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 investigation will focus on the platform’s compliance with federal privacy law with respect to its collection, use, and disclosure of Canadians’ personal information to train artificial intelligence models,” according to a statement from The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada published by Reuters.
Brazil’s ANPD found on Friday that Altman’s biometric data-collecting project may interfere with Brazilians’ ability to freely consent to having their biometric data processed by offering crypto in exchange for the scans, according to a Reuters report syndicated at The Economic Times.
From the announcement, using Google Translate:
...consent for the processing of sensitive personal data, such as biometric data, must be free, informed, unequivocal and provided in a specific and highlighted manner, for specific purposes.
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was a longtime critic of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act... until it got in the way of her potential Senate confirmation.
Trump nominated Gabbard, a Democrat-turned-independent-turned-Republican, for director of national intelligence. But senators from both parties have taken issue with Gabbard’s 2020 effort to repeal Section 702.
It looks like she’s changed her mind, telling Punchbowl News:
“My prior concerns about FISA were based on insufficient protections for civil liberties, particularly regarding the FBI’s misuse of warrantless search powers on American citizens. Significant FISA reforms have been enacted since my time in Congress to address these issues.”
404 Media has a good story about the reported hack of Gravy Analytics, and let’s just say the situation doesn’t seem great:
The hackers said they have stolen a massive amount of data, including customer lists, information on the broader industry, and even location data harvested from smartphones which show peoples’ precise movements, and they are threatening to publish the data publicly.
The European Commission must pay a German citizen EU 400 (about $412 USD) for improperly safeguarding the person’s data sent to Meta in the US after they used a “Sign in with Facebook” button to log into an EU site, reports Reuters.
The Intercept asked over 30 firms whether they’d use their data to help the Trump administration deport immigrants, but it only got four responses — and none of them were from Meta, Google, Microsoft, or Apple.
The president-elect announced that Tom Homan — one of the architects of Trump’s family separation policy — will play a major role in his administration.
In 2022, Homan spoke at a conference organized by white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Starting next year, he’ll “be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
He asked the Commerce Department to strengthen rules designed to prevent repressive regimes from using US-made surveillance technology to spy on dissidents, journalists, and Americans.
The proposed export controls will make it harder for regimes to engage in human rights abuses ranging from mass surveillance of their citizens to hacking into the phones of dissidents and independent journalists. However, I am concerned that the draft rules contain gaps that would allow autocratic governments to continue buying technologies and services from American companies to commit human rights abuses.
An IT consultant, Nunzio Samuele Calamucci, allegedly breached Italy’s Interior Ministry databases on behalf of Equalize, a private investigations company run by a former Italian police officer.
Equalize used a computer virus to break into government databases, prosecutors claim.
In wiretaps, Calamucci, who worked for Equalize, allegedly boasted of having hacked the information of 800,000 people.
Several Italian politicians were among those who were hacked. And agents with Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, allegedly tried to buy information from Equalize.
The ruling was made by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) following a complaint filed in 2018 that said LinkedIn’s tracking ads business violated GDPR.
DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle commented:
“The lawfulness of processing is a fundamental aspect of data protection law and the processing of personal data without an appropriate legal basis is a clear and serious violation of a data subjects’ fundamental right to data protection.”
