Network The US Has Ever Seen

 

“Ring is effectively building the largest corporate-owned, civilian-installed surveil-lance network that the US has ever seen”. Moreover “Because Ring cameras are owned by civilians, law enforcement are given a backdoor entry into private video recordings of people in residential and public space that would otherwise be protect-ed under the fourth amendment.”

 

This issue intersects with several ESG areas, from privacy and outdated industrial age laws, to blurring lines between private and public security arrangements, as well as the ethics of boards making decisions at large tech firms like Amazon.

 

Read More

 

How Apple’s AirTag Turns Us Into Unwitting Spies in a Vast Surveillance Network

 

This presents another example of how ‘crowd-sourced’ surveillance networks are gathering pace through private, consumer products. When combined with smart devices in the home through the internet of things, consumers could be tracked 24X7.

 

In the meantime, each company is coming up with its own standards of behaviour, privacy and data collection practices, above and beyond a patchwork of global regulations. So who is ensuring a broader set of consumer protections across those various platforms? And what role can investors play on the self-governance front?

 

Read More

 

Elon Musk Says Tesla Will No Longer Accept Bitcoin Due to Fossil Fuel Use

 

We wrote about this when Musk first announced the acceptance of Bitcoin for payment, questioning the fossil fuel impact of Bitcoin mining, offsetting the savings from his electric vehicle fleet.

 

It appears that it has now dawned on the company that this might not have been a well advised strategy. One wonders what the board was thinking when they approved this, and if there was enough challenge around the table to prevent a market moving U-turn?

 

Read More

 

Censorship, Surveillance and Profits: A Hard Bargain for Apple in China

 

A fascinating article detailing the operational complexities and problematic dilemmas facing tech companies hoping to do business with authoritarian governments. Not only does it set them against their stated values, but it creates dependencies that can have long term consequences to their success.

 

It also highlights hardening of the tech island fragmentation we frequently revisit. While it is incredibly challenging to appease an authoritarian ruled, growth market, and simultaneously continue to ‘do the right thing,’ there will inevitably come a break point where companies will have to decide which side of this divide they want to land on.

 

Read More

 

Gig Economy Couriers Should be Eligible For a Pension, Says UK Regulator

 

Tech platforms can either be dragged into compliance – having fought these laws for years – or get ahead of the curve and claim some moral high ground.

 

Considering the reputational impact on these intangibles contingent businesses, it might be more prudent to err on the right side of history.

 

Read More