Wyden’s Office Gets FTC To Protect The Data Of 1.6 Billion People Tracked By Now-Bankrupt Data Broker

Privacy

from the dysfunction-junction dept

There are two major reasons that the U.S. doesn’t pass an internet-era privacy law or regulate data brokers despite a parade of dangerous scandals.

One, lobbied by a vast web of interconnected industries with unlimited budgets, Congress is too corrupt to do its job.

Two, the U.S. government is disincentivized to do anything because it exploits this privacy dysfunction to buy data, dodge warrants, and expand surveillance.

So instead of passing a privacy law or regulating data brokers, Americans get a sort of regulatory simulacrum designed to distract you. Most recently that popped up in the form of hysteria about TikTok privacy, as if TikTok’s privacy abuses aren’t a broader symptom of our corrupt failure to protect consumers from a vast and unaccountable network of ethics-optional surveillance and monetization.

We’ve documented how data brokers routinely sell access to very granular location and behavioral data to any nitwit who asks for it. That’s long been a problem, but it’s become an uglier problem given the rise of U.S. authoritarianism and the frontal assault on women’s reproductive health care.

That point was made very loudly recently after Senator Wyden’s office found that one data broker, named Near Intelligence, recently sold the location data of women seeking abortion healthcare to an activist group, which turned right around and sent targeted misinformation to vulnerable women.

When it originally went public, Near bragged about how they owned a database tracking the movement and online behavior of 1.6 billion people across 44 countries. But the company went bankrupt last year, and, as The Markup notes, there was a real risk that this database would fall into the hands of any number of random knobs and shitwhistles looking to exploit and abuse it.

Enter Ron Wyden’s office again, which sent a letter to the FTC last week urging the agency to step in and block the transfer of this data. As The Markup notes, the FTC agreed, and an order this week blocked the sale or transfer of a huge trove of user data:

“This week, a new bankruptcy court filing showed that Wyden’s requests were granted. The order placed restrictions on the use, sale, licensing, or transfer of location data collected from sensitive locations in the US and requires any company that purchases the data to establish a “sensitive location data program” with detailed policies for such data and ensure ongoing monitoring and compliance, including the creation of a list of sensitive locations such as reproductive health care facilities, doctor’s offices, houses of worship, mental health care providers, corrections facilities and shelters among others.”

The problem of course is the FTC lacks the staff and resources to tackle privacy violations at any real scale. Thanks in large part to years of mindless “deregulatory” assault by corporate America (about to dramatically accelerate thanks to several looming Supreme Court decisions), which dreams of a future where U.S. corporate oversight has the integrity and functionality of a decorative gourd.

Genuinely fixing this problem requires congressional action. A greater FTC budget. More staff. A clear, well-crafted privacy law that draws hard and clear lines about the collection and sale of sensitive consumer data. Hard regulations governing how and where and when sensitive user data can be collected, and precisely who it can be shared with and sold to with consumer consent.

But all the financial incentives point in the opposite direction thanks to the extreme profitability of hyper surveillance at scale across countless industries, so it seems obvious that the problem gets progressively worse — until there’s an unprecedented (potentially fatal) scandal that’s simply impossible to ignore.

Filed Under: anonymization, behavioral data, data brokers, ftc, location data, privacy, ron wyden, security
Companies: near intelligence