A booming industry of AI age scanners, aimed at children’s faces; The Washington Post, August 7, 2024

Drew Harwell, The Washington Post ; A booming industry of AI age scanners, aimed at children’s faces

"Nineteen states, home to almost 140 million Americans, have passed or enacted laws requiring online age checks since the beginning of last year, including Virginia, Texas and Florida. For the companies, that’s created a gold mine: Employees at Incode, a San Francisco firm that runs more than 100 million verifications a year, now internally track state bills and contact local officials to, as senior director of strategy Fernanda Sottil said, “understand where … our tech fits in.”

But while the systems are promoted for safeguarding kids, they can only work by inspecting everyone — surveying faces, driver’s licenses and other sensitive data in vast quantities. Alex Stamos, the former security chief of Facebook, which uses Yoti, said “most age verification systems range from ‘somewhat privacy violating’ to ‘authoritarian nightmare.'”"

THE GREAT SCRAPE: THE CLASH BETWEEN SCRAPING AND PRIVACY; SSRN, July 3, 2024

Daniel J. Solove, George Washington University Law School; Woodrow Hartzog, Boston University School of Law; Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society; THE GREAT SCRAPE: THE CLASH BETWEEN SCRAPING AND PRIVACY

"ABSTRACT

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems depend on massive quantities of data, often gathered by “scraping” – the automated extraction of large amounts of data from the internet. A great deal of scraped data is about people. This personal data provides the grist for AI tools such as facial recognition, deep fakes, and generative AI. Although scraping enables web searching, archival, and meaningful scientific research, scraping for AI can also be objectionable or even harmful to individuals and society.

Organizations are scraping at an escalating pace and scale, even though many privacy laws are seemingly incongruous with the practice. In this Article, we contend that scraping must undergo a serious reckoning with privacy law. Scraping violates nearly all of the key principles in privacy laws, including fairness; individual rights and control; transparency; consent; purpose specification and secondary use restrictions; data minimization; onward transfer; and data security. With scraping, data protection laws built around

these requirements are ignored.

Scraping has evaded a reckoning with privacy law largely because scrapers act as if all publicly available data were free for the taking. But the public availability of scraped data shouldn’t give scrapers a free pass. Privacy law regularly protects publicly available data, and privacy principles are implicated even when personal data is accessible to others.

This Article explores the fundamental tension between scraping and privacy law. With the zealous pursuit and astronomical growth of AI, we are in the midst of what we call the “great scrape.” There must now be a great reconciliation."

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul sues company for publishing voters’ personal data; Chicago Sun-Times, May 9, 2024

 

Dave McKinney | WBEZ

, Chicago Sun-Times; Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul sues company for publishing voters’ personal data

"A publishing company whose politically-slanted newspapers have been derided as “pink slime” is being sued by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul for illegally identifying birthdates and home addresses of “hundreds of thousands” of voters.

Raoul’s legal move against Local Government Information Services accuses the company of publishing sensitive personal data that could subject voters across Illinois to identity theft.

Among those whose personal data has been identified on LGIS’ nearly three dozen online websites are current and former judges, police officers, high-ranking state officials and victims of domestic violence and human trafficking, Raoul’s filing said."

T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon slapped with $200M fine — here’s what they illegally did with your data; Mashable, April 30, 2024

Matt Binder, Mashable ; T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon slapped with $200M fine — here’s what they illegally did with your data

"AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile allegedly provided location data to third parties without their users' consent, which is illegal.

“Our communications providers have access to some of the most sensitive information about us," said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement. "These carriers failed to protect the information entrusted to them. Here, we are talking about some of the most sensitive data in their possession: customers’ real-time location information, revealing where they go and who they are.” 

FCC fines the biggest U.S. mobile carriers

According to the FCC, T-Mobile has been fined the largest amount: $80 million. Sprint, which has merged with T-Mobile since the FCC's investigation began, also received a $12 million fine.

AT&T will have to pay more than $57 million and Verizon will dole out close to $47 million."