Over on his excellent newsletter, Risky Biz News, Catalin Cimpanu reports: A coalition of 33 state attorneys general have urged the US Federal Trade Commission to pass regulation around online data collection practices. AGs said they are “concerned about the alarming amount of sensitive consumer data that is amassed, manipulated, and monetized,” and that they regularly…
Category: Govt
NCLA Files Class-Action Against Massachusetts for Auto-Installing Covid Spyware on 1 Million Phones
From the New Civil Liberties Alliance, information on a case that was filed on November 14: Case Summary: The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) worked with Google to auto-install spyware on the smartphones of more than one million Commonwealth residents, without their knowledge or consent, in a misguided effort to combat Covid-19. Such brazen…
Viewing public documents is not a crime, Canadian edition
In today’s episode of “Let’s mitigate this data leak by violating the privacy of people who happened to view it,” we bring you the government of Nova Scotia and a privacy lawyer who didn’t appreciate them violating his privacy. Canadian privacy lawyer David Fraser has a story to share with you. It’s a story about…
Koch-funded group sues US state agency for installing ‘spyware’ on 1m Android devices
Jessica Lyons Hardcastle reports: The Massachusetts Department of Public Health conspired with Google to secretly install a COVID-19 tracing app onto more than 1 million Android users’ devices without their knowledge and without obtaining warrants, according to a class-action lawsuit filed this week by the New Civil Liberties Alliance. […] The Massachusetts app, according to…