Philip Dorling reports: Australia’s leading telecommunications company, Telstra, has installed highly advanced surveillance systems to “vacuum” the telephone calls, texts, social media messages and internet metadata of millions of Australians so that information can be filtered and given to intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The Australian government’s electronic espionage agency, the Australian Signals Directorate, is…
Category: Business
HK: California Fitness rapped by privacy watchdog over data use
Ng Kang-chung reports: Fitness centre chain California Fitness has been rapped over the knuckles by the privacy watchdog for putting at risk the personal details of 220,000 customers who have signed up for its exercise courses. An investigation by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, prompted by two complaints in 2011, found…
In Privacy Opinions, Koh and Grewal Air Differences
Julia Love reports: A pair of Silicon Valley judges have dramatically parted ways on how much wiggle room email providers have under federal wiretap laws to gather user information. In an order issued Tuesday evening, U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal of the Northern District of California tossed a class action that accused Google of violating…
Google Wins Dismissal of Suit Over Co-Mingling User Data
Joel Rosenblatt reports: Google Inc. (GOOG) won dismissal of a lawsuit challenging its privacy policy allowing it to co-mingle user data across different products because the plaintiffs didn’t convince a judge they suffered losses as a result. U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose, California, yesterday agreed with Google that the plaintiffs failed to claim any injury…