Online privacy

[Press release] Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD), Communications Subcommittee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Moran (R-KS), in a letter to Alphabet CEO Larry Page, requested information about the privacy policy and practices of Gmail email services offered through subsidiary company Google.

The House Commerce Committee sent letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Larry Page to probe the companies’ representation of third-party access to consumer data, and the collection and use of audio recording data as well as location information via iPhone and Android devices. The letters were signed by full committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR), Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Gregg Harper (R-MS), and Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta (R-OH). 

When Facebook rolled out facial recognition tools in the European Union in 2018, it promoted the technology as a way to help people safeguard their online identities. It was a risky move by the social network. Six years earlier, it had deactivated the technology in Europe after regulators there raised questions about its facial recognition consent system. Now, Facebook was reintroducing the service as part of an update of its user permission process in Europe.

The Communications Workers of America has joined the Freedom from Facebook coalition and is backing the effort to get the Federal Trade Commission to break up Facebook. “We should all be deeply concerned by Facebook’s power over our lives and democracy," said CWA strategist Brian Thorn in a statement. "It’s time for the FTC to hold Facebook accountable, impose strong privacy rules on the platform, and break up the monopoly.

Supporters of the California Consumer Privacy Act say it dramatically expands your power to control the information tech companies collect about you. Starting in 2020, you'll be able to ask businesses to delete your personal information and prevent the sale of it. Companies must also disclose the categories of information they collect, as well as the kinds of third parties that buy it. For kids under 16, companies will need to have their consent before their data can be sold.

Germany’s top telecommunications regulator has set its sights on US technology groups such as Google and Facebook, insisting that providers of messaging and email services should be regulated just like ordinary telecommunications companies. “What we are seeing is that the line between traditional telecommunications services and web-based services like [Google’s] Gmail and [Facebook’s] WhatsApp has become very blurred.

Less than a month after the European Union instituted rules to protect the privacy of its citizens, the United States Supreme Court took an important step to protect Americans against unwarranted government intrusion in criminal investigations. Now it is time for another branch of government—the Congress—to act to protect our privacy the rest of the time. June’s decision in Carpenter v. U.S. (16 U.S. 402) focused on the government’s access to private information.

Privacy policies from companies including Facebook, Google and Amazon don’t fully meet the requirements of th European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to the pan-European consumer group BEUC. An analysis of policies from 14 of the largest internet companies shows they use unclear language, claim “potentially problematic” rights, and provide insufficient information for users to judge what they are agreeing to.

Technology experts and scholars have never been at a loss for concerns about the current and future impact of the internet. Over the years of canvassings by Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, many experts have been anxious about the way people’s online activities can undermine truth, foment distrust, jeopardize individuals’ well-being when it comes to physical and emotional health, enable trolls to weaken democracy and community, compromise human agency as algorithms become embedded in more activities, kill privacy, make institutions less secure, open u