A leading lawmaker on privacy issues said he would ask for a probe into whether recently announced changes in how Google handles consumer data violated an agreement it made with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Representative Edward Markey was also one of eight U.S. lawmakers who sent a letter to Google expressing concern that a planned consolidation of user information may make it more difficult for consumers to protect their privacy.
Twitter said that it will withhold tweets from a country when there are local restrictions rather than having to block them globally. “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression,” the company wrote on its blog.
Federal regulators announced settlements with six online marketers who were accused of using fake news sites on the Internet to entice customers to buy acai berry weight-loss products. They promised rapid and substantial weight loss, sometimes claiming people could lose 25 pounds in four weeks without changing their diets or exercising.
The British judge presiding over a wide-ranging inquiry into media ethics and practices has suggested that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter should be seen differently than traditional publishers. Lord Justice Brian Leveson said that there was a distinction between what he described as “pub chatter” between friends on such sites and organizations which publish material for public consumption.
The FBI is looking to develop a web application that can monitor social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, in order to gain better real-time intelligence about current or potential future security threats or situations. This plan was inadvertently revealed by the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) in a market research request for a “Social Media Application.”
