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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956__
A lawsuit filed against Google by consumers who claimed the search engine's photo sharing and storage service violated their privacy was dismissed on Saturday by a U.S. judge who cited a lack of "concrete injuries."
U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang in Chicago granted a Google motion for summary judgment, saying the court lacked "subject matter jurisdiction because plaintiffs have not suffered concrete injuries."
The suit, filed in March 2016, alleged Alphabet Inc's Google violated Illinois state law by collecting and storing biometric data from people's photographs using facial recognition software without their permission through its Google Photos service.
[...] Google had argued in court documents that the plaintiffs were not entitled to money or injunctive relief because they had suffered no harm. The case is Rivera v Google, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, No. 16-02714.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RS3 on Monday March 04 2019, @03:21AM
As a very strong privacy advocate, I agree with you in principle, but fixing it is complicated.
1) Words fail me in trying to describe my feelings whenever any case is decided against common sense, let alone never even heard.
2) IIRC from civics classes, judges don't make law. In extreme cases they can rule against a law if they determine it's not constitutional, but I think that has to be a Supreme court (federal or state depending on the law in question.) They have to rule in accordance with existing laws (or lack thereof).
3) Congress is very out of touch with We The People and reality. I blame many things, including and largely lobbying.
4) I might be in a rare / small minority but I read many (most) "privacy" agreements. Most of them say: "We value your privacy" (as in, we will capitalize on its value). We use your data to do business with you, and only share it with our trusted business partners (but we won't tell you who they are nor when we share it, and we have no idea nor control over what they do with your info so suck it.) Hence, I don't do much business online, and generally keep a low profile (very few accounts- no facebook, no twitter, no google, etc.)
5) One way I like to look at privacy: if a "peeping tom" watches you through your windows, they have not hurt you, nor could you prove any loss. But somehow most of us understand it as harm, and there are laws against it. I get a sickening feeling thinking about all this spying and storing our data and liken it to voyeurism.
6) Databases are being negligently left exposed to the Internet and/or hacked into. The more of our data is in more databases, the more it greatly increases the risk of our data falling into the wrong hands. I'd bet there's a secret agreement among data thieves to never let on that they've gotten legislator's data. Can you imagine how quickly things would change if a large percentage of congress' personal identities were stolen and exposed?
7) As others have commented, the harm might be yet to come, and I hold that truth to be self evident.