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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici

FTC Bans Location Data Company That Powers the Surveillance Ecosystem

“The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed order bans use or sale of data associated with military installations, churches, healthcare facilities, or other sensitive locations. The Federal Trade Commission will prohibit data broker Mobilewalla, Inc. from selling sensitive location data, including data that reveals the identity of an individual’s private home, to settle allegations the data… Continue Reading

FTC – Examining the Data Practices of Social Media and Video Streaming Services

Examining the Data Practices of Social Media and Video Streaming Services, September 2024. In December 2020, the Federal Trade Commission issued 6(b) Orders to nine of the largest social media and video streaming services—Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Snap, ByteDance, Discord, Reddit, and WhatsApp (“Companies”). At the time, a bipartisan group of Commissioners issued a joint… Continue Reading

Most Americans continue to say media scrutiny keeps politicians from doing things they shouldn’t

“As they have for the past four decades, most Americans say criticism from news organizations keeps political leaders from doing things they shouldn’t, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in September 2024. But Republicans’ and Democrats’ views on this question often shift depending on which party controls the White House. And Republicans became… Continue Reading

AI, huge hacks leave consumers facing a perfect storm of privacy perils

Washington Post gift article – “Hackers are using artificial intelligence to mine unprecedented troves of personal information dumped online in the past year, along with unregulated commercial databases, to trick American consumers and even sophisticated professionals into giving up control of bank and corporate accounts. Armed with sensitive health information, calling records and hundreds of… Continue Reading

FBI releases PSA warning about all the ways that cybercriminials are using AI to commit fraud

Criminals Use Generative Artificial Intelligence to Facilitate Financial Fraud – The FBI is warning the public that criminals exploit generative artificial intelligence (AI) to commit fraud on a larger scale which increases the believability of their schemes. Generative AI reduces the time and effort criminals must expend to deceive their targets. Generative AI takes what… Continue Reading

Librarian Amanda Jones Files New Defamation Lawsuits

School Library Journal – Amanda Jones has had enough. Again. The 2021 School Librarian of the Year, who has sued online harassers in the past, filed two new federal lawsuits on Tuesday. Jones is suing Dan Kleinman for defamation and “false light”—an invasion of privacy that arises from publicity that unreasonably places the plaintiff in… Continue Reading

The Great Scrape: The Clash Between Scraping and Privacy

Solove, Daniel J. and Hartzog, Woodrow, The Great Scrape: The Clash Between Scraping and Privacy (July 03, 2024). 113 California Law Review (forthcoming 2025), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4884485 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4884485   Artificial intelligence (AI) systems depend on massive quantities of data, often gathered by “scraping” – the automated extraction of large amounts of data from… Continue Reading