Local, state and federal officials should end Amazon partnerships that allow police to use the company’s Ring doorbell products, more than 30 advocates wrote Tuesday. Fight for the Future, Color of Change and Project on Government Oversight signed. Amazon Ring data shows at least 500 partnerships between the company and cities, which the groups wrote threaten privacy, civil liberties and democracy because of lack of oversight. Police can use face scanning technology to profile individuals and invade the privacy of their homes, the groups wrote. Claims that the partnerships pose privacy and civil liberties risks are “inaccurate,” emailed an Amazon spokesperson. “Ring’s mission is to help make neighborhoods safer,” the spokesperson said, citing design that keeps users in control of their privacy.
The Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium launched Tuesday to bring together industry leaders from automotive, automotive supply, semiconductor and computing to help solve challenges of deploying self-driving vehicles at scale. Founding AVCC members are Arm, Bosch, Continental, Denso, General Motors, Nvidia, NXP Semiconductors and Toyota. The first goal is recommendations for a system architecture and computing platform that reconciles autonomous performance requirements with vehicle-specific requirements and limitations in size, temperature range, power consumption and safety.
The U.S. is negotiating a Cloud Act agreement with Australia, DOJ announced Monday. The U.S. and U.K. signed the first Cloud Act agreement last week, allowing police to demand cross-border data.
Efforts to secure World Trade Organization agreement on e-commerce that’s “inclusive, high-standard, and commercially meaningful,” has backing of “global industry,” said 27 tech groups Monday. “Digital trade is critical to the prosperity of all economies,” and to the ability of companies of all sizes “to grow, innovate, and create jobs,” they said. ACT|The App Association, BSA|The Software Alliance, CTA, Internet Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others made 13 recommendations for what a WTO agreement should contain, including a prohibition on internet tariffs and “customs formalities on electronic transmissions,” plus mechanisms to “facilitate the flow of data across borders.” The groups want a WTO agreement that counters “digital protectionism while protecting and promoting consumer trust, fosters inclusivity in digital trade, and generates real commercial value for the global economy,” they said.
A bipartisan group of state attorneys general met with DOJ and FTC officials Monday to discuss the group’s Facebook antitrust investigation, New York Attorney General Letitia James said: “We have grave concerns over potential anticompetitive practices by large tech companies. We are concerned that Facebook’s actions may have put consumer data at risk of data breaches, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, and increased the price of advertising, so we will continue to work in a bipartisan manner to protect consumers and protect competition.”
About 80 percent of U.S. adults have adjusted their social media privacy settings or decreased their social media usage, DuckDuckGo reported Thursday. Nearly a quarter of survey participants “deleted or deactivated a social media profile due to privacy concerns,” the platform reported. It surveyed about 1,100 American adults in August.
YouTube users will soon be able to automatically delete their search and viewing histories, Google announced Wednesday. The company rolled out some sweeping privacy-related changes for various Google platforms, including Maps, which will now allow users to operate in an incognito mode similar to a Chrome feature. Assistant users will soon be able to delete voice recording data, as well.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology seeks comment by Nov. 1 on a draft document for IoT product security, said the agency Wednesday: “The report details open-source research, a hands-on review and a security features analysis of several commonly purchased IoT consumer home devices.”
Commissioners Christine Wilson and Noah Phillips and FTC officials will speak at an Oct. 7 children’s online privacy workshop (see 1907170063), the agency said Tuesday. Division of Privacy & Identity Protection Associate Director Maneesha Mithal, DPIP attorney Jim Trilling and ACT | The App Association President Morgan Reed also speak. Topics include the scope of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the state of children’s privacy and persistent identifiers.
Website users must give specific consent to storage of their cookies, the European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday. The decision arose from a challenge by the Federation of German Consumer Organizations to a pre-ticked checkbox, used by Planet49 in connection with online promotional games, by which users looking to participate consented to such storage. The cookies were used to collect information to advertise Planet49's partner products. ECJ ruled that under previous EU privacy law and the current general data protection regulation, consent required isn't valid if storage of information or access to information already stored in a user's terminal equipment is permitted via a pre-checked box which the user must deselect to refuse consent. That decision isn't affected by whether the information shared or accessed is personal data, because EU law seeks to protect users from any interference with their private life, such as from hidden identifiers and similar devices that enter users' terminals without their knowledge. "Consent or be tracked is not an option," said European Digital Rights Policy Head of Policy Diego Naranjo. EU governments should now move ahead with legislating on the practice and finalize the e-privacy regulation that complements GDPR, he said. Planet49 didn't comment.