Digital rights

Photo: SAVO PRELEVIC/AFP (Getty Images)Today’s kids, more online than any generation before, are paradoxically beset by a digital world that isn’t the most kid-friendly. From creeps to depression-spurring algorithms to cyberbullying, experts often link web use to skyrocketing mental health issues in young people.But help may be on the way. On Monday, the California Senate overwhelmingly voted (33 to 0) to pass a comprehensive children’s privacy bill designed to protect kids from web platforms’ most noxious and invasive…

Photo: Graeme Jennings-Pool (Getty Images)The Federal Trade Commission announced a lawsuit Monday against a major data broker, accusing it of offering services that allow for the tracking of Americans at sensitive locations, such as addiction clinics or domestic violence shelters. Commissioners voted 4-1 this week to bring a suit against Kochava, Inc., which calls itself the “industry leader for mobile app attribution” and sells mobile geo-location data on hundreds of millions of people. The suit accuses the company of…

Not a month ago, 53 House lawmakers voted, for the first time this century, to send a comprehensive federal privacy bill to the floor. It was a laudable achievement, but it’s been frozen in place ever since. Now, with fewer than 100 days until the midterm elections, any hope of getting national privacy reform done before a new Congress is sworn in is growing dimmer by the day.The American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) may have advanced farther than any of its forerunners, but there are plenty of obstacles in…

Photo: ROBYN BECK/AFP (Getty Images)Log on to your Apple Store or Google Play account, and you’ll find dozens of apps that say they’ll keep track of your time of the month or that’ll help you know the status of your little bun in the oven. They’re also keeping track of you, and it’s become increasingly apparent since the U.S. Supreme Court ended the right to safe abortion byoverturning Roe v. Wade, many companies don’t hesitate to sell your pregnancy info to the highest bidder.Mozilla privacy researchers dove into 25…

FTC Chair Lina Khan is a big critic of big tech, and she’s stretching her agency’s regulatory power to try and take on the industry’s data gathering practices.Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call (AP)Despite years of tech companies tracking users, gathering data on their online activities and selling it for profit, few government entities have done anything tangible to halt the hoarding of people’s online information. But it looks like the Federal Trade Commission is putting on its bright orange vest, thinking it could become…

A San Diego Police Department officer looks on as activists hold signs and protest the California lockdown due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on May 01, 2020 in San Diego, California.Photo: Sean M. Haffey (Getty Images)San Diego is joining a growing list of cities taking official action against the unregulated use of emergent police surveillance technologies.Community-led efforts to address potential civil liberties violations, spurred by the deployment of more 3,000 police cameras across the city, finally paid…

View of the biometric facial recognition system in front of a security checkpoint in the departure area of Hamburg Airport. Photo: Marcus Brandt (AP)A group of House lawmakers charged with investigating the implications of biometric surveillance empaneled three experts Wednesday to testify about the future of facial recognition and other tools widely employed by the U.S. government with little regard for citizens’ privacy.The experts described a country—and a world—that is being saturated with biometric sensors. Hampered…

Rep. Kelly Armstrong, a member of the House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, accompanies House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy outside for a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 27, 2021.Photo: Associated Press (AP)House Republicans want to drastically change a federal privacy bill that Democrats in the Senate are also threatening to murder. The American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) is one of the few pieces of privacy legislation to get the time of day on CapitolHill in the last few…