Barrister-Processing and Summarization of Terms & Conditions / Privacy Policies

Abstract

“You re confused into thinking these are there to inform users, as opposed to protect companies,” said Albert Gidari, the consulting director of privacy at the Stanford Centre for Internet and Society. Terms of service and privacy agreements are verbose and full of legal jargon, and the justifications for the processing and sale of your data are opaquely defined by corporations. The data market has become the powerhouse of the internet, and these terms and privacy rules that we accept without understanding or sometimes even reading help fuel the age of surveillance capitalism. It is common to access a wealth of services and applications, each with a long terms and conditions declaration and a one-click “allow” option. Often users accept these stipulations usually without ever reading the contractual obligations, let alone understanding their particulars. This work proposes a framework which is an automated text summarization application that can convert long, legalese, difficult-to-comprehend, terms and conditions / privacy policies to summarized, simplified simple English speech; using machine learning and natural language processing, which will dramatically decrease the reading time of these legalese documents and shed special attention on class action waivers. It is probably better to behave with one rule in mind until we reshape privacy policy to suit our needs, or we find an acceptable substitute. To be straightforward and concise: there is always someone watching.