Jennifer Valentino-DeVries reports: A judge in Texas is raising questions about whether investigators are giving courts enough details on technological tools that let them get data on all the cellphones in an area, including those of innocent people. In two cases, Magistrate Judge Brian Owsley rejected federal requests to allow the warrantless use of “stingrays”…
Category: Govt
FTC publishes guidelines for facial recognition
You can read “Best Practices for Common Uses of Facial Recognition Technologies” on the FTC’s site. Here’s a snippet from the Executive Summary: Finally, there are at least two scenarios in which companies should obtain consumers’ affirmative express consent before collecting or using biometric data from facial images. First, they should obtain a consumer’s affirmative…
GAO report: Wireless consumers don’t know how location data are shared
Catching up on some news I missed or neglected to post…. Hayley Tsukayama reports: A study released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office suggests that the government could do more to protect consumer privacy when it comes to mobile device location data. The report, which was requested by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), concludes wireless companies are not…
Senator Opens Investigation of Data Brokers
Natasha Singer reports: The multibillion-dollar data brokerage industry, a growing force in online marketing, is drawing intensified government scrutiny. On Wednesday, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, opened an extensive investigation of nine leading information brokers. Because Americans now conduct much of their daily business online, the senator said he was concerned that…