human rights
Demanding employees turn on their webcams is a human rights violation, Dutch Court rules
When Florida-based Chetu hired a telemarketer in the Netherlands, the company demanded the employee turn on his webcam. The employee wasn’t happy with being monitored “for 9 hours per day,”…
Oracle’s ‘surveillance machine’ targeted in US privacy class action
Enterprise giant Oracle is facing a fresh privacy class action claim in the U.S. The suit, which was filed Friday as a 66-page complaint in the Northern District of California,…
Europe’s health data reuse plan needs some surgery, say privacy supervisors
A proposal put forward by European Union lawmakers in May, to establish a legal framework to make it easier to share electronic health records and other medical data — across…
Meta’s first human rights report is largely self-congratulatory
Meta today released its first annual human rights report, which — in the company’s words — includes “insights and actions from [Meta’s] human rights due diligence on products, countries, and…
TikTok ‘pauses’ privacy policy switch in Europe after regulatory scrutiny
TikTok has agreed to pause a controversial privacy policy update in Europe, which had been due to happen tomorrow, and would have meant the platform stopped asking users for their…
Children’s rights groups call out TikTok’s ‘design discrimination’
Research examining default settings and terms & conditions offered to minors by social media giants TikTok, WhatsApp and Instagram across 14 different countries — including the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia and…
TikTok’s attempt to switch legal basis for targeting advertising at users in Europe looks to be in trouble after Italy’s data protection watchdog stepped in and issued a warning of…
Meta consolidates its privacy policy to appease regulators
In an effort to make its notoriously dense user agreements less labyrinthine, Meta has rewritten and redesigned how that information is presented. The company insists that the changes are in…
The U.K.’s data protection watchdog has confirmed a penalty for the controversial facial recognition company, Clearview AI — announcing a fine of just over £7.5 million today for a string…
The European Union has formally presented its proposal to move from a situation in which some tech platforms voluntarily scan for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to something more systematic…
Clearview AI banned from selling its facial recognition software to most US companies
A company that gained notoriety for selling access to billions of facial photos, many culled from social media without the knowledge of the individuals depicted, faces major new restrictions to…
Google has announced a package of additional controls for users of its productivity suite, Google Workspace (neé G Suite), in Europe — which it’s rolling out by the end of…
Europe’s top court unblocks more GDPR litigation against Big Tech
A ruling by the European Union’s top court today is set to unblock a raft of litigation brought by consumer protection organizations seeking to apply the bloc’s General Data Protection…
Privacy watchdogs in Europe are considering a complaint against Apple made by a former employee, Ashley Gjøvik, who alleges the company fired her after she raised a number of concerns,…
EU-US trans-Atlantic data transfers ‘deal in principle’ faces tough legal review
The political agreement reached late last month between the European Union and the United States on a new trans-Atlantic data transfers pact, which aims to end years of legal uncertainty…
Featured Article
Tech workers describe detentions and interrogations as they flee Russia
Russia’s interrogation of fleeing tech workers became commonplace after the war in Ukraine began. One Russian said his devices were taken away at the border: “Let’s leave the motherland’s secrets in the motherland.”
A UK High Court judge has granted permission for a class-action style privacy lawsuit to proceed against TikTok over its handling of children’s data. The lawsuit was filed back in…
Privacy Shield 2.0 is ‘high priority’ but ‘not easy’, warns EU’s Vestager
Agreeing a new data transfer agreement with the US is a “high priority” for the EU, Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s executive VP for digital strategy, said yesterday — but she…
Meta crowns Nick Clegg president of tilting at regulatory headwinds
Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister of the U.K., has been elevated to new heights at Meta, the tech giant formerly known as Facebook — under a new title…
Meta’s Oversight Board urges Facebook and Instagram to tighten doxing rules
Meta’s external advisory organization issued new recommendations Tuesday, urging the company to bolster its policies that protect users against doxing. Facebook requested advice on the policy last year, acknowledging that…
Changing how we approach data privacy to unlock economic opportunities
While the pandemic accelerated the ability to live our lives largely online, around 4 billion people remain “digitally invisible” because their data is locked away in fragmented silos and databases.
Remember the backlash over that impossible-to-understand privacy policy update pushed out by WhatsApp last year? A consumer protection complaint over the messaging platform’s aggressive push to make users accept impenetrable terms…
Europe’s AI Act falls far short on protecting fundamental rights, civil society groups warn
Civil society has been poring over the detail of the European Commission’s proposal for a risk-based framework for regulating applications of artificial intelligence which was proposed by the EU’s executive…
Ethyca raises $7.5M, open sources Fides for developers to build privacy tools directly into their codebases
Ethyca, the privacy-by-design technology startup that has built a unique set of APIs, detection tools and analytics to make it easier for organizations to adhere to data privacy policies like…
TikTok dodges questions about biometric data collection in Senate hearing
In its first-ever Congressional hearing, TikTok successfully dodged questions about what it plans to do with the biometric data its privacy policy permits it to collect on the app’s U.S.…
Tel Aviv-based Piiano wants businesses to keep their customers’ data private. The company is coming out of stealth today and announcing a $9 million funding round led by YL Ventures,…
Cytrio launches with $3.5M to help SMEs meet data privacy regulation demands
Cytrio, a Boston-based data privacy and compliance startup, has launched its software-as-a-service privacy rights management platform after landing $3.5 million in seed funding. The funding was secured from angel investors…
Texas Right to Life website exposed job applicants’ resumes
Anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life exposed the personal information of hundreds of job applicants after a website bug allowed anyone to access their resumes, which were stored in an…
UK now expects compliance with children’s privacy design code
In the U.K., a 12-month grace period for compliance with a design code aimed at protecting children online expires today — meaning app makers offering digital services in the market…
UK names John Edwards as its choice for next data protection chief as gov’t eyes watering down privacy standards
The U.K. government has named the person it wants to take over as its chief data protection watchdog, with sitting commissioner Elizabeth Denham overdue to vacate the post: The Department…
