Jason Kelley writes: In 2022, student privacy gets a solid “C” grade. The trend of schools engaging in student surveillance did not let up in 2022. There were, however, some small wins indicative of a growing movement to push back against this encroachment. Unfortunately, more schools than ever are spying on students through EdTech software…
Category: Business
Google to pay $29.5 million to settle DC, Indiana lawsuits over location tracking
Jared Gans reports: Google has agreed to pay a total of $29.5 million to settle separate lawsuits with Washington, D.C., and Indiana over its location tracking practices. Under the settlements, Google agreed to not make misrepresentations to users about an individual user’s location information in location history and web and app activity. Read more at…
A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?
Eileen Guo reports: In the fall of 2020, gig workers in Venezuela posted a series of images to online forums where they gathered to talk shop. The photos were mundane, if sometimes intimate, household scenes captured from low angles—including some you really wouldn’t want shared on the Internet. In one particularly revealing shot, a young…
Ninth Circuit revives children’s suit against Google over surreptitious tracking
Edvard Pettersson reports: Google must face a purported class-action lawsuit by children who claimed they were tracked and profiled for targeted ads without their parents’ consent while watching YouTube videos. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday reversed a judge’s dismissal of the children’s claims brought under various state laws because, the appellate panel said, the…