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DC, 3 states sue Google, saying it violates users’ privacy



WASHINGTON (AP) — The District of Columbia and three states are suing Google for allegedly deceiving consumers and violating their privacy by making it nearly impossible for them to prevent their location from being tracked.

In a lawsuit filed in District of Columbia court Monday, DC Attorney General Karl Racine alleges that Google “systematically” deceived consumers about how their location is tracked and used. He also says the internet search giant has convinced users that they can control the information the company collects about them.

“In reality, consumers who use Google products cannot prevent Google from collecting, storing and monetizing their location,” the lawsuit says. Google has an “unprecedented ability to monitor the daily lives of consumers.”

The lawsuit claims that Google made it impossible for users to disable tracking of sensitive and valuable location data.

Texas, Indiana, and Washington state attorneys general filed similar cases in state courts on Monday.

“Google’s business model relies on constant surveillance of its users,” Racine’s office said in a news release. The DC lawsuit alleges that Google’s location data collection “has a strong financial incentive to hide the details and make it harder for consumers to opt out.” Location data is shared with Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. It says it’s a key part of its digital advertising business, generating $150 billion in revenue for 2020.

The Mountain View, California-based company is contesting the claims.

“The Attorney General is filing a lawsuit based on false allegations and outdated claims regarding our settings,” Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said in a statement. “We’ve always added privacy features to our products and provided robust controls for location data.”

Castaneda said the company will defend itself and “fix the record”.

Google says it has made several improvements in recent years to make location data easier to manage and understand, and to minimize the amount of data stored.

The lawsuits are the latest in a series of legal salvos against the tech giant whose search engine accounts for nearly 90% of worldwide web searches.

In December 2020, 10 states led by Texas filed a federal lawsuit against Google, accusing Google of engaging in “anti-competitive behavior” in the online advertising industry, including its deal with rival Facebook to manipulate sales.

In October 2020, the US Department of Justice, attended by 11 states, filed a major antitrust lawsuit against Google for allegedly abusing its dominance in online search and advertising. The lawsuit asked the court to order structural changes for Google “as needed” and opened the door to possible fundamental changes, such as the Chrome browser spinoff.

In recent years, European regulators have fined Google billions of dollars over competition issues in an effort to lessen its influence on the continent. Google, one of the most profitable companies in the world, helped Alphabet generate revenue of $18.9 billion in the July-September quarter of last year.

The bipartisan law, developed by a Senate panel last week, will prevent dominant online platforms – Google, Meta (formerly Facebook), Amazon and Apple – from preferring their own goods and services to those of competitors. For example, it could impose restrictions on Google’s search engine, which routinely places its services at the top of search results.

The new lawsuits reflect the lawsuit filed by Arizona in May 2020 and similarly accuses Google of deceiving consumers about the protection of their personal data. A year ago, an Arizona judge dismissed the state’s request for summary judgment, deciding that the state did not have sufficient evidence and saying the case should go before a jury. The judge said the state relies heavily on internal Google communications, none of which conclusively indicates that consumers are being misled.

Documents exposed in the Arizona lawsuit in August 2020 revealed that Google’s own engineers were uncomfortable with the company’s way of surreptitiously tracking the movements of users who didn’t want to be tracked.

Racine’s office said it began the investigation after the Associated Press investigation was published in August 2018, which showed that through Google’s “Location History” setting, it recorded users’ movements, even if they explicitly told them not to. Computer science researchers at Princeton University confirmed the findings at the AP’s request.

According to the new DC filing, a self-titled “Oh S—-” meeting was held within Google to find answers the day the AP story went live. Later, Google updated its Help Page to remove the misleading point that “When Location History is turned off, your places are no longer stored.”





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