Online privacy

On Facebook's map of humanity, the node for "you" often includes vast awareness of your movements online and a surprising amount of info about what you do offline, too. The company has near-total awareness of every move you make on its website or in its apps. Facebook does scan your chat messages, but it isn't exactly reading them — it runs an automated scan for child pornography and other banned content. Facebook sees you less thoroughly outside its own digital turf, but it still sees a lot.

In response to questions from Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR), T-Mobile has revealed another case of abuse, in which a “bad actor” acquired location information without consumer consent. “It is now abundantly clear that you have failed to be good stewards of your customers’ private location information,” Sen Wyden wrote in another letter March 13 addressed to all of the major telecoms. In the newly revealed incident, in Aug 2014, LocAid—a company that aggregated location data from the telecoms and then sold it onto other clients—informed T-Mobile it was suspending the account of a particular customer

Freshman Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), 39, (the country's youngest senator) is swiftly emerging as one of the Repulican Party's toughest critics of Big Tech. At a March 12 privacy hearing, he slammed Google for collecting people's location data on Android phones -- even after they try to disable the tracking function. Sen Hawley wants Google to give consumers a clear way to opt out of invasive location tracking. He says many members of the committee — including Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) — told him they were not aware that Google tracks people at this level.

Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feintsein (D-CA) made it clear that her state's tough privacy legislation will have to be the floor for any federal privacy legislation. The hearing was on that California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as well as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation adopted by the European Union. Sen Feinstein suggested the California bill should be even tougher, make more privacy control decisions opt in, rather than the opt out in which CCPA is based.

On January 24, 2019, 15 senators sent Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai a letter urging the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission to broadly investigate the sale of Americans' location data by wifeless carriers, location aggregators, and other third parties. On Feb 27, Chairman Pai replied: "As you know, the Commission launched an investigation of these practices last year. The Commission takes its responsibility in this regard seriously.

With increased tracking of children and teens online and the collection their personal data a widespread practice, Sens Ed Markey (D-MA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced legislation to update children’s online privacy rules for the 21st century. The legislation updates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by prohibiting internet companies from collecting personal and location information from anyone under 13 without parental consent and from anyone 13- to 15-years old without the user’s consent.

Today, 30 years on from my original proposal for an information management system, half the world is online. It’s a moment to celebrate how far we’ve come, but also an opportunity to reflect on how far we have yet to go.To tackle any problem, we must clearly outline and understand it. I broadly see three sources of dysfunction affecting today’s web:

People in China use WeChat for everything from sending messages to family to reading news and opinion to ordering food to paying at vending machines to paying for a taxi. For Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, WeChat is both his greatest challenge and the model for the future of his company. WeChat is what Facebook has yet to become.

Right now, Congress is considering a new federal privacy law, but nearly all of the proposals on the table have ignored the crucial issue of forced-arbitration clauses in consumer contracts. Companies use these clauses to prevent customers from suing them, often leaving no practical options for consumers whose rights have been violated.  Arbitration clauses are especially harmful when it comes to the Internet, because almost everything we do online involves a contract.

A Q&A with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons.