All stories tagged privacy on The Silicon Valley News.
A federal court has issued a summary judgment finding that the Office of Personnel Management acted unlawfully when handing over millions of federal employee records.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is pressing Brazil's national data protection authority to anchor upcoming platform regulations in strict privacy and free speech guardrails.
A federal audit reveals systemic security gaps in the TSA's biometric screening systems, challenging the agency's expansion plans across domestic airports.
The EFF and ACLU are petitioning the Wisconsin Supreme Court to mandate warrants for retrospective automated license plate reader database searches.
A California trial court has dismissed a lawsuit against the city of San Jose’s warrantless use of automated license plate reader data, despite a federal ruling labeling the technology mass surveillance.
Meta expands its Superintelligence Labs lineup with Muse Wonder, stepping up its competition in heavy-duty reasoning and agentic workloads against industry rivals.
The federal government's aggressive push to centralize citizen data through cross-agency sharing and automated programs establishes a dangerous digital surveillance infrastructure.
As tech giants race to embed generative models everywhere, LibreOffice chooses a different path by keeping default configurations entirely free of machine learning.
In response to the rise of autonomous AI agents, Apple is overhauling macOS Full Disk Access to prevent software from silently harvesting local user data for model training or execution.
A federal judge has halted Utah's effort to mandate local filtering on virtual private networks, ruling that state-level age and geographic restrictions conflict with basic networking protocols.
The European Commission's newly drafted Kids Act attempts to secure young internet users but risks undermining universal digital privacy through mandatory age gating.
As messaging platforms rush to integrate AI features, the industry is increasingly relying on Trusted Execution Environments to protect user privacy. However, these hardware-isolated enclaves introduce critical security vulnerabilities.
Amazon's new Throw Away the Key Encryption for Ring cameras aims to limit company access to video, but the method does not deliver the robust end-to-end privacy users expect, leaving data vulnerable to internal access and external requests.
Recent audits reveal law enforcement agencies are treating massive automated license plate reader networks with alarming casualness, using them for trivial searches and evading public scrutiny.
California’s new social media ban for minors highlights a dangerous trend in legislative policy that prioritizes restrictive age-gating over meaningful systemic reform of digital platforms.
A federal court has dismissed a class-action lawsuit against LinkedIn, ruling that scanning users' browser extensions to prevent scraping does not violate wiretap laws.
New UK regulations forcing Apple and Google to implement mandatory image-scanning on devices signal a fundamental shift in how tech platforms manage user safety and encryption.
As location data surveillance becomes a central policy battleground, the shift from federal inaction to fragmented state-level regulation creates a complex landscape for tech firms.
Meta's settlement with state attorneys general mandates pervasive age verification, shifting the burden of online safety from parental oversight to platform-level identity architecture.
France's top court has struck down a proposed ban on social media for minors, marking a pivotal moment in the global debate over state-mandated digital age verification.
The record-breaking settlement resolves a 2024 federal lawsuit accusing the platform of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting data on minors without parental consent.
Under pressure from European regulators and Germany's cartel office, Apple is adjusting its App Store fee structures and redesigning its App Tracking Transparency consent prompts.
The Supreme Court has declined to hear Verizon's challenge to a $47 million FCC fine, cementing a regulatory precedent that holds telecom carriers strictly liable for safeguarding user location data.
Flock Safety has introduced new policies for its automated license plate readers, aiming to address widespread criticism regarding data retention and sharing, though critics argue the changes fall short of necessary protections.
A new 'Computer History' feature logs clicks and keystrokes to build a continuous timeline of user activity, shifting the chatbot toward active, context-aware desktop automation.
Flock Safety’s marketing strategy of showcasing police partnerships has collided with the reality of officer misconduct, raising questions about corporate accountability in public surveillance.
Despite recent legislative amendments, California's proposed social media ban for minors under 16 faces intense backlash from civil liberties groups over mandatory age verification and First Amendment violations.
As the Senate Commerce Committee advances a suite of youth safety bills, including the Youth AI Privacy Act and KOSA, tech companies face a structural paradox: protecting minors online will require unprecedented levels of user identity verification and data collection.
A proposed federal bill, the SCREEN Act, seeks to mandate age verification for online sexually explicit content, but its sweeping requirements pose significant privacy and free speech risks for all internet users. The legislation would compel millions to surrender personal data,
Flock Safety has ended its pilot program using acoustic sensors to detect human distress, reversing plans amid privacy and surveillance concerns.
Google’s latest remote attestation initiative, reCAPTCHA Mobile Verification, intensifies control over user environments by blocking independent software, undermining open web principles.