Search results for "European Commission "

Europe bolsters pioneering tech rules with help from Haugen

European lawmakers have pioneered efforts to rein in big technology companies and are working to strengthen those rules, putting them ahead of the United States and other parts of world that have been slower to regulate Facebook and other social media giants facing increasing blowback over misinformation and other harmful content that can proliferate on […]

Australia regulator demands face-scanning firm delete photos

An Australian privacy authority has ordered facial recognition company Clearview AI to stop scanning the faces of Australians and destroy the images and related data it has already collected. It’s the latest challenge for the New York startup that has angered privacy advocates around the world over its practice of “scraping” photos from social media […]

Facebook to shut down face-recognition system, delete data

Facebook said it will shut down its face-recognition system and delete the faceprints of more than 1 billion people amid growing concerns about the technology and its misuse by governments, police and others. “This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology’s history,” Jerome Pesenti, vice president of […]

An "eraser button"? Focused ideas could help bridle Big Tech

Break up Big Tech? How about shrinking the tech companies’ shield against liability in cases where the content they push to users causes harm? Or creating a new regulator to strictly oversee the industry? Those ideas have captured official attention in the U.S., Europe, U.K. and Australia as controversy has enveloped Facebook — which on […]

Facebook grilled by UK lawmakers making online safety rules

British lawmakers grilled Facebook on Thursday over how it handles online safety as European countries move to rein in the power of social media companies. Facebook’s head of safety said the tech giant supports regulation and has no business interest in providing people with an “unsafe experience.” Representatives from Google, Twitter and TikTok also answered […]

Energy crunch hits global recovery as winter approaches

Power shortages are turning out streetlights and shutting down factories in China. The poor in Brazil are choosing between paying for food or electricity. German corn and wheat farmers can’t find fertilizer, made using natural gas. And fears are rising that Europe will have to ration electricity if it’s a cold winter. The world is […]

Facebook Whistleblower sets stage for louder EU regulations

After a whistleblower uncovered to the U.S. Congress Facebook’s misleading workflow, the European Parliament will fortify regulations on key players in the tech league, with global forces joining the operation. The EU’s proposal will aim at European companies alongside the Big Tech giants, Facebook, Alphabet Inc. entity Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. One of the […]

One to charge them all: EU demands single plug for phones

The European Union announced plans Thursday to require the smartphone industry to adopt a uniform charging cord for mobile devices, a push that could eliminate the all-too-familiar experience of rummaging through a drawer full of tangled cables to find the right one. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, proposed legislation that would mandate USB-C […]

UN urges moratorium on use of AI that imperils human rights

The U.N. human rights chief is calling for a moratorium on the use of artificial intelligence technology that poses a serious risk to human rights, including face-scanning systems that track people in public spaces. Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, also said Wednesday that countries should expressly ban AI applications which don’t […]

Irish watchdog fines WhatsApp $267M after EU privacy probe

Ireland’s privacy watchdog has fined WhatsApp a record 225 million euros ($267 million) after an investigation found it breached stringent European Union data protection rules on transparency about sharing people’s data with other Facebook companies. The Data Protection Commission said Thursday that it was also ordering WhatsApp to take “remedial actions” to change the way […]