Katie Cunningham reports: This month, Amazon inked a deal to acquire smart vacuum company iRobot – the makers of Roomba – for a tidy US$1.7bn. As some see it, if the purchase goes through, that should worry us. “It’s all about the data,” says David Vaile from the Australian Privacy Foundation. Privacy advocates such as Vaile are concerned the…
Kochava Fights FTC Action Over Health-Site Mobile Data Sales
Andrea Vittorio reports: Mobile advertising firm Kochava Inc. is suing the Federal Trade Commission to challenge an enforcement action brought over its alleged sale of location records that could reveal people’s travel to abortion clinics or other health care facilities. The commission can’t use the FTC Act to go after Kochava for past practices, the…
Google Maps accused of leading users to fake abortion clinics
Ashley Belanger reports: In 2018, Google was first confronted by media reports investigating why crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs)—often religious, non-medical organizations that do not provide abortion services or referrals for abortion services—frequently dominate Google Maps search results for “abortion clinics.” Now, four years later, the tech company seems to be making some moves to potentially change the…
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…