Alyssa Boyle reports: We’re about to see a lot more enforcement against dark patterns from the Federal Trade Commission and on a state level. Dark patterns involve using manipulative or ambiguous language that pushes people to take an action they either don’t understand or wouldn’t normally take, such as sharing their data or agreeing to…
Category: Govt
CIA sued over alleged spying on lawyers, journalists who met Assange
Kanishka Singh reports: A group of journalists and lawyers sued the CIA and its former director Mike Pompeo over allegations the intelligence agency spied on them when they visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during his stay in Ecuador’s embassy in London. The lawsuit said that CIA under Pompeo violated the privacy rights of those American…
Google fined $60 million over Android location data collection
Sergiu Gatlan reports: The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced that Google was fined $60 million for misleading Australian Android users regarding the collection and use of their location data for almost two years, between January 2017 and December 2018. Read more at Bleeping Computer. The ACCC’s full statement can be found on its…
FTC: Commercial Surveillance and Data Security Rulemaking
From the FTC: Commercial surveillance is the business of collecting, analyzing, and profiting from information about people. Technologies essential to everyday life also enable near constant surveillance of people’s private lives. The volume of data collected exposes people to identity thieves and hackers. Mass surveillance has heightened the risks and stakes of errors, deception, manipulation,…