Privacy International (PI) and several other European privacy and digital rights organizations announced today that they've filed legal complaints against the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI. From a report: The complaints filed in France, Austria, Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom say that the company's method of documenting and collecting data -- including images of faces it automatically extracts from public websites -- violates European privacy laws. New York-based Clearview claims to have built "the largest known database of 3+ billion facial images."

PI, NYOB, Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights, and Homo Digitalis all claim that Clearview's data collection goes beyond what the average user would expect when using services like Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. "Extracting our unique facial features or even sharing them with the police and other companies goes far beyond what we could ever expect as online users," said PI legal officer Ioannis Kouvakas in a joint statement.

A Dutch court on Wednesday ruled oil giant Royal Dutch Shell must reduce its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels. That's a much higher reduction than the company's current aim of lowering its emissions by 20% by 2030. CNBC reports: Shell's current climate strategy states that the company is aiming to become a net-zero emissions business by 2050, with the company setting a target of cutting its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2035. A spokesperson for Shell said the company "fully expect to appeal today's disappointing court decision." "We are investing billions of dollars in low-carbon energy, including electric vehicle charging, hydrogen, renewables and biofuels," the spokesperson said via email. "We want to grow demand for these products and scale up our new energy businesses even more quickly."

The lawsuit was filed in April 2019 by seven activist groups -- including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace -- on behalf of 17,200 Dutch citizens. Court summons claimed Shell's business model "is endangering human rights and lives" by posing a threat to the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement. Roger Cox, a lawyer for environmental activists in the case, said in a statement that the ruling marked "a turning point in history" and could have major consequences for other big polluters.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Every day, people who download and share pirated content receive DMCA notices via their ISPs, warning them to cease and desist their infringing behavior. While the majority of these notices are accurate, one Ubuntu user says he has just been targeted by an anti-piracy company alleging that by torrenting an OS ISO released by Ubuntu itself, he breached copyright law. Posting to Reddit's /r/linux sub-Reddit, a forum with more than 656K subscribers, 'NateNate60' reported the unthinkable. After downloading an official Ubuntu ISO package (filename ubuntu-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.iso) he says he received a notice from Comcast's Infinity claiming that he'd been reported for copyright infringement.

"We have received a notification by a copyright owner, or its authorized agent, reporting an alleged infringement of one or more copyrighted works made on or over your Xfinity Internet service," the posted notice reads. NateNate60 wisely redacted the notice to remove the 'Incident Number' and the precise time of the alleged infringement to protect his privacy but the clam was reported filed with Comcast on May 24, 2021. "The copyright owner has identified the IP address associated with your Xfinity Internet account at the time as the source of the infringing works," it continues, adding that NateNate60 should search all of his devices connected to his network and delete the files mentioned in the complaint.

The allegedly infringing content is the 64-bit Ubuntu 20.04.2.0 LTS release but the first big question is whether the file is actually the official release from Canonical. Given that the listed hash value is 4ba4fbf7231a3a660e86892707d25c135533a16a and that matches the hash of the official release, mislabeled or misidentified content (wrong hash, mislabeled file etc) appears to be ruled out. Indeed, the same hash value is listed on Ubuntu's very own BitTorrent tracker and according to NateNate60, this is where he downloaded the torrent that led to the DMCA notice. It doesn't get much more official than that. According to the DMCA notice sent by Comcast, the complainant wasn't Ubuntu/Canonical but an anti-piracy company called OpSec Security, which according to its imprint is based in Germany. Presuming the notice is genuine (albeit sent in error), Comcast needs to be informed that mistakes have been made. The ISP has a repeat infringer policy and given the current hostile environment, terminating users is certainly on the agenda. Indeed, the notice states just that.

Google has made a deal for access to patient records from HCA, which which operates 181 hospitals and more than 2,000 healthcare sites in 21 states, so the tech company can develop healthcare algorithms, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Verge: Google will store anonymized data from patient health records and internet-connected medical devices. That data will be used to build programs that could inform medical decisions made by doctors. The deal is described as "multiyear" by the WSJ, without specifying how many years. As health records moved online over the past few years, hospitals and tech companies jumped at opportunities to take advantage of the glut of digitized medical information collected at each doctor's visit.

Microsoft and Amazon also have deals with hospitals to analyze their patient information. Google previously partnered with healthcare system Ascension to gather patient records in a secretive project called "Project Nightingale." The company was criticized for starting in on the project without disclosing the work to patients and doctors. HCA is a major win for Google, since its facilities handle 5 percent of the hospital services provided in the US -- around 30 million patient interactions each year.

WhatsApp has sued the Indian government challenging the second largest internet market's new regulations that could allow authorities to make people's private messages "traceable," and conduct mass surveillance. From a report: The Facebook-owned instant messaging service, which identifies India as its biggest market by users, said it filed the lawsuit in the High Court of Delhi on Wednesday. It said New Delhi's "traceability" requirement -- which would require WhatsApp to help New Delhi identify the originator of a particular message -- violated citizens' constitutional right to privacy.

"Civil society and technical experts around the world have consistently argued that a requirement to 'trace' private messages would break end-to-end encryption and lead to real abuse. WhatsApp is committed to protecting the privacy of people's personal messages and we will continue to do all we can within the laws of India to do so," WhatsApp said in a statement. India first proposed WhatsApp to make software changes to make the originator of a message traceable in 2018. The suggestion came at a time when WhatsApp was grappling with containing spread of false information in India, where circulation of such information had resulted in multiple real-life casualties. But its suggestion didn't become the law until this year. Traceability requirement is part of New Delhi's sweeping IT rules that also require social media firms to appoint several officers in India to address on-ground concerns, and also gives authorities greater power over taking down posts it deems offensive. Further reading: India says WhatsApp's lawsuit over new regulations a clear act of defiance.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Offshore wind is headed west. The Biden administration announced today that it will open up parts of the Pacific coast to commercial-scale offshore renewable energy development for the first time. The geography of the West Coast poses huge technical challenges for wind energy. But rising to meet those challenges is a big opportunity for both President Joe Biden and California Governor Gavin Newsom to meet their clean energy goals. There are two areas now slotted for development off the coast of Central and Northern California -- one at Morro Bay and another near Humboldt County. Together, these areas could generate up to 4.6GW of energy, enough power for 1.6 million homes over the next decade, according to a White House fact sheet.

Compared to the East Coast, waters off the West Coast get deeper much faster. That has stymied offshore wind development. So the White House says it's looking into deploying pretty futuristic technology there: floating wind farms. Until now, technical constraints have generally prevented companies from installing turbines that are fixed to the seafloor in waters more than 60 meters deep. That's left nearly 60 percent of offshore wind resources out of reach, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). With the development of new technologies that could let wind turbines float in deeper waters, it looks like those resources might finally be within reach.

The Department of Energy says that it has funneled more than $100 million into moving floating offshore wind technology forward. There are only a handful of floating turbines in operation today, and no commercial-scale wind farms yet anywhere in the world. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management still needs to officially designate the areas off the California coast as Wind Energy Areas for development and complete an environmental analysis. The plan is to auction off leases for the area to developers in mid-2022. It's also working with the Department of Defense to make sure the projects don't interfere with its ongoing "testing, training, and operations" off California's coast.

Russian authorities on Tuesday fined Google 6 million rubles, or just under $82,000, after the company failed to comply with Moscow's demands to delete prohibited online content. Engadget reports: On Monday, Russia's internet watchdog, Roskomnadzor, gave Google 24 hours to delete more than 26,000 instances of online media considered to be illegal in the country. If their demands weren't met, authorities threatened to slow down Google's services in Russia and levy fines of up to 10 percent of the company's annual revenue. Today, Roskomnadzor fined Google in three batches at 2 million rubles apiece, alleging administrative offenses in each case, according to Reuters. Much of the prohibited content involves calls for social action following the detention of high-profile Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in January.

A group of Redditors came together in a bid to archive over 85 million scientific papers from the website Sci-Hub and make an open-source library that cannot be taken down. Interesting Engineering reports: Over the last decade or so, Sci-Hub, often referred to as "The Pirate Bay of Science," has been giving free access to a huge database of scientific papers that would otherwise be locked behind a paywall. Unsurprisingly, the website has been the target of multiple lawsuits, as well as an investigation from the United States Department of Justice. The site's Twitter account was also recently suspended under Twitter's counterfeit policy, and its founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, reported that the FBI gained access to her Apple accounts.

Now, Redditors from a subreddit called DataHoarder, which is aimed at archiving knowledge in the digital space, have come together to try to save the numerous papers available on the website. In a post on May 13, the moderators of r/DataHoarder, stated that "it's time we sent Elsevier and the USDOJ a clearer message about the fate of Sci-Hub and open science. We are the library, we do not get silenced, we do not shut down our computers, and we are many." This will be no easy task. Sci-Hub is home to over 85 million papers, totaling a staggering 77TB of data. The group of Redditors is currently recruiting for its archiving efforts and its stated goal is to have approximately 8,500 individuals torrenting the papers in order to download the entire library. Once that task is complete, the Redditors aim to release all of the downloaded data via a new "uncensorable" open-source website.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: Now that Jeff Bezos's space flight company Blue Origin has lost a multibillion contract to Elon Musk's SpaceX, Congress is prepping the ground for Bezos to win a contract anyway, ordering NASA to make not one but two awards. The order would come through the Endless Frontier Act, a bill to beef up resources for science and technology research that's being debated on the Senate floor this week. An amendment was added to that legislation by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., to hand over $10 billion to NASA -- money that most likely would go to Blue Origin, a company that's headquartered in Cantwell's home state.

Cantwell's amendment is no sure bet though: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a last-minute amendment Monday to eliminate the $10 billion. "It does not make a lot of sense to me that we would provide billions of dollars to a company owned by the wealthiest guy in America," Sanders told The Intercept Tuesday. Cantwell's measure wouldn't rescind the grant to SpaceX but would create an additional contract that Bezos's company would be in line to win. A third company, Dynetics, had also bid for the moonshot, but the author of the new amendment offers a strong suggestion of which company it's likely to benefit. The measure has been attached to the Endless Frontier Act as part of a manager's amendment and authorizes $10.032 billion through the year 2026 for the moon program. Authorization alone does not fund the program, and Congress would still need to appropriate the money, or the executive would need to find other appropriated funds.

Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon Tuesday, alleging that the e-commerce giant has unfairly raised prices and hurt innovation. From a report: The lawsuit filed in D.C. Superior Court claims that Amazon has engaged in anti-competitive business practices including not allowing third party sellers to offer their products at lower prices elsewhere and imposing excessive fees. The suit alleges that those practices have passed on fees to consumers in the form of higher prices, prevents other platforms from competing and takes away choices from consumers.

"Amazon has used its dominant position in the online retail market to win at all costs," Racine said in a statement. "It maximizes its profits at the expense of third-party sellers and consumers, while harming competition, stifling innovation, and illegally tilting the playing field in its favor."

GCHQ's methods for bulk interception of online communications violated the right to privacy and the regime for collection of data was "not in accordance with the law," the grand chamber of the European court of human rights has ruled. From a report: In what was described as a "landmark victory" by Liberty, one of the applicants, the judges also found the bulk interception regime breached the right to freedom of expression and contained insufficient protections for confidential journalistic material but said the decision to operate a bulk interception regime did not of itself violate the European convention on human rights.

The chamber, the ultimate court of the ECHR, also concluded that GCHQ's regime for sharing sensitive digital intelligence with foreign governments was not illegal. The grand chamber judgment is the culmination of a legal challenge to GCHQ's bulk interception of online communications begun in 2013 by Big Brother Watch and others after Edward Snowden's whistleblowing revelations concerning the interception, processing and storing of data about millions of people's private communications by the eavesdropping agency.

A man has been jailed for 13 years after his fingerprints were analysed from a photo of a block of cheese. Sky News reports: Carl Stewart shared the M&S Stilton picture -- but made the mistake of showing his fingers and palm. He may have thought he was safe because he was using an EncroChat phone, a highly encrypted device used by criminals. However, police cracked the system last year -- leading to the arrest of hundreds of people in the UK suspected of murder, gun smuggling and serious drug trafficking. Sixty-thousand users -- about 10,000 of them in the UK -- have been identified globally as part of Operation Venetic. Stewart, 39, of Gem Street, Liverpool, received a sentence of 13-and-a-half years at Liverpool Crown Court on Friday. [...] Detective Inspector Lee Wilkinson said Stewart had been "caught out by his love of Stilton cheese." "His palm and fingerprints were analysed from this picture and it was established they belonged to [him]," the officer said. Stewart had used the name Toffeeforce to conduct his EncroChat deals.

Florida on Monday became the first state to regulate how companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate speech online, by imposing fines on social media companies that permanently bar political candidates in the state. From a report: The law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is a direct response to Facebook's and Twitter's bans of former President Donald J. Trump in January. In addition to the fines for barring candidates, it makes it illegal to prevent some news outlets from posting to their platforms in response to the contents of their stories. Mr. DeSantis said signing the bill meant that Floridians would be "guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites."

"If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable," he said in a statement. The bill is part of a broader push among conservative state legislatures to crack down on the ability of tech companies to manage posts on their platforms. The political efforts took off after Mr. Trump was barred after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Lawmakers around the country have echoed Mr. Trump's accusations that the companies are biased against conservative personalities and publications, even though those accounts often thrive online. More than a hundred bills targeting the companies' moderation practices have been filed nationwide this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many of the bills have died, but a proposal is still being debated in Texas.

AmiMoJo writes: The German Parliament has adopted new legislation that will implement the EU Copyright Directive into local law. This includes the controversial Article 17 that, according to some, would lead to overbroad upload filters. To deal with these concerns, the German law prevents 'minor' and limited use of copyrighted content from being blocked automatically. These 'presumably authorized' uploads should not be blocked automatically if they qualify for all of the selection criteria below:

1. The upload should use less than 50% of the original copyrighted work
2. The upload must use the copyrighted work in combination with other content
3. The use should be 'minor'

The term 'minor' applies to non-commercial uses of fewer than 15 seconds of video or audio, 160 characters of text, or 125 kB of graphics. If the use of a copyrighted work exceeds these 'minor' thresholds, it can still qualify as 'presumably authorized' when the uploader flags it as an exception.

Almost half a decade after the first reports were published, mobile app developers are still exposing their users' personal information through abhorrently simple misconfigurations. From a report: In a report published last week, security firm Check Point said it found 23 Android applications that exposed the personal data of more than 100 million users through a variety of misconfigurations of third-party cloud services. This included developers who forgot to password-protect their backend databases and developers who left access tokens/keys inside their mobile application's source code for services such as cloud storage or push notifications. The Check Point team said it was able to use the information they found through a routine examination of 23 random applications and access the backend databases of 13 apps. In the exposed databases, researchers said they found information such as email addresses, passwords, private chats, location coordinates, user identifiers, screen recordings, social media credentials, and personal images.

A user quotes Gizmodo: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is facing a million-dollar lawsuit for allegedly stealing the idea to create a Woz-branded tech school, according to a weekend Insider report.

Connecticut business professor Ralph Reilly claims he and Wozniak agreed to establish a "tech university" and sealed the deal with an on-camera handshake in 2011. The educational platform, which was aimed at teaching adults computer and other technical skills, would lean heavily on Wozniak's name and reputation as a key engineering force in Apple's early days for branding purposes. However, the partnership never got off the ground, Reilly said in court filings reviewed by Gizmodo and Insider. Wozniak went on to launch virtually the same idea under the name Woz U in 2017 after partnering with the code-learning firm Coder Camps. In response, Reilly reached out to Wozniak via email asking to be a part of the venture, according to court filings. "It's exactly what I envisioned for Woz Institute of Technology when I first approached you with the idea," Reilly wrote at the time.

"You are right on the mark," Wozniak responded. "You had the right idea... I doubt it would have happened without your initial idea!"

But when Reilly pushed back asking for partial ownership in the project, he was met with radio silence. Reilly went on sue Wozniak for alleged intellectual property theft and copyright infringement. He's seeking at least $1 million in relief and damages. Other accusations Reilly's brought against Wozniak such as breach of contract have already been dismissed by a judge...

For his part, Wozniak's team claims the two never reached a real deal on the proposal and the aforementioned on-camera handshake was just one of countless photo-ops he regularly conducts with fans.

"A U.S.-backed consortium beat out one financed by China in a closely watched telecommunications auction in Ethiopia — handing Washington a victory in its push to challenge Beijing's economic influence around the world," reports the Wall Street Journal: The East African country said Saturday it tapped a group of telecommunications companies led by the U.K.'s Vodafone Group PLC to build a nationwide, 5G-capable wireless network.

The group had won financial backing for the multibillion-dollar project from a newly created U.S. foreign-aid agency. The agency offers low-interest loans, but the financing comes with a condition: the money won't be used to buy telecom equipment from China's Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. Washington considers both a spying threat, an accusation the companies deny...

The telecom license auction in Ethiopia took on wider geopolitical significance amid heightened competition between the U.S. and China over key technological pursuits, from the rollout of 5G to chip manufacturing. "The U.S. and China are fighting a proxy war in Ethiopia for influence," said Zemedeneh Negatu, chairman of Fairfax Africa Fund LLC, a U.S.-based investment firm that focuses on Africa. After all but shutting out Huawei in the U.S., Washington has become more assertive about challenging Beijing's economic footprint overseas. It is using new financial tools to win influence and ensure that strategic assets in foreign countries stay in friendly hands...

Backing the Vodafone bid was the International Development Finance Corp., or DFC. The U.S. government-funded agency was created in December 2019 with a goal of offering alternatives to cheap, Chinese financing for foreign infrastructure projects... U.S. law also prohibits its loan from being used to buy Huawei or ZTE equipment, though one person familiar with the matter said it is possible the Vodafone-led bid could still buy some Chinese gear because of the project's size and cost.

"Technological advances are driving rapid change in the global payments landscape," says the U.S. federal reserve, the country's central banking system. They announced this week that they're "studying these developments" and exploring ways that the central bank "might refine its role as a core payment services provider and as the issuing authority for U.S. currency."

Slashdot reader clubalien shares Engadget's argument that the Reserve "took a step toward developing a digital currency as it announced plans to publish a research paper on the subject," seeking public comment on its pros and cons for payments, financial inclusion, data privacy, and information security. But the Federal Reserve emphasizes that "before making any decision on whether and how to move forward with a U.S. central bank digital currency," their paper "represents the beginning of what will be a thoughtful and deliberative process" that has more than one possible outcome. "Irrespective of the conclusion we ultimately reach, we expect to play a leading role in developing international standards for central bank digital currencies, engaging actively with central banks in other jurisdictions as well as regulators and supervisors here in the United States throughout that process."

Their announcement notes America's central bank has already been exploring the benefits and risks of issuing a digital currency "for the past several years," but emphasizes they're exploring it "as a complement to, and not a replacement of" current systems. And the Reserve also state pointedly that "To date, cryptocurrencies have not served as a convenient way to make payments, given, among other factors, their swings in value," before the announcement switches its attention to stablecoins pegged to the value of a non-virtual currency. But even there, the interest seems to be as much regulatory as it is monetary. "As stablecoins' use increases, so must our attention to the appropriate regulatory and oversight framework.

"This includes paying attention to private-sector payments innovators who are currently not within the traditional regulatory arrangements applied to banks, investment firms, and other financial intermediaries."

Slashdot reader esm88 shares the BBC's story about a couple who experienced "a knock on the door from the police" investigating child abuse images posted online. "The couple insisted they had nothing to do with it. But the next few months were 'utter hell' as they attempted to clear their names," before their case was finally dropped in March: In February, a conversation with a friend who worked in cyber-security alerted them to the possibility that their router, supplied by their broadband provider Vodafone, might hold clues to what had happened. They had not changed the default passwords for either the router itself or the admin webpage, leaving it susceptible to brute force attacks. "We think of ourselves as competent users but we are not IT experts," said Matthew. "No-one told us to change the password and the setting up of the router didn't require us to go on to the admin menu, so we didn't.

"It came with a password, so we plugged it in and didn't touch anything."

Ken Munro, a security consultant with Pen Test Partners, told the BBC that it can take "a matter of minutes" for criminals to piggyback on insecure wireless connections... "So what I guess has happened here, is that the hacker has cracked the wi-fi password and then made changes to the router configuration, so their illicit activities on the internet appear to be coming from the innocent party." In March, when the couple's devices were returned and the case closed, the police officer assigned to liaise with them seemed to corroborate that unauthorised use of their wi-fi was to blame. But it couldn't be proved... The problem is industry-wide, points out Mr Munro.

"Internet service providers have started to improve matters to make these attacks harder, by putting unique passwords on each router. However, it will take years for all of the offending routers to be replaced," he said.

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes Ars Technica: Texas Governor Greg Abbott's office knew of looming natural gas shortages on February 10, days before a deep freeze plunged much of the state into blackouts, according to documents obtained by E&E News and reviewed by Ars.

Abbott's office first learned of the likely shortfall in a phone call from then-chair of the Public Utility Commission of Texas DeAnne Walker. In the days leading up to the power outages that began on February 15, Walker and the governor's office spoke 31 more times.

Walker also spoke with regulators, politicians, and utilities dozens of times about the gas curtailments that threatened the state's electrical grid. The PUC chair's diary for the days before the outage shows her schedule dominated by concerns over gas curtailments and the impact they would have on electricity generation. Before and during the disaster, she was on more than 100 phone calls with various agencies and utilities regarding gas shortages.

After the blackouts began, Abbott appeared on Fox News to falsely assert that wind turbines were the driving force behind the outages.