The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Tuesday held Bulgaria’s laws on secret surveillance, including retention and accessing of communications data, violate the right to respect for private life and correspondence under Article 8 of the European Human Rights Convention. The application was lodged in October 2012 by two Bulgarian lawyers, Mihail Tiholov Ekimdzhiev and [...]

US Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia Tuesday denied a motion of dismissal by tech conglomerate Meta Platforms (previously Facebook) against the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit suing the company for illegally maintaining its personal social network (PSN) monopoly through anticompetitive conduct. The FTC had filed an amended complaint [...]

The Cybersecurity Administration of China (CAC) Wednesday published a draft of amendments to the Administrative Regulations on the Management of Mobile Internet Application Information Services issued in 2016. The draft contains 27 articles and places emphasis on data security, user privacy, and national security. The rules govern app providers and distribution platforms, requiring them to abide [...]

The German competition regulator Bundeskartellamt Wednesday published a decision determining that Google fulfills the criteria for companies having paramount significance for competition across markets. The Bundeskartellamt can now proceed against Google under the recently introduced Section 19a GWB, which seeks to limit the anticompetitive effects of large digital companies in the digital economy. The Bundeskartellamt [...]

Activision Publishing, the owner and publisher of the popular online multiplayer Call of Duty video game series (COD) Tuesday sued German business EngineOwning for selling malicious cheats and hacks enabling players to manipulate the COD games. It alleges that EngineOwning has made more than hundreds of thousands of US dollars from the sale and distribution [...]

Chinese authorities Tuesday published the Internet Information Service Algorithm Recommendation Management Regulations to regulate algorithmic recommendation activities used by apps and other internet services. The rules are expected to safeguard national security and social public interests, protect the legitimate rights and interests of citizens and promote the healthy development of internet information services. The regulations [...]

The High Court of Telangana Monday issued notice against the state government in a petition by Hyderabad-based social activist SQ Masood regarding the deployment of facial recognition technology (FRT) in the state of Telangana. Masood filed this petition in public interest after he was stopped by the police while returning home from work and asked [...]

California’s Department of Fair Employment Housing (DFEH) Monday announced a settlement to resolve allegations of systemic gender discrimination and harassment by Riot Games, a popular game developer and publisher in the US market. In 2018, former employees Melanie McCracken and Jess Negrón filed a class-action lawsuit against the company before the Los Angeles County Superior [...]

A former content moderator Friday sued TikTok and its parent company ByteDance for failing to provide a safe work environment against psychological trauma resulting from continued exposure to graphic and objectionable content. The plaintiff Candie Frazier filed this class action suit on behalf of all others similarly situated before the US central district court of [...]

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Tuesday announced that zero-emission vehicles startup Nikola Corporation has agreed to pay $125 million to settle charges that it violated US securities laws and defrauded investors by misleading them about its products, technical advancements, and commercial prospects. The settlement emerges from the SEC’s order issued earlier this year, [...]