Senators Warn Feebly Regulated Ad Data Is Being Exploited By Governments Worldwide

from the too-profitable-to-care dept

Back when the whole TikTok hysteria was taking root, we noted how people were generally obsessing over the wrong things. Yes, there are concerns about what a Chinese company does with your data. But there was nothing TikTok was doing that was particularly unique in an adtech sector that's massively complex, sees little meaningful regulatory oversight, isn't big on the whole ethical behavior thing, operates in many countries with no real internet privacy laws, and is comprised of thousands of foreign and domestic app makers, data brokers, telecoms, tech giants, and others -- all dashing toward a hugely profitable trough.

Last week, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers warned that this entire ecosystem is being exploited by governments around the world. There's simply so much data being collected, and efforts to secure this data (if you hadn't noticed from the steady parade of hacks, breaches, leaks, and avoidable fuck ups) aren't particularly consistent:

"This information would be a goldmine for foreign intelligence services that could exploit it to inform and supercharge hacking, blackmail, and influence campaigns," a letter signed by Senators Ron Wyden, Mark Warner, Kirsten Gillibrand, Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, and Bill Cassidy, reads. The lawmakers sent the letter last week to AT&T, Verizon, Google, Twitter, and a number of other companies that maintain advertisement platforms."

The Senators seemed particularly concerned about "bidstream" data, which offers detailed insights into users and is collected by a long list of companies during the ad auction process, even if said companies don't win the bid for that particular ad placement. Much like location, clickstream, and other data, bidstream data is then being sold to pretty much any idiot with a nickel, with nothing in the way of meaningful oversight, the lawmakers warned:

"Few Americans realize that some auction participants are siphoning off and storing 'bidstream' data to compile exhaustive dossiers about them. In turn, these dossiers are being openly sold to anyone with a credit card, including to hedge funds, political campaigns, and even to governments," the letter continued."

Granted as the steady parade of location data scandals routinely show, bidstream data is just a tiny part of this messy ecosystem. And the US government is itself part of the problem. Israeli surveillance companies Rayzone and Bsightful routinely sell this data. Companies like Venntel also sell this data, frequently to US government agencies like ICE. Experts warn that Congressional oversight into this arena is long overdue given the potential for widespread abuse:

"This is a deeply problematic practice when Western governments are abusing the data flows, and it becomes a national security emergency when these same global advertising companies are not vetting their own partners," Zach Edwards, a researcher who has closely followed the supply chain of various sources of data, told Motherboard in an online chat.

"It's long overdue for Congress to begin asking the largest tech companies in the world tough questions about their real-time-data-breach technology that underpins global advertising auctions and user data supply chains," Edwards continued. "Every time a person loads a website or a mobile app, it's likely that their data is being shared with at least dozens of companies, and when that user is interacting with an app or site with banner ads, typically several thousand companies could be receiving data about that visit in order to give those companies 'the opportunity to bid to show ads to that user.'"

The US government's love of ad data as a way to tap dance around warrants reduces any incentive for meaningful oversight of the sector, which is why "investigations" routinely end with few meaningful changes. When you have a universe of connected industries and governments all happily exploiting a single market and lobbying against meaningful change, it begins to make more sense why the US can't even pass a basic internet privacy law. But it also shouldn't be hard to see why obsessing exclusively about TikTok (which wound up being more about cronyism than privacy and security) was a waste of time in broader context.

Filed Under: ad data, bill cassidy, data, elizabeth warren, kirsten gillibrand, mark warner, ron wyden, sherrod brown
Companies: at&t, google, twitter, verizon

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the dialogue-log dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Jason with a response to a specific passage in Charles Harder's article complaining about cancel culture:

"I believe that less cancellation, and more thoughtful consideration of context—plus appreciation for viewpoints we disagree with, particularly when communicated in a respectful, law-abiding way—would benefit all of us.

That, sadly, represents the underlying disconnect.

If he says something that other people disagree with, well, that's his free expression and everyone else should be more tolerant and respectful of his opinion.

If someone says something he disagrees with, that's obviously a blatant and despicable crime and should therefore be punished.

In second place, it's JMT with a response to a particularly angry commenter complaining about Joe Biden "trying to make election fraud permanent":

Screaming incessantly about something will not make it become true, but hopefully it'll eventually give you a stroke.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from That One Guy about what we should expect from the DMCA:

Accuracy costs effort, sloppiness is free

With no penalty for bogus DMCA claims there's no incentive for accuracy, so the surprising thing isn't that such claims are made on a regular basis but that they don't happen more often.

Next, it's MightyMetricBatman responding to a question about the use of the term "dark patterns" to describe sketchy donation-raising tactics from Republicans:

I do not know if this comment was made in a trolly fashion or not, but I'll take the chance.

The study of what person looks at in website originated from the outgrowth of the theories of UI design in computer science. It was found to be criminally easy to design a user interface that would draw your eyes to some things and totally avoid others.

Since this type of study originates from computer science, they took terms from that field of study. In computer science, a "dark pattern" is a pattern in software engineering that makes iteration more difficult and more buggy as more and more is added onto the system.

User interface research took the term to refer to a user interface designed to make it harder or avoid understanding of the information being projected.

Dark patterns are not only pernicious in scams but regularly show up in contracts to hide things you would not ordinarily agree too. And the courts have generally encouraged it by being science illiterate as usual and responding "But the text was there." and ignore the entire study of what people look at on a screen or piece of paper.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous response to an aforementioned angry commenter, who complained all week about being caught in spam filters and demanded an explanation of why their "browser session stopped working" during a deluge of comments:

Even your browser is sick of your bullshit.

In second place, it's another anonymous comment regarding the latest ridiculous New York Times opinion piece about Section 230, in which the author expressed their desire to teach people to avoid misinformation online:

Mission accomplished! I will henceforth not read his columns!

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with another comment on that post, this time from Bloof who coined a new tagline for the NYT opinion pages:

Ah the NYT op ed column, where the rich, pompous and privileged go to be wrong in public.

Finally, because one commenter's complaints about supposedly being censored were so fervent this week, we close with a response from Rocky suggesting a diagnosis of the problem:

Troll beset by gremlins

Have you considered that maybe your computer is infested by gremlins? Or just perhaps, it's a common PEBKAC?

That's all for this week, folks!

This Week In Techdirt History: April 4th - 10th

from the back-in-the-day dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, broadband providers were either fighting against privacy protections or trying to charge a premium for them (not unlike their approach to uncapped bandwidth). Evidence continued to show that encryption and "going dark" were not the cause of recent terrorist attacks, but that didn't stop Senators Burr and Feinstein from releasing an anti-encryption bill that was even more ridiculous than expected (while the White House aimed to punt on the question). But this was also the week that WhatsApp finished rolling out end-to-end encryption, and the week of the massive Panama Papers leak.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, the MPAA filed its expected lawsuit against Zediva, while an appeals court heard the Joel Tenenbaum case, and Congress had a hearing on file sharing that turned into everyone against the COICA censorship bill, but Senator Leahy was happy to completely ignore the first amendment concerns. We also saw some worrying assertions emerge about what constitutes infringement, like linking to legal videos by rightsholders, being liable for people finding infringing movies via your search engine, and even forwarding a single sentence from a mailing list.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, there was yet another fight over song pricing on iTunes, while movie studios were continuing to attempt digital distribution with all the convenience sucked out, and newspapers were simultaneously bragging and whining about how much traffic their websites got. The RIAA was continuing its tradition of drop out of school to be able to pay a settlement fee. Also: the latest attempt to create a law about violent video games was once again declared unconstitutional, Netflix disappointingly (and unnecessarily) tried to use business model patents against Blockbuster, and, after insisting it would never happen, Apple began officially endorsing the use of Windows on new Macs with Intel chips.

Filed Under: history, look back

Khloe Kardashian Streisands A Photo She Wanted Taken Down By Issuing Takedowns

from the far-and-wide dept

The Kardashians are no strangers to Techdirt's pages. Being comprised of family members who are by and large famous for being famous, the Kardashians have been notorious for a heavy-handed approach to policing their own images, often times through spurious claims on intellectual property or publicity rights. So, heading into this story, it should be noted that the default posture of this particular family tends to be the use of IP claims to police anything to do with the family's image on the internet.

But, as readers of this site will recognize, often times these policing attempts have the opposite of the intended effect. This certainly seems to be the case with Khloe Kardashian's recent attempts to rid the internet world of a un-touched photo of her poolside.

The alleged leaked photo pictured Kardashian smiling in a swimsuit. Many previously criticized Kardashian on social media for her attempts to remove it online after it was leaked, suggesting she was contributing to body image issues by hiding the unfiltered photo. In her post, Kardashian said she thought the leaked photo of herself was "beautiful" but she is entitled to want it removed.

"When someone takes a photo of you that isn’t flattering in bad lighting or doesn’t capture your body the way it is after working so hard to get it to this point, you should have every right to ask for it to not be shared - regardless of who you are," she wrote.

That... isn't how copyright law actually works, though. And it was copyright Khloe's team used to issue takedown requests to all kinds of sites, including Reddit and Twitter. According to her team, the photo was shot at a Kardashian residence and was "accidentally uploaded" to the internet by "an assistant." Left unsaid are some important details when it comes to the copyright question. Some reports indicate that the takedown notices were issued by Khloe's grandmother, who reportedly took the photo. When the family assistant uploaded it on accident, it was done so without authorization. A mistake. But once that was done, it's unclear how sharing the post via retweets and social media somehow is a copyright violation subject to a DMCA notice.

But that isn't really the point of this post. Instead, this is a story of a classic Streisand Effect in action. Due in large part to the efforts to disappear the photo, it's now in much wider circulation on the internet, including in posts from news organizations where any takedown request made by the Kardashians would run straight into the First Amendment. And so now the photo Khloe wanted disappeared is all over the place.

After circulating for about two days, the image is likely experiencing the Streisand Effect, where the effort to suppress information — a story, a video or a picture — only amplifies it further.

Now, I am not including the photo in question here for multiple reasons. First, I don't need it to get the point of the post across. Second, in recent comments, Khloe has indicated that part of the reason for her wanting the photo gone is that she has struggled with body image issues in her life and I have enough respect for that to not want to add to it.

But that's kind of the point, right? Other media sources are showing the photo as part of the news coverage of all of this, which is the exact opposite reality that Khloe was attempting to achieve with the aggressive takedowns of the photo elsewhere. Sometimes, it seems, it's a better strategy to simply let a story die rather than amplify it by trying to kill it.

Filed Under: dmca, khloe kardashian, streisand effect, takedowns

Crime Rates Drop After The City Of Baltimore Decides It's Not Going To Waste Resources Prosecuting Minor Offenses

from the do-you-want-to-help-or-do-you-just-want-to-look-busy dept

The argument against anything perceived as "defunding" cops or going just a bit lighter on suspected criminals (like decriminalization of drug possession or the elimination of cash bail) is that the criminals will win. Apparently all they've been waiting for is fewer laws so they can break more laws… or something.

A few disingenuous people (some of them holding very powerful offices) have claimed it takes nothing more than people being angry at law enforcement to make crime rates rise. Others claim the only way to keep crime rates down is to harshly police every minor infraction.

There's no real answer here. Crime rates rise and fall. Mostly, they've been falling. Here in the United States, we've been enjoying historically low crime rates for most of the last decade. But law enforcement opportunists insist on viewing every deviation from this pattern as the start of an alarming trend, one that can be traced to almost any attempt to introduce accountability to policing.

Over in Baltimore -- where cops have been on a rampage -- crime rates continue to fall. The backlash from rampant law enforcement corruption has resulted in some changes meant to level the criminal justice playing field and direct law enforcement resources towards more serious crimes. The wild card was a worldwide pandemic. Here's Elizabeth Nolan Brown for Reason:

Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced in March 2020 that her office would dismiss all pending charges for drug possession, prostitution, trespassing, open container, public urination, paraphernalia possession, attempted distribution of drugs, and minor traffic offenses. It would also stop prosecuting new cases for these offenses—a decision born out of the desire to thwart COVID-19 spreading through jails.

Critics of this action claimed this would embolden criminals. But the opposite has happened. Perhaps partially aided by COIVD-related restrictions, crime rates have fallen in the city.

Between March 2020 and March 2021, violent crime in Baltimore dropped 20 percent and property crime dropped 36 percent. Homicides were also down slightly (13 fewer compared to the previous year).

And, as a direct result of this action (which included dismissing nearly 3,000 pending cases and warrants), the city's jail system is no longer such a drain on residents and their tax dollars. According to the data, incarceration is down 18% and a 40% drop in people "entering the criminal justice system."

Whatever the underlying reasons, this is better for the city. Crime rates are going down one way or the other. And it's not due to aggressive enforcement or giving cops permission to run people in for minor legal infractions. Crime rates may increase as COVID restrictions roll back, but critics can't ignore the results of this criminal justice experiment. And it's not just that fewer people are out or that prosecutors are pushing as many prosecutions. Even citizens seem fine with these relaxed conditions:

The data showed that 911 calls about drug use, public intoxication and sex work (a proxy for public concern) did not increase following the policy; rather, from March – December 2020, there was a 33% reduction in calls mentioning drugs and a 50% reduction in calls mentioning sex work compared to the prior 2 years.

There was also a drop in recidivism, which indicates tons of nickel-and-dime prosecutions aren't essential to curbing crime rate growth. The good news is this is now permanent. The action taken during the beginning of the pandemic will be the way forward for the city of Baltimore. If the city can maintain this new status quo going forward, it should produce a useful dataset that may show the way to a safer nation is less law enforcement, rather than more.

Filed Under: baltimore, crime, defunding police, minor offenses, police, prosecution

MSCHF Settles Upgraded Shoe Dispute With Nike And Promises (Wink, Wink) To Buy Back Satan Shoes

from the good-luck-getting-those-shoes-back dept

There were actually a whole bunch of interesting legal questions raised by Nike's trademark lawsuit against MSCHF the weird "structured chaos" organization that seems to basically sell publicity stunts as a business model. It had teamed up with the musician Lil Nas X to sell 666 pairs of upgrade Nike Air Max 97, complete with red ink (and, it claimed, a single drop of blood) inserted in the sole of the shoe. The lawsuit raised issues regarding first sale/resale rights, art, freedom of expression, trademark, ownership, property, dilution, confusion and more. And... all of it's going nowhere, because a settlement has been reached.

This isn't that much of a surprise. MSCHF execs have admitted in the past that lawsuits only raise their profile, which may be true, but they're also crazy fucking expensive. MSCHF already got the benefit of the publicity bump from the lawsuit, and now probably sought to get things done and over with as quickly as possible -- and that includes agreeing to issue a "voluntary recall" of the shoes -- 665 pairs of which it had already shipped out. MSCHF also agreed to do the same thing for the much smaller number of Jesus shoes it had sold two years ago in a similar stunt.

Of course, the whole thing seems like a charade. It's a voluntary recall, in which MSCHF is supposed to buy back the shoes at their original retail prices "in order to remove them from circulation." But, uh, anyone who has those shoes in their possession now knows that these shoes are way more valuable because of this dispute. I'd be amazed if anyone actually agreed to sell the shoes back to MSCHF, because these shoes just went from already established rare collector's items, to rare collector's items with an even more insane story including the fact that Nike wants them to disappear.

In some ways, this form of settlement just shows how ridiculous the lawsuit was in the first place. Nike's statement on the settlement is hilarious:

“As part of the settlement, Nike has asked MSCHF, and MSCHF has agreed, to initiate a voluntary recall to buy back any Satan Shoes and Jesus Shoes for their original retail prices, in order to remove them from circulation. If any purchasers were confused, or if they otherwise want to return their shoes, they may do so for a full refund. Purchasers who choose not to return their shoes and later encounter a product issue, defect, or health concern should contact MSCHF, not Nike.”

I mean, c'mon. No one who bought this shoe was "confused." No one's going to want to return it. And, no one's going to contact Nike about any "defect" or "health concern." The whole thing is silly. And yes, that's even though there were some foolish pundits on certain infamous news channels who tried to make a culture war issue falsely claiming Nike was making these shoes. So, sure, Nike can point to the lawsuit as proof they had nothing to do with the shoes, but responding to the brigade of trumped up controversial people is lame. Pretty much everything about this story has been about posturing, rather than anything substantive.

Filed Under: art, confusion, dilution, first sale, free speech, jesus shoes, lil nas x, satan shoes, tarnishment, trademark
Companies: mschf, nike

Howard Dean Is Out Stumping For Big Pharma Patent Protection, No Matter How Many People In Poor Countries Die As A Result

from the yaaaaah! dept

If ever there was a situation that called for a circumvention of the normal patent process and lifespan, surely it would be the COVID-10 pandemic. It seems obvious that a global pandemic is the perfect situation to go beyond the normal restrictive patent protections for things like therapeutics and vaccines and instead operate from a posture of information-sharing and collaboration so that the world can get back to something resembling normalcy. Instead, products of research that are often based on publicly-funded scientific campaigns are being locked up in patent offices, fought over among patent holders, and used for pure profiteering over a public health crises. It's in that reality that we've had to witness some folks who absolutely know better, such as Senator Ben Sasse, advocate for longer patent protections for COVID-19 treatments, rather than the opposite.

But if you thought that this kind of pro-pharma shill work was limited to Republicans like Sasse, fear not oh ye both-sides-ers, because here comes Howard Dean to demonstrate that the other side of the aisle is equally capable of spewing this nonsense. Dean recently penned an op-ed pushing Joe Biden to not issue a special waiver that would allow poor countries access to produce generic COVID-19 vaccines.

HOWARD DEAN, the former progressive champion, is calling on President Joe Biden to reject a special intellectual property waiver that would allow low-cost, generic coronavirus vaccines to be produced to meet the needs of low-income countries. Currently, a small number of companies hold the formulas for the Covid-19 vaccines, limiting distribution to many parts of the world.

“IP protections aren’t the cause of vaccination delays,” Dean claimed in a column for Barron’s last month. “Every drug manufacturing facility on the planet that’s capable of churning out Covid-19 shots is already doing so.” “Creating a new medicine is a costly proposition,” wrote Dean. “Companies would never invest hundreds of millions in research and development if rivals could simply copy their drug formulas and create knockoffs.”

Even in just those two paragraphs, there is a ton to unpack. First and foremost, it's worth remembering that Dean, once considered a progressive representative in Congress, is now in the business of influencing lawmakers on behalf of large pharma companies. To be clear, Dean himself is not registered as a lobbyist... which is hilarious. He does work for Dentons, a law and lobbying firm. And, anytime the public catches wind of the potential for lowering drug prices in favor of healthcare concerns, there is Howard Dean to tell you how awful that would be.

His official role is as a senior advisor to its government affairs practice focused on corporate health care clients, though as The Intercept has previously reported, he engages in almost every lobbying activity imaginable. In the past, Dean has argued that he is not a lobbyist but has declined to discuss what he does at the firm or the identities of his clients. Neither Dean nor Dentons responded to a request for comment from The Intercept.

“He sorts of pops up whenever you argue against anything that would lower drug prices,” said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit that works to reform intellectual property rights to expand access to medicine. “It’s appalling because he’s introduced as a progressive; he still gets on ‘Rachel Maddow,’” said Love. “But he’s on the payroll. He’s not a registered lobbyist — he somehow finds a way not to register — but he’s sort of an influencer, he’s paid to influence the debate.”

In other words, note that when Howard Dean speaks on the topic of pharmaceuticals, you should picture big pharma as the ventriloquist.

But back to Dean's original claims. The idea that patents haven't held back vaccine production and that all the possible production is currently happening is... well... it ain't fucking true.

Dean’s claim that global vaccine manufacturing is already at capacity is patently false. Foreign firms have lined up to offer pharmaceutical plants to produce vaccines but have been forced to enter into lengthy negotiations under terms set by the intellectual property owners. The waiver, however, would allow generic drug producers to begin copying the vaccine without delay.

Many of the manufacturing plants prepared to mass produce low-cost vaccines are centered in India, which has committed to supplying the poorest countries in the world. But the waiver petition, Dean wrote, “is unreasonable and disingenuous; it’s a ruse to benefit India’s own industry at the expense of patients everywhere. President Biden would be wise to reject it.”

Except that doesn't make an iota of sense. To start, generic medicines exist. And, yet, pharma companies still make the medicines that eventually go generic. What we're talking about in this instance is a waiver that would allow generic versions of patented COVID-19 vaccines far earlier than the normal patent system would allow. It's worth noting that companies like Pfizer and Moderna have already made a ton of money on vaccine contracts with various countries. Arguing that those companies wouldn't have created vaccines without the normal patent protection length is arguing that those companies would have just left all the money they've already made on the table for... reasons. As far as I'm able to tell, not making money is not the primary motive of big pharma.

But as to Dean's claim that this is harmful to "patients everywhere", tell that to the god damned underserved and poor nations currently operating with barely any vaccine distribution at all. It might be fun for Dean to non-lobby for pharma patents here in the States while citizens in poor nations literally get sick and die from COVID-19, but it damned sure isn't the progressive posture Dean is regularly lionized for. And leaving a patent waiver off the table means that some of these poorer countries will be dealing with COVID-19 for years.

The column references a proposal led by India and South Africa — joined by Kenya, Bolivia, Pakistan, and dozens of other countries — to request a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights over the creation of Covid-19 vaccines. The waiver to the World Trade Organization would allow unfettered access to the intellectual property and formulas necessary to retool factories and ramp up production of vaccines for the developing world, much of which is currently projected not to reach significant vaccination rates until as late as 2024.

And that's before you take into account that these same pharma companies Dean is non-lobbying for have promised their investors that they plan to jack up the price for these life-saving vaccines in the very near future. You know, the exact sort of thing that will diminish poorer nations' ability to vaccinate their peoples.

So, to summarize, here is what Howard Dean, progressive champion, is doing with op-eds like this. He is shilling for big pharma companies' ability to control manufacturing of vaccines to help end a global pandemic through strict patent control in a manner that will keep poorer countries from having the vaccine sooner than they would otherwise. If Biden did issue the waiver, it would mean that more people in the world would get vaccinated sooner. Uncomfortable as it might be to hear, this in turn means that whatever the literal body-count Dean's advocacy would generate might be, it would certainly not be zero. People will die due to this. And, if you're into pure self-interest and are reading this from a wealthy nation now getting vaccines rolled out relatively quickly, failing to vaccinate poorer nations could easily result in wider COVID-19 spread, which in turn could easily lead to the evolution of new variants that could get around the vaccines we have today.

Dean's advocacy is a literal threat to the world, is my point. And if you think that I'm exaggerating that point, you aren't paying attention to the news.

Filed Under: access to medicine, big pharma, covid, covid vaccines, howard dean, patents

Daily Deal: Minolta MN673 Mini LCD Projector

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Whether you're having a movie night with friends or a presentation with colleagues, the Minolta MN673 Mini LCD Projector is perfect for you. It casts a 120" high-quality image onto any surface. Enjoy crisp visuals with up to 1080P resolution and 800:1 contrast ratio. With HDMI input, you can easily connect the projector to any compatible device. It also has USB and MicroSD inputs. The remote control is also included so you can operate from a distance. It's on sale for $100.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Oracle's Projection: As It Accuses Google Of Snooping On You, It Has Built A Huge Data Operation That It Doesn't Want Regulated

from the ah,-look-at-that dept

Over the last decade or so, the fight between Oracle and Google has seemed incredibly personal -- at least on the Oracle side. Of course, many have argued the main reason for Oracle's attacks on Google were to pressure the company into settling its long-running fight over the Java API -- and the Supreme Court just put an end to that -- so it will be interesting to watch whether or not the attacks continue. But there's an important point buried in all of this. Almost everything Oracle accuses Google of doing... it does itself. Often in much more nefarious ways. I mean, Oracle even copied an API without a license. But Oracle's grand projection in blaming Google for the things that Oracle actually does (in much worse ways) goes way further than that.

Late last year reports came out noting that various regulatory attacks on Google around the globe clearly had Oracle's fingerprints all over them -- including claims that Google is a disaster for persona privacy. From a big Bloomberg article:

What's less known is that Oracle Corp. spent years working behind the scenes to convince regulators and law enforcement agencies in Washington, more than 30 states, the European Union, Australia and at least three other countries to rein in Google's huge search-and-advertising business. Those efforts are paying off.

Officials in more than a dozen of the states that sued Google received what has been called Oracle’s “black box” presentation showing how Google tracks users’ personal information, said Ken Glueck, Oracle’s top Washington lobbyist and the architect of the company’s antitrust campaign against Google. Glueck outlined for Bloomberg the presentation, which often entails putting an Android phone inside a black briefcase to show how Google collects users’ location details — even when the phones aren’t in use — and confirmed the contours of the pressure campaign.

“I couldn’t be happier,” said Glueck about the barrage of lawsuits. “As far as I can tell, there are more states suing Google than there are states.”

Oracle's attacks on Google have taken other forms as well, including its now infamous "Shadow Profiles" report that it has submitted to various governments, detailing claims that Google is sucking up tons of data on everyone and doing sketchy things with it.

Whether or not this is true, it kind of leaves out an important fact: Oracle is doing the same thing. And Oracle seems to be doing it in an even sketchier way. You may recall that, last summer, a sneaky data collection company BlueKai leaked tons of personal info on an unsecured server. BlueKai is owned by Oracle. Many years ago, we had been approached about using the service, which seemed incredibly sketchy because it was much more involved in building "shadow profiles" of users in ways that users had no idea about (at least with Google, you can go in and see what the company has on you and can delete much of the info).

But, it gets worse. In a new article from The Markup, it details how various "data brokers" are now bigger lobbyists in DC than many of the big tech firms, maneuvering to make sure that legislators don't cut them off from their data sources. And guess who the biggest such data broker of them all is? Yup. It's Oracle, which has spent the last few years buying up every sketchy data collector it can get its hands on.

Oracle has its own data collection arm but has also built its portfolio by buying up companies like DataRaker, Compendium, and Crosswise. The companies, which were acquired in 2012, 2013, and 2016, respectively, take data from a variety of sources. DataRaker gets data from millions of smart meters and sensors for utilities companies, while Compendium delivers targeted ads. Crosswise allows Oracle to track people across devices, claiming to process data from billions of devices every month. 

Oracle also acquired Datalogix, in 2014, which connected offline purchases to online profiles. Additionally, Oracle combines datasets from more than 75 other data brokers, which it calls “the world’s largest collection of third-party data.” 

And then when you look at how these data brokers are lobbying, you may notice that Oracle stands out way above the rest:

It kind of makes you wonder how much of that lobbying is attacking Google by claiming that Google is doing... what Oracle is actually doing in undermining privacy. And, yes, in case your wondering, the Markup notes that Google spent less than Oracle on lobbying the US government during this period (the year 2020).

None of this is to say that Google is a good player here. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about what Google does as well. But considering how much effort Oracle seems to be putting into demonizing Google's practices, and how much it's spending on lobbying, when it appears that Oracle's own strategy is to be much more abusive in secretly collecting data on everyone, it seems worth questioning just what Oracle's actual strategy here is, beyond attacking a competitor.

Filed Under: data, data brokers, lobbying, privacy
Companies: google, oracle