As gadgets and services get smarter, they need more data, and face the hard problem of keeping it safe. Data privacy has become a huge problem for Google, Facebook, Amazon, and any company using artificial intelligence to power its services — and a major sticking point for lawmakers looking to regulate. Here’s all the news on data privacy and how it’s changing tech.
The company says in its announcement that the app, which uses Nord’s WireGuard-based NordLynx VPN protocol, will let users watch shows they’re following while abroad and prevent ISPs from identifying and throttling streaming content.
NordVPN was initially skeptical that Apple would place limitations on Apple TV’s native VPN support, but later said it was working on an app.
[NordVPN]
The New York Times published an investigative piece on the slave labor behind some of those innocuous-seeming crypto scam texts and calls.
The story focuses on one person who escaped from a compound where he was where he was forced to carry out intricate online romance scams involving crypto. The money earned from these scams is then laundered through other countries, including the US.
A word of warning: This story has descriptions of torture and captivity.
[The New York Times]
Hot off a recent Utah Supreme Court decision, legal blogger Orin Kerr lays out the legal conundrum around whether you can be legally compelled to provide a passcode or password (and how that’s actually slightly different from, but closely related to, having to unlock your phone):
The lower court caselaw is a total mess. No one can say what the law is. And I’ve been waiting for a case to come down that might be a good candidate for U.S. Supreme Court review to clear up the mess.
Here’s a possibility: The Utah Supreme Court’s ruling today in State v. Valdez.
A month after Meta announced new subscriptions that give users the choice between paying or giving their “consent” to being tracked and shown ads, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and 18 of its members have filed a complaint, Reuters reports. “People should not be asked to pay for protecting their privacy,” it says. A first step in what’s likely to be a long legal battle.
ABC News in Australia reported that Dr. Janice Duffy settled with Google after winning two lawsuits alleging defamation — one in 2015 and one earlier this year.
The judge found Google liable for publishing snippets from the site Ripoff Reports, which profits by allowing people to post unvetted “complaints” about others on the site and surfacing them in Google Search. As the judge in Duffy’s last lawsuit noted, would change URLs to keep pages visible.
A 2021 New York Times report about the site noted that Google began downranking Ripoff Reports and similar sites.
Kashmir Hill, author of the book Your Face Belongs to Us and “not a privacy nihilist,” spoke to Nilay on Decoder about whether or not we can do anything about the rise of a facial recognition-enabled dystopian world.
New York Times journalist Kashmir Hill comes on Decoder to discuss her new book, Your Face Belongs to Us, and what the spread of facial recognition technology means for the future of privacy.
In certain situations, like using Gmail, Google News, Assistant, Contacts, or Google TV, personal data will be combined across different services it offers or with data from non-Google sources.
This is the arrangement set up by Germany’s Federal Cartel Office, or Bundeskartellamt, after an antitrust inquiry under a provision allowing it to intervene “when competition is threatened by large digital companies.”
In the future Google will have to provide its users with the possibility to give free, specific, informed and unambiguous consent to the processing of their data across services. For this purpose Google has to offer corresponding choice options for the combination of data. The selection dialogues must be designed so as not to guide users manipulatively towards cross-service data processing (avoiding “dark patterns”).
Where data are not actually processed across services and Google’s data processing terms explicitly make this clear, Google will not have to offer choice options. Any obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation remain unaffected by these obligations.
The regulator mentions it’s still conducting more proceedings against Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Apple, Facebook (Meta), and Microsoft.
New York State Education Department Commissioner Betty A. Rosa has issued an order prohibiting New York State schools from purchasing or using facial recognition technology. Schools may use other forms of biometric identification, the department says, but are asked to consider “the technology’s privacy implications, impact on civil rights, effectiveness, and parental input”.
In a report on the subject earlier this summer, the state’s Office of IT Services noted that “there are discernable risks to the use of this technology in school settings”.
[New York State Education Department]
Maximus, a company that administers government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, was swept up in the broad MOVEit hacking campaign in May that affected over 2,000 organizations.
Victims filed a proposed class action lawsuit against the company after the attack, which as TechCrunch noted saw the leak of social security and other sensitive health information for between 8 and 11 million people.
National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), a Virginia-based educational nonprofit, said in a sample data breach notice filed with the California Attorney General that it suffered a MOVEit-related cyber attack on May 30th, reported Bleeping Computer.
The NSC says in the letter that stolen data may include SSNs and other personal and school-related records. Bleeping Computer writes that 890 schools’ were affected. The organization acknowledges the breach and subsequent patch on its website.
[BleepingComputer]
This report by 404 Media discusses an unnamed Taylor Swift fan TikTok account with 90,000 followers that finds people in viral videos and releases their information, like name, occupation, and social media profiles. It does this using PimEyes, one of several facial recognition search engines. And at least so far, TikTok has declined to remove it.
One target told me he felt violated after the TikTok account using facial recognition tech targeted him. Another said they initially felt flattered before “that promptly gave way to worry.” All of the victims I spoke to echoed one general point—this behavior showed them just how exposed we all potentially are simply by existing in public.
A new Justice Department filing says that Elon Musk’s actions at X (formerly Twitter) might have violated a privacy order from the FTC, according to The Washington Post.
Seems like Musk may have made some bad decisions:
Multiple employees testified that Musk gave directives that were at odds with the company’s normal processes and policies, according to the filing.
[The Washington Post]
