Online privacy

In New York and other states across the country, authorities are acquiring technology to extract and digitize the voices of incarcerated people into unique biometric signatures, known as voice prints. Prison authorities have quietly enrolled hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people’s voice prints into large-scale biometric databases. Computer algorithms then draw on these databases to identify the voices taking part in a call and to search for other calls in which the voices of interest are detected.

Facebook has acknolwedged it has hired three veteran privacy law activists, including Nate Cardozo, an attorney formerly of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who has been very publicly critical of the company in recent years. In 2015, Cardozo once wrote in an op-ed that Facebook's "business model depends on our collective confusion and apathy about privacy."  In addition to Cardozo, Facebook also hired attorney Robyn Greene, previously with the Open Technology Institute in Washington, DC, and Nathan White, who is set to leave his position at Access Now.

Apple announced that Facebook violated an agreement by distributing a data-collecting app to consumers, bypassing Apple’s normal review for an app intended for the public. Apple said it is cutting off Facebook’s ability to offer the app to consumers. The announcement comes after the revelation that Facebook has been paying some users (aged 13-35) $20 per month to install a research app on their phones that can collect intimate information about their online behavior and communications.

Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook  has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August.

US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose (CA) has rejected a proposed settlement that would put an end to the years-long lawsuit over the company’s 2016 disclosure that it had been hit by nation-state hackers that exposed hundreds of millions of accounts. Judge Koh, who has presided over many tech-related cases, including the Apple v. Samsung trial, lambasted Yahoo for its lack of transparency over how it has handled the aftermath of the breach.

At the State of the Net conference, House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Bob Latta (R-OH) said that regulators and legislators need to make sure they are not looking in the rearview mirror or putting up roadblocks to innovators who are looking ahead, not backwards. He said that one message he has brought back from his visit to tech startups is they are focused on innovation, so there is not a compliance officer sitting in the corner of the room. Ranking Member Latta also said he thought there was room for consensus on network neutrality.

The influence network led by billionaire Charles Koch is watching a growing push to regulate Big Tech firms with alarm. Officials, scholars, and donors with links to the network expressed unease with the idea that sweeping regulation will solve tech's problems — like platforms that facilitate the spread of malicious content or privacy practices that outrage users — and worried lawmakers aren't being precise enough.

When it comes to your digital profile, the data you choose to share is just the tip of an iceberg. The first layer is the one you do control. The second layer is made of behavioral observations. The third layer is composed of interpretations of the first and second.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning to integrate the underlying infrastructure of Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, allowing users to message each other between apps, but some lawmakers, regulators, and security experts are already beginning to question whether the benefits outweigh the consequences. “Good for encryption but bad for competition and privacy,” tweeted Seante Communciations Subcommittee Ranking Member Brian Schatz (D-HI). Sen Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said, “Facebook and Google’s dominance over data has already harmed consumers and the economy.