Month: October 2020

Apple has been hit with an antitrust complaint by the Interactive Advertising Bureau in France over its planned privacy settings which will limit the ability of app developers to track users unless the users give explicit consent. (Link)

A proposed ban on facial recognition by police agencies and companies in Portland, Oregon has been complicated by an individual’s development of a facial recognition system that would identify police officers, a system which would be allowed under the new bill. (NY Times)

Facebook has demanded that NYU Ad Observatory cease its monitoring and collecting data on political advertisements on the platform claiming a breach of its terms of service provisions on bulk data collection without permissions. (WSJ)

Zoom shut down a series events in the United States, including one held by NYU, discussing Zoom’s previous shut down of a San Francisco State University organized talk by Leila Khaled, a Palestinian activist and a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a US designated terror organization. The events did not have Leila Khaled presenting in their meetings, but discussed the previous event cancellation and statements made by Khaled. (Buzzfeed; AAUP)

(compiled by Student Fellow Maxwell Votey)

The University of Miami has recently come under scrutiny for its alleged use of facial recognition technology to target students participating in protests. The University has denied that it utilizes such technology, although it admitted to the use of video surveillance. (WSJ)

The Trump reelection campaign has been videotaping voters dropping off ballots at drop boxes in Pennsylvania. The state’s Attorney General has released a statement strongly admonishing the campaign for this behavior. (NY Times)

Freedom House, a government-funded NGO, has published a report on the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting global internet freedom. (link)

Senators Markey and Hawley recently introduced legislation aimed at updating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which includes provisions that would extend some of the protections to minors older than 13 years old. (Press Release)

A petition to legislate protection for minors online has reached the Indian Supreme Court, which reached out to the Central government for a response. (Hindustan Times)

The Irish Data Protection Commission is investigating Instagram (and parent company Facebook) for issues relating to the protection of information about minors. (Forbes)

China’s top legislative body has released a first draft of a Personal Information Protection Law. (Lexology)

China has also passed a new export control law which would allow it to take retaliatory steps in response to changes in export controls in other countries which would harm Chinese interests or national security. (Bloomberg)

Scholars at Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Institute published a working paper proposing a model to regulate and tax Big Tech companies. (Policy Brief)

(compiled by JSD Fellow Stav Zeitouni)

ILI Research Fellow Salome Viljoen wrote a piece for the Phenomenal World blog, critiquing ‘propertarian’ and ‘dignitarian’ approaches to data ownership. 

Google is providing data to law enforcement agencies based on keyword search warrants. Albert Fox Cahn of PRG and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project ( S.T.O.P.) writes about the ensuing constitutional issues. 

Twitter amended policy which prevented users from posting links to a New York Post story about Hunter Biden. Company leadership explained that the platform was warning users about the “potentially unsafe” link because of a policy on the treatment of articles which are partially sourced in “hacked materials”. Facebook also limited the distribution of the article in its news feed, reportedly as part of their practice to give third-party fact-checkers time to review content. Glenn Greenwald criticizes both companies’ actions on The Intercept.

California’s Attorney General released a third set of proposed modifications to the text of California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).At the same time, Proposition 24 (the Consumer Personal Information Law and Agency Initiative) is on the ballot in California. Proposition 24 would expand or amend the CCPA, create the California Privacy Protection Agency, and remove the ability of businesses to fix violations before being penalized for violations.

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University concluded their Data and Democracy symposium. Session videos are available online.

Watch out for upcoming events at the NYU Law Guarini Institute for Global Legal Studies, including talks from Anupam Chander, Frank Pasquale, Lina Khan, and Daphne Keller.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Margarita Boyarskaya.)

• The House Judiciary Committee released their 449-page report on competition in digital markets, largely concluding (at least on the Democrat side) that Big Tech should be broken up.  
  
• Sue Halpern wrote an excellent piece in The New Yorker on the data collection practices of the Trump administration’s 2020 re-election campaign app, which offers thoughtful reflections on data collection and privacy generally.

(compiled by JSD Fellow Katrina Geddes)

In California, a federal court started hearing arguments in the case between Epic Games, the company that created Fortnite, and Apple and Google. Briefly, Epic Games argues that the companies’ relative app stores broke antitrust laws buy levying high commission on in-app purchases.

The US Department of Commerce published a whitepaper that helps organizations determine that sending personal data to the US is legitimate.

The background for this whitepaper is an ECJ decision from July. That decision held that requires organizations that use EU-approved data transfer mechanisms to verify, on a case-by-case basis, whether foreign legal protections concerning government access to personal data meet EU standards.

Amazon introduced a new contact-less palm reading technology, their latest way to verify users’ identity. The company explains that the technology uses configurations of veins under the skin to evaluate multiple aspects of the palm and select the most distinct identifiers on a users’ palms in order to create a palm signature. Those signatures are then encrypted and stored on a unique cloud.

New York launched its contact-tracing app, aimed to hedge the spread of Covid-19. The state related to privacy concerns, explaining that the app is anonymous, uses Bluetooth technology rather than GPS tracking, and “doesn’t give any privacy information.”
Facebook has launched a new forecasting tool that allows users to posit questions about future events and crowdsource predictions about the outcome.

Finally, the House Judiciary Committee held another hearing to discuss strengthening antitrust laws, especially with regards to tech companies. 

(compiled by JSD Fellow Tomer Kenneth)