Month: December 2020

Internet Governance

Google Facing A Googol’s Worth Of Litigation As 52 Attorneys General And The Department Of Justice Allege Antitrust Violations: Across a series of actions likely to be consolidated into one lawsuit, the federal government, several coalitions of states, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the District of Columbia allege that the search engine goliath has long engaged in exclusionary agreements and anticompetitive conduct involving blocking competition for online advertising, abusing vertical integration in order to win advertising, limiting access to competitors, prohibiting interoperability of its search-advertising business, and throttling the speeds of those who try to circumvent Google Search by accessing destinations directly.

Privacy

Facebook Took Out Full-Page Ads To Stand Up To Apple: In addition to creating a website criticizing Apple’s forthcoming policy that will require iPhone users to choose whether to allow certain companies to track them across different apps, Facebook took out full-page ads in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times to “speak[] up for small businesses” that have allegedly expressed concern over the policy change; however, Facebook’s published statements neglect to mention how the new policy could also hurt its own advertising business. 

Facebook To Move United Kingdom Users To United States Accounts: In response to Brexit, the social network will put its U.K. users into agreements with its California-based corporate headquarters to sever their relationship with its Ireland-based unit for the purpose of putting those users out of EU privacy law’s reach; privacy advocates are concerned that the shift might lead the U.K. to adopt looser privacy laws as it negotiates a trade deal with the U.S., and that U.K. users may have their information shared with the U.S. government.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Behind The Russia-Based Cyberattack Affecting Multiple United States Government Agencies And Private Firms: A backdoor initially detected by cybersecurity firm FireEye and Microsoft was implanted by Russia’s primary foreign intelligence agency, SVR, in an update to SolarWinds’s Orion IT monitoring platform back in March; with thousands of Orion users around the world, including the United States Departments of Commerce, the Treasury, and Homeland Security, and given the nation-state level sophistication of the malware, the effects of the ongoing breach and its impact may remain uncertain for many more months.

Free Expression and Censorship

Misinformation Purveyors Pivot To Covid-19 Vaccines: In order to maintain their social media influence, peddlers of online misinformation are switching topics to stay relevant; those who were spreading election conspiracy theories are now pushing false Covid-19 vaccine narratives as voter fraud misinformation has subsided.

Twitch’s New Policy Bans Terms “Simps,” “Incel,” And “Virgin”: Due to a rise in sexual harassment complaints and in an effort to make the streaming platform a safer environment, Twitch will ban the words when they are used to harass another person for their sexual activity.

Practice Note

European Union Announces Intent To Bolster Anti-Competition Efforts By Introducing Aggressive Regulation Via Two Acts: Carrying the threat of fines as high as 10% of annual global revenue, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) would bar large online platforms, or “gatekeepers,” from favoring their own products over those of rivals or using data they have collected in an exclusionary way, while the Digital Services Act (DSA), which is aimed at preserving the laws of EU member nations, and would penalize platforms up to 6% of their annual revenue for not removing illegal posts following a government order.

On the Lighter Side

Twitter Update Will Show Users Tweets They Find Funny: Anecdotal evidence suggests that as people spend more time on video calls with co-workers, friends, and family, more have turned to plastic surgery to improve their on-camera appearance. 

Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law
Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP

Tom Norton
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Erica Chan
Daniel Gerken
Editorial Fellows, Fordham CLIP

Internet Governance

FTC, States, Launch Antitrust Suit Against Facebook: The Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of over 40 states have launched parallel suits against the social network, alleging that its “actions to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition”; in its suit, the FTC seeks an injunction that would require Facebook to divest Instagram and WhatsApp.

Privacy

CDC Vaccination-Tracking Effort Gives Rise To Privacy Concerns: To better understand national uptake of a Covid-19 vaccine and to “track adverse reactions, address safety issues and assess the effectiveness of the vaccine among different populations,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has asked states to agree to share vaccine recipients’ identifying information, including names, addresses, ethnicities, and birthdays; some state authorities, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, have pushed back on the plan, arguing that shared data could be used to identify and ultimately deport undocumented immigrants, which might dissuade some from obtaining the vaccine. 

French Privacy Regulator Fines Google €100 Million For Cookies Rules Violations: The CNIL levied its largest fine ever against the search company after concluding that it failed to obtain users’ consent before storing advertising cookies on their devices and failed to explain how the trackers would be used or how users could opt-out of tracking; Amazon was also fined €35 million for similar violations.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Prominent Cybersecurity Firm Victimized By Hack: U.S.-based FireEye, which is relied on by companies and governments across the globe, was hacked by what is believed to be a “highly sophisticated” state actor seeking “information related to certain government customers”; the attackers made away with FireEye’s own hacking tools, which could enable further hacks across the globe. 

European Medical Agency Suffers Hack Related To Covid-19 Vaccine: The Agency, which is responsible for approving potential Covid-19 vaccines—including those by Moderna and a BioNTech/Pfizer collaboration—announced that attackers accessed “some documents relating to the regulatory submission for Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate.”

Free Expression and Censorship

YouTube Bans Misinformation About 2020 Presidential Election Results: Now that “the legitimacy of Biden’s election is no longer up for debate,” the video-streaming service will remove nearly all content “that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the [election’s] outcome”; content that is “educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic,” however, is excepted from the ban.

Practice Note

House Of Representatives Passes PACER Reform: This week, the House passed the Open Courts Act of 2020, which would modernize the database of court filings and eliminate its paywall; the federal judiciary, which earns approximately $145 million annually from PACER fees, opposes the bill on the bases that it would increase filing costs for litigants, result in a windfall for large law firms and companies, and cost more than $2 billion over the next half decade.

On the Lighter Side

On Camera And Under The Knife: Anecdotal evidence suggests that as people spend more time on video calls with co-workers, friends, and family, more have turned to plastic surgery to improve their on-camera appearance. 

Olivier Sylvain
Academic Director, Fordham CLIP

Tom Norton
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Internet Governance Trump Lashes Out At Section 230, Threatens To Veto Annual Defense Funding Bill: Disgruntled with the provision of the Communications Decency Act that safeguards online platforms from liability for user-posted content, President Donald Trump threatened to veto the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, an omnibus defense spending bill, if it does not include a repeal of Section 230. NLRB Alleges Google Retaliated Against Employees For Worker Organizing: After Google fired two employees last year for purportedly violating its internal policies, the National Labor Relations Board this week filed a complaint alleging that the tech giant broke labor laws by retaliating against the terminated employees for their organizing efforts.

Privacy Amazon And Microsoft Release Tools For Increased Monitoring Of Employees: Amazon’s machine-learning-based Panorama uses computer vision to analyze camera footage and automatically detect safety and compliance issues, while Microsoft 365’s Productivity Score allows employers to track 73 metrics across Microsoft services including Word, Outlook, Skype, and Excel; after receiving a backlash about privacy concerns, Microsoft has ceased individual tracking in favor of using company-wide aggregated data.

Information Security and Cyberthreats Google Security Researcher Discovers iPhone WiFi Vulnerability: A security researcher with Google’s Project Zero demonstrates how potential hackers can completely access a victim’s iPhone by only being within the victim’s WiFi range, without having the victim click on suspicious links or install malware; while the security flaw was fixed in May, its discovery is significant because it allowed access to a device through a single vulnerability in code. Covid-19 Vaccine Distribution Chain Targeted By Hackers: The Department of Homeland Security and IBM warn that hackers posing as executives of a legitimate participant in the vaccine effort have used spearfishing tactics to attempt to obtain the usernames and passwords of key actors in the vaccine distribution chain, which could enable access to information about the vaccine’s development and distribution.

Intellectual Property Microsoft Files Patent To Monitor Employees’ Productivity During Work Meetings: Despite being criticized for a employing a separate “productivity-score” tool, the technology giant has filed a patent for a “meeting-insight computing system” that allows managers to perform quality control of its Office 365 software by keeping track of employees’ body language and facial expressions during real-world and virtual meetings.

Free Expression and Censorship Amnesty International Alleges Facebook And Google Are Complicit In Vietnam’s Censorship: After interviewing scholars and experts regarding Vietnam’s online censorship, the human rights organization published a 78-page report claiming that Vietnamese authorities are weaponizing both platforms to block content opposing the Vietnamese government. Six Initial Cases Of Content Moderation Now Open For Public Comment Under Facebook’s New Oversight Board: In each case, a panel of five board members will make a determination as to whether the content, which ranges from alleged hate speech to nudity to misinformation, should have been removed; Facebook hopes the new board will help relieve increasing pressure over its content decisions by introducing a familiar form of governance.

On the Lighter Side Cowkeepers Milk Useful Analytics From Bovine Facial Recognition System: Cainthus, an Irish computer system and AI agriculture specialist, has developed a technology capable of identifying and tracking individual cows based on hide patterns and facial recognition; ultimately, the tool provides important behavior information that “drives on-farm decisions that can impact milk production, reproduction management, and overall animal health.”

Joel R. Reidenberg Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP Tom Norton Executive Director, Fordham CLIP Erica Chan Daniel Gerken Editorial Fellows, Fordham CLIP