United Kingdom
Daily Mirror publisher faces 101 phone-hacking lawsuits in UK
- Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People tabloids, is facing over 101 phone-hacking lawsuits from public figures including Kate Winslet, Sean Bean and Gillian Anderson.
- MGN asked for the trail to be held in late 2025 to decide whether a sample of the cases were brought too late. Judge Timothy Fancourt ruled a trial would accelerate other cases being resolved and said it was likely to take place in November 2025.
- An MGN spokesperson said, “Where historical wrongdoing took place, we apologise unreservedly, have taken full responsibility and paid compensation.”
United States
Elon Musk Asked People to Upload Their Health Data. X Users Obliged.
- Elon Musk, the owner of social media platform X, suggested in a post for users of X to submit medial images to the platform’s artificial intelligence chatbot (Grok), asking for diagnoses. Users of the platform have submitted X-rays, MRIs, CT scans and other medical images to the AI.
- Sharing medical information with an AI chatbot has alarmed some medical privacy experts. In the US, when medical data is shared with a doctor it is guarded by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which protects the data from being shared without the patients’ consent. This legislation does not apply to posting medical information on social media platforms.
- In X’s privacy policy, X states they will not sell user data to a third party, but does share it with “related companies”. The privacy policy also says X does not aim to collect sensitive personal data, despite Musk’s invitation to share medical images.
Gmail Leak Reveals New Email Addresses Are Heading Your Way
- Investigative reporters discovered some code suggesting Google is working on an email forwarding system using aliases to help keep personal emails private when subscribing to services.
- Additionally, according to a 9to5 Google report, Google Messages will soon start notifying users of the name and profile they are sending their message as. This will allow users to share their Google Account profile (name and picture only) with those you are sending messages to
Europe
DuckDuckGo calls for EU to widen its Digital Markets Act probe of Google
- DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, has urged the European Union to widen its Digital Markets Act investigation into Google.
- The DuckDuckGo Senior Vice President for Public Affairs set out several fresh charges, starting with accusing Google of a self-serving narrow interpretation of a DMA requirement to avoid sharing “click-and-query” data that could help competitors.
- The “Google European Search Dataset Licensing Program,” which was the company’s response to the legal requirement to share click-and-query data, yields a dataset that DuckDuckGo says “has little to no utility to competing search engines” due to the anonymisation method chosen by Google.
- Additionally, DuckDuckGo has complained that Google has ignored its easy switching obligations under the DMA, as it is not easy to switch between its own search and browser products to rival products as a default search engine choice.
Irish privacy watchdog awaiting clarity from EU on AI regulation
- The Irish data protection authority is waiting to hear from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) for details on how to deal with AI questions under EU’s privacy rules. Questions include whether personal data continues to exist within the training model.
- The EDPB will provide an opinion on this before the end of the year.
International
Bunnings breached privacy of customers by using facial recognition, watchdog finds
- The Australian privacy commissioner as ruled that Bunnings breached the privacy of Australians by using facial recognition in stores to scan every customer on entry (aiming to address theft or store safety).
- Facial recognition captured hundreds of thousands of people, and was deployed in 63 stores between November 2018 and November 2021. The privacy commissioner, Carly Kind, found this sensitive information was collected without consent, and without taking reasonable steps to notify people their information was being collected.
- Kind said that “just because a technology may be helpful or convenient does not mean its use is justifiable”, the use of facial recognition in this instance was a disproportionate interference of the privacy of everyone in stores.
- Bunnings has been ordered to not repeat or continue the acts and practices that led to the interference with the privacy of individuals.
AI and patents: What qualifies as a creator
- As AI inventions advance, new challenges for patent and intellectual property law have emerged, leading to different approaches worldwide. Specifically, how the role of AI is recognised in patents.
- In the US, the US Patent and Trademark Office has a significant human contribution element, ensuring there is still a fundamental level of creativity involved.
- The Japan Patent Office has updated application examination requirements for patents, with an “AI-related invention” definition. Case examples of examination procedures have been clarified to cover technical fields and functions tied to AI and the role of natural people in the evaluation process.
- China patent guidelines have also been updated to clarify the eligibility criteria for AI-related inventions, treating AI-related inventions like other computer-program inventions.
- The EU also considers AI inventions as part of “compute-implemented inventions”, and AI inventions must demonstrate a “technical character” beyond just being a computer program to be patentable.
