Online privacy

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling that police must get a warrant to access the vast trove of location information wireless carriers collect on their customers marks a breakthrough for privacy rights. But the majority in Carpenter v. United States sidestepped key issues about whether police can still access location data in real time or for short periods without a warrant. These gaps will likely give rise to a flurry of new legal challenges --- and are already sparking calls for Congress to step in to fix potential loopholes.

Internet-connected locks, speakers, thermostats, lights and cameras that have been marketed as the newest conveniences are now also being used as a means for harassment, monitoring, revenge and control.  In more than 30 interviews with The New York Times, domestic abuse victims, their lawyers, shelter workers and emergency responders described how the technology was becoming an alarming new tool.

Lawmakers in CA have introduced a sweeping privacy bill to the state legislature that would give Californians unprecedented control over their data and reign in the power of their Silicon Valley neighbors. The bill would allow California residents to find out what information businesses and data brokers collect about them, where that information comes from, and how it's shared. It would give people the power to ask for their data to be deleted and to order businesses to stop selling their personal information.

In a major win for privacy rights, the Supreme Court put new restraints on law enforcement’s access to the ever-increasing amount of private information about Americans available in the digital age. In the specific case before the court, the justices ruled that authorities generally must obtain a warrant to gain access to cell-tower records that can provide a virtual timeline and map of a person’s whereabouts. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 5 to 4 decision, in which he was joined by the court’s liberal members.

Carriers get requests for their customers’ whereabouts from all sorts of places. How they handle them depends on who is asking. 1) Each carrier has a dedicated legal team that evaluates the requests of law-enforcement officers. 2) Emergency calls are routed to public-safety answering points, which can obtain the caller’s location without affirmative consent. 3) Middlemen like LocationSmart and Zumigo can access information on cellphone users’ whereabouts in situations where the company seeking the information might not know which carrier to ask.

The White House is in the early stages of determining what a federal approach to online data privacy should look like. The preliminary conversations show that the White House wants a voice in the contentious domestic and global debate about how to protect consumer privacy online. Gail Slater, special assistant to President Donald Trump for tech, telecom and cyber policy at the White House National Economic Council, has met with industry groups to discuss possible ways to put in place guardrails for the use of personal data, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The Federal Trade Commission, the Trump administration’s privacy, competition and consumer protection cops, plans to embark on a cross-country listening tour to gauge how academics and average Web users believe the US government should address digital-age challenges, from the rise of artificial intelligence to the data-collection mishaps that have plagued companies like Facebook. The effort was announced by new FTC Chairman Joe Simons and includes 15 or more public sessions in a series of cities that have yet to be announced.

Aleksandr Kogan, the academic researcher who harvested personal data from Facebook for a political consultancy firm said that the idea the data was useful in swaying voters’ decisions was “science fiction.”

Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower who outed Cambridge Analytica for improperly accessing millions of Facebook users’ personal information, warned that unchecked data collection and targeting on social media threaten Web users’ privacy — and the healthy functioning of democracy. Wylie, who worked at the consultancy before it assisted President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, pointed to Facebook’s tools that allow political candidates, advertisers and others to reach discrete categories of Americans online. 

Sen Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that he is preparing to introduce a privacy "bill of rights." That came at another hearing on the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica third-party data sharing issue, this one in the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance, and Data Security. Sen Blumenthal said it was based at least in part on the European Union's tough new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) online privacy framework taking effect May 25.