Wow, the tide is really turning against Facebook and Google
Breaking: Angela Merkel wants EU to seize Big Tech's data as Financial Times exposes yet another misuse of highly sensitive patient data
This morning, German chancellor Angela Merkel called on the EU to claim “digital sovereignty” and seize data held by Silicon Valley’s Big Tech contingent.
Also breaking this morning: the Financial Times reveals its investigation into Big Tech’s clandestine harvesting of highly specific and personal patient medical data from health Web sites, specifically fingering Google, Facebook and Amazon.
And all this comes just 48 hours after a damaging story on Monday in the Wall Street Journal about Google’s covert acquisition of highly sensitive patient data. In response, the company loudly proclaimed its illegal harvesting from the second largest hospital system in the country (millions of patients) to be “HIPAA-compliant”.*
Google lied. And now there’s a Federal inquiry.
It’s also been another fraught week for Facebook, with the company being…
Ordered by an Amsterdam court to stop distributing scam ads it knows are fake.
Told by an EU court that it can now be forced to delete content worldwide.
Sued by the State of California for refusal to comply with a (previously unannounced) investigation into its privacy controls. This is particularly damning since the California attorney general had stayed conspicuously quiet as 48 other state attorneys general launched an investigation into Facebook’s business practices earlier this year.
And finally, Mark Zuckerberg may not want to get too fond of Instagram and WhatsApp, given the latest public comments from U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Rohit Chopra (on Twitter) and U.S. Justice Department Antitrust Division chief Makan Delrahim (at the NY Times’ Dealbook conference). Again, two regulators who had to date remained publicly demure about their points of view.
Context: It’s been less than a month since an entire House of Representatives Antitrust hearing focused on harms Big Tech companies represent to privacy.
TODAY IN…
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Finance
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Public Policy
* For those not yet familiar, HIPAA is shorthand for the group of Federal regulations created to protect the privacy and security of patient data. (Yeh, not something you want to be lying about.)
