HONG KONG (AP) — A former executive at ByteDance, the Chinese company which owns the popular short-video app TikTok, says in a legal filing that some members of the ruling Communist Party used data held by the company to identify and locate protesters in Hong Kong. Yintao Yu, formerly head of engineering for ByteDance in […]

NEW YORK (AP) — Two U.S. senators are asking TikTok to explain what they called “misleading or inaccurate” responses about how it stores and provides access to U.S. user data after recent news reports raised questions about how the Chinese-owned social media platform handles some sensitive information. In a letter sent Tuesday to TikTok CEO […]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft will pay a fine of $20 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it illegally collected and retained the data of children who signed up to use its Xbox video game console. The agency charged that Microsoft gathered the data without notifying parents or obtaining their consent, and that […]

LONDON (AP) — Critics accuse the British administration of running “government by WhatsApp” because of the popularity of the messaging app with politicians and officials. So it feels inevitable that a tussle over WhatsApp messages is at the heart of Britain’s official inquiry into how the country handled the COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands of messages exchanged […]

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s administration accused the National Rifle Association of wanting to use involuntary commitment laws “to round up mentally ill people and deprive them of other liberties,” according to documents drafted by the Republican’s staffers as part of their initial attempt to pass a gun control proposal earlier this […]

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Good Book is being treated like a bad book in Utah after a parent frustrated by efforts to ban materials from schools convinced a suburban district that some Bible verses were too vulgar or violent for younger children. And the Book of Mormon could be next. The 72,000-student Davis […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amazon agreed Wednesday to pay a $25 million civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations it violated a child privacy law and deceived parents by keeping for years kids’ voice and location data recorded by its popular Alexa voice assistant. Separately, the company agreed to pay $5.8 million in customer refunds […]

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s border and coast guard agency is collecting information from migrants that could end up identifying vulnerable people seeking sanctuary from persecution in their homelands, according to a report by the EU’s data protection watchdog. The European Data Protection Supervisor, or EDPS, also announced that it is launching an investigation […]

A meeting headed by party leader and President Xi Jinping on Tuesday urged “dedicated efforts to safeguard political security and improve the security governance of internet data and artificial intelligence,” the official Xinhua News Agency said. Xi, who is China’s head of state, commander of the military and chair of the party’s National Security Commission, […]

The U.S. Census Bureau said Wednesday that it would delay the release, and narrow the scope, of some of the most detailed data from the 2020 census — until next year. Detailed numbers dealing with household types — such as if the household is a family — broken down by race and ethnicity, and whether […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amazon will pay more than $30 million to settle alleged privacy violations involving its voice assistant Alexa and its doorbell camera Ring. The Federal Trade Commission voted to file charges in two separate cases Wednesday that could also force the company to delete certain data collected by its popular internet-connected devices. In […]

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — Those who harass, intimidate or use force on election workers performing their duties in Nevada could soon face up to four years in prison under a new law signed by the Western swing state’s Republican governor on Tuesday. The law is meant to deter attacks against those in state and […]