Online privacy

Sens Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) expressed frustration with a federal probe into Facebook’s privacy practices, urging the government to move more swiftly and consider imposing tough punishments that target the company’s top executives. “This investigation has been long delayed in conclusion — raising the specter of a remedy that is too little too late,” the lawmakers wrote. “The public is rightly asking whether Facebook is too big to be held accountable.

Apparently, Facebook has told the Federal Trade Commission it is willing to submit to greater oversight of its data-collection practices — from the launching of new services to the decisions of its top executives — in order to end a wide-ranging federal probe into a series of privacy abuses that came to light in 2018. The changes would accompany a record-breaking, multi-billion-dollar fine that the FTC has considered levying against Facebook. Under such a settlement, Facebook would have to complete a more rigorous privacy review of new products and services before launching them.

Advocates and experts are worried that an Amazon-owned mobile app, used by owners of its Ring security cameras to upload videos for neighbors to see, could entrench racial discrimination and violate people's privacy. The app, called Neighbors, is striking deals to partner with police departments across the country. Recently, journalists on Twitter noticed Ring was hiring an editor — prompting concerns that Amazon was stoking community fears to sell security systems, as Amazon bought Ring in 2018. People with and without Ring cameras can download the Neighbors app.

To safeguard the privacy and safety of American consumers, Commissioner Rosenworcel sent letters to major phone companies to confirm whether they have lived up to their commitments to end location aggregation services. The FCC needs to do more to protect the privacy and security of American consumers. It needs to do more to provide the public with basic information about what is happening with their realtime location information.

As Mark Zuckerberg filled in the details of his new, privacy-oriented vision of Facebook at the F8 developers conference, he left out a key episode from the past: Long before Facebook's pivot to privacy, the company pivoted to make everything more public. There's a reason Facebook's new "digital living room" where you are "free to be your true self" sounds familiar. You've already been there, if you were one of the hundreds of millions of people who used Facebook before roughly 2010.

A compilation of research, interviews, and analysis aims to show that while the worldwide consequences of getting things wrong with the internet could be huge – for peace and security, for political and individual freedoms, for human equality – the problems are never so great that nothing can be done. This annual report is a call to action to recognize the things that are having an impact on the internet today through research and analysis, and to embrace the notion that we as humans can change how we make money, govern societies, and interact with one another online. This report is structu

As Congress and other relevant stakeholders debate how to protect Americans’ privacy, a key concern is making sure that new legislation doesn’t entrench the power of big tech incumbents. In this post, we argue that incorporating data interoperability into privacy legislation is essential to empowering consumers’ data rights and fostering a competitive marketplace. In a nutshell, interoperability means enabling different systems and organizations to communicate with each other and work together.