Whole Foods Market will begin testing its Just Walk Out as a checkout option in stores in Washington’s Glover Park and in Sherman Oaks, California, next year, blogged Dilip Kumar, vice president-physical retail and technology. The Amazon company will evaluate how customers like being able to skip the checkout line in stores, he wrote Wednesday.

Rules protecting the principle of the open internet should be reviewed in light of new technologies, 5G, the move to the cloud and increased consumer and enterprise broadband demand, said the U.K. Office of Communications Tuesday. It wants input on how existing net neutrality rules on access, traffic management and specialized services are working, and whether updated guidance is needed. Comments are due Nov. 2, with initial findings expected next spring.

Apple is seeking the dismissal of a May 17 complaint asking class-action status that alleged the iPhone maker harms developers through anti-competitive behavior and monopolistic practices in running the App Store in violation of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, said a motion (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Plaintiff Primary Productions was “unhappy that a cryptocurrency app it had some role in developing was allegedly rejected from the App Store,” and alleges a series of “sweeping” antitrust and contract claims against Apple, said the motion. “But Apple has no obligation, under the antitrust laws or otherwise, to approve and distribute on its own platform apps that it has determined are inconsistent with Apple’s Guidelines.” It called the claims “meritless,” saying the plaintiff “has plausibly pleaded neither relevant antitrust markets nor cognizable antitrust injuries” to support its allegations. Apple asked for an Oct. 14 hearing before Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley. Lawyers for the plaintiff didn’t respond Friday to requests for comment.

The Irish Data Protection Commission should strengthen its draft decision on WhatsApp privacy breaches, said the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) Thursday. It adopted a dispute resolution decision in July to address objections from several other data protection authorities to Ireland's proposed ruling on WhatsApp Ireland. The board decision recommended the DPC add another privacy infringement finding, and found that in this case, "in light of the gravity and the overarching nature and impact of the infringements, there has been an infringement of the transparency principle enshrined" in the general data protection regulation. When using WhatsApp's contact feature, data of non-users isn't anonymized. The EDPB urged the DPC to rethink how it calculated the social media site's fine, and asked that the time for WhatsApp to comply be cut from six to three months.

The cyberthreat environment “remains fierce,” as “inherent vulnerabilities” in widely used operating systems “leave companies of all sizes open to attack and provide a rich feeding ground for sophisticated and novice e-criminals alike,” said CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz on a call Tuesday for fiscal Q2 ended July 31. “The lessons learned from recent attacks emphasize that a breach involves more than just malware.” Companies “overly relying” on malware prevention have the biggest vulnerabilities, he said. More than half of recent threat detections “were not malware-based,” evidence that attackers are “exploiting the proliferation of vulnerabilities and abusing systemic weaknesses,” he said. The early July ransomware attack on Kaseya servers should serve as a “reminder to the far-reaching impact of a supply chain breach and the importance of a zero-trust architecture,” said Kurtz. “Most ransomware outbreaks have a compromised identity component. Shoring up this threat vector is critical to stopping breaches.” A new strategic alliance with Verizon positions the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity platform as part of Verizon's business security portfolio “to provide comprehensive endpoint and workload protection that spans prevention, detection and response capabilities,” he said.

Zoom fiscal Q2 revenue grew 54% year over year to $1.02 billion, in its first “billion-dollar-plus” quarter, said Chief Financial Officer Kelly Steckelberg on a Monday call. “As we’ve just lapped our first full quarter year-over-year compare since the start of the pandemic, we have seen customers return to more thoughtful, measured buying patterns.” Revenue and profitability were strong in the quarter ended July 31, but “other metrics have begun to normalize, especially when compared to the unprecedented year-over-year comps,” she said. Zoom expects its online business “will be a headwind in the coming quarters,” she said. The online sector consists “primarily” of small-business people and individual consumers, many of whom are “socializing in person now,” doing fewer Zoom calls, “and that's where we are starting to see some of the challenges,” she said. Zoom had expected the “slowdown” toward the end of the year, but it “just happened a little bit more quickly than we expected,” she said. The stock closed down 17% Tuesday at $289.50.

A judge sought to push along discovery in DOJ and states' antitrust case against Google. At a livestreamed status conference Tuesday, Judge Amit Mehta of U.S. District Court in Washington directed parties to file a joint statement by 2 p.m. Friday on where things stand on parties’ disagreement over the scope of a DOJ deposition notice about market share. Google attorney John Schmidtlein and DOJ Civil Division trial attorney Kenneth Dintzer said they’re meeting Wednesday. Mehta ordered Google to provide “dates certain” by close-of-business Friday for a deposition witness to appear on states’ request about how Google analyzes session logs showing consumers’ journey through the search engine. Mehta also sought updates by then on Google disputes with Yelp and Microsoft about the scope of Google’s document requests. Google complained Microsoft production remains sluggish, in a Tuesday filing. Microsoft objected to using “Bing” and other Google-requested search strings for the document production. Mehta said they don’t “strike me as out of bounds.” He urged Google to look harder at adjusting proximity connectors, which measure how closely words appear in a document, as a possible way to reduce burdens on Microsoft. Parties should reach agreement on technology-assisted review to increase efficiencies, he said. Mehta wants to see Microsoft’s pace increase through September, with a goal of finishing by mid-October. The judge last month set Sept. 30 for Apple to produce about 1.5 million documents DOJ requested (see 2108190041). Mehta said he won’t order Google to turn over to DOJ certain information, including privileged logs and materials produced for past investigations. The jurist said the request was too broad and maybe not entirely relevant. Mehta resolved another disagreement over sharing Google documents about employees’ self-assessments and performance reviews. DOJ asked the court to reject Google’s request to limit distribution of such documents to eight people because it didn’t account for IT professionals, experts and others. Mehta said such tight protections could apply to entire documents, but snippets relevant to deposition could be more widely shared. The next three status hearings are Sept. 28 at 11 a.m., Oct. 29 at 3 p.m. and Nov. 30 at 11 a.m., Mehta said.

An app developer’s May 17 complaint alleging Apple violations of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act by monopolizing the distribution of apps through the App Store was assigned Monday to U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong in Oakland, the third judge to handle the case after the first two recused themselves. Thomas Reilly said he spent $150,000 developing Konverti, a currency exchange app for the remaining petty cash travelers have when returning home from foreign destinations. Konverti was approved and placed in the App Store in June 2017 “and abruptly removed weeks later without clear cause given,” said Reilly’s complaint. “Apple’s anti-competitive conduct forecloses all potential competitors from entering” the app distribution market, facing “no constraints” on its monopoly power, it said. Apple didn’t comment Monday.

The Copyright Office’s electronic copyright system is mostly back online after a scheduled Aug. 12 “technical upgrade” rendered it unavailable to the public, the CO emailed Friday. “We are experiencing a few technical issues that we are working diligently to resolve.” System users who haven’t logged in during the past 90 days may “experience account reactivation issues,” the CO said.

An Illinois court denied Clearview AI’s motion to dismiss a privacy lawsuit alleging the company’s facial recognition technology violated people’s privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union and others said the company violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) (see 2005280032). “This case touches on matters of significant public interest,” Illinois Circuit Court in Cook County Judge Pamela McLean Meyerson wrote Friday. The complaint can’t be dismissed on jurisdictional grounds because Clearview targeted Illinois customers, the judge said. She disagreed with Clearview that BIPA doesn’t apply to face-prints. Clearview’s dormant Commerce Clause argument -- that BIPA can’t be applied because it would control the company’s conduct outside Illinois -- “would reward reckless disregard of the law in blind deference to technology,” she said. The judge disagreed that BIPA violates the First Amendment, saying BIPA restrictions on Clearview’s free speech “are no greater than what’s essential to further Illinois’ interest in protecting its citizens’ privacy and security.” The judge said Friday’s decision doesn’t mean the court found Clearview liable for violating BIPA but that the court has jurisdiction and the complaint “states a cause of action for which relief may be granted.” ACLU praised the ruling. “Without regulations like BIPA, companies like Clearview could end privacy as we know it,” said Vera Eidelman, staff attorney-ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. “This ruling protects our clients’ rights, and sends a strong message to lawmakers across the country that they can protect privacy without running afoul of the First Amendment.” Clearview AI didn't comment by our deadline.