Flickr Creative Commons | Rob Pongsajapan

By Anita Chang | The Associated Press | July 13, 2010

BEIJING — A leading Chinese Internet regulator has vowed to reduce anonymity in China’s portion of cyberspace, calling for new rules to require people to use their real names when buying a mobile phone or going online, according to a human rights group.

In an address to the national legislature in April, Wang Chen, director of the State Council Information Office, called for perfecting the extensive system of censorship the government uses to manage the fast-evolving Internet, according to a text of the speech obtained by New York-based Human Rights in China.

China’s regime has a complicated relationship with the freewheeling Internet, reflected in its recent standoff with Google over censorship of search results. China this week confirmed it had renewed Google’s license to operate, after it agreed to stop automatically rerouting users to its Hong Kong site, which is not subject to China’s online censorship.

The Internet is China’s most open and lively forum for discussion, despite already pervasive censorship, but stricter controls could constrain users. The country’s online population has surged past 400 million, making it the world’s largest.

Chen’s comments were reported only briefly when they were made in April. Human Rights in China said the government quickly removed a full transcript posted on the legislature’s website. But the group said it found an unexpurgated text and the discrepancies show that Beijing is wary that its push for tighter information control might prove unpopular.

Wang said holes that needed to be plugged included ways people could post comments or access information anonymously, according to the transcript published this week in the group’s magazine China Rights Forum.

“We will make the Internet real name system a reality as soon as possible, implement a nationwide cell phone real name system, and gradually apply the real name registration system to online interactive processes,” the journal quoted Wang as saying.

As part of that Internet “real name system,” forum moderators would have to use their real names as would users of online bulletin boards, and anonymous comments on news stories would be removed, Wang is quoted as saying.

The State Council Information Office did not immediately respond to a faxed request asking whether certain sections of Wang’s address to the legislature were altered in the official transcript.

Wang’s comments are in line with recent government statements that indicate a growing uneasiness toward the multitude of opinions found online. A Beijing-backed think tank this month accused the U.S. and other Western governments of using social-networking sites such as Facebook to spur political unrest and called for stepped-up scrutiny.

China has blocked sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, although technologically savvy users can easily jump the so-called “Great Firewall” with proxy servers or other alternatives. Websites about human rights and dissidents are also routinely banned.

Flickr Creative Commons | Novocortex

Reporters Sans Frontieres | July 6, 2010

Reporters Without Borders is concerned about the constant harassment of online journalists and Internet users. In the latest case, Natalia Radzina, the editor of the Charter’97 opposition website (www.charter97.org), was interrogated in Minsk on 1 July about a comment posted on the site. It was the fourth time she has been interrogated since March.

“The authorities are stepping up the tension by increasing the frequency of interrogations, confiscation of material and legislative initiatives that limit online free expression,” Reporters Without Borders said. “They are trying to reinforce their control over the Internet as they already have for other media.”

The press freedom organisation added: “The intimidation attempts, which have been mounting in the run-up to a presidential election due to be held in the coming months, must be brought to an end to permit the criticism and pluralistic debate that are necessary for any free election.”

The comment that prompted Radzina’s latest interrogation voiced support for Soviet-Afghan war veterans who refused the jubilee medals issued by President Alexander Lukashenko. The computers and equipment that were seized from the Charter ’97 office in March in connection with an earlier case have never been returned (http://en.rsf.org/belarus-journalists-emails-probed-charter-29-04-2010,37233.html).

Decree No. 60 “On measures for improving use of the national Internet network,” issued last February, meanwhile took effect on 1 July. It establishes extensive control over Internet content and access, and requires Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to register with the communication ministry and provide technical details about online information resources, networks and systems.

The decree also requires ISPs to identify all the devices (including computers and mobile phones) that are being used to connect to the Internet. The aim of this provision is clearly to allow the government to control online access.

At the same time, anyone going online in an Internet café or using a shared connection (for example, in an apartment building) now has to identify themselves, while a record of all online connections will have to be kept for a year. All these measures will inevitably discourage people from visiting independent and opposition websites.

The decree also creates an “analytic centre” attached to the president’s office that will be tasked with monitoring content before it is put online – clearly establishing censorship at the highest level of government.

Every request by this centre for a website’s closure must now be carried out by the ISP concerned within 24 Hours.

Regulations currently being drafted by the government and expected to be enacted on 1 September envisage a filtering system for controlling access to websites that are considered dangerous, including “extremist” sites and sites linked to pornography, violence and trafficking in arms, drugs or human beings. If banned by the communication ministry, such sites will be rendered inaccessible from state agencies, state companies and Internet cafés. ISPs could also render them inaccessible for other Internet users (at their request).

Vilejka.org, a news website based in the town of Vileyka, has been blocked as a result of a police investigation into comments posted on the site. Police arrested one of the site’s users, Mikalay Susla, on 1 July on suspicion of posting one of the insulting comments about the principal of the town’s high school. Susla told Reporters Without Borders he thought the site had been blocked because of criticism of local and national policies, and that the crackdown was linked with the fact that Decree No. 60 had just come into effect.

Nine members of the National Bolshevik Party (Nazbol) meanwhile staged an unauthorised demonstration on Freedom Square in Minsk on 23 June, waving placards and wearing T-shirts with the words “Internet Freedom.” They were all arrested and convicted of violating procedures for holding demonstrations. Leader Yawhen Kontush was fined 875,000 roubles (236 euros). The others were fined 175,000 roubles (47 euros) each.

Flickr Creative Commons | Steakpinball

Yahoo! welcomes the decision last week by the Court of Appeal in Belgium, which highlights the importance of local law enforcement authorities following established international protocols when conducting their investigations.

In March 2009, a Belgian Criminal Court entered judgment in a criminal case against Yahoo! Inc. for the failure to disclose user data to Belgian law enforcement authorities. Yahoo! does not have a local subsidiary or a website in Belgium.  More importantly, the Belgian authorities did not follow the recognised legal process when it sought to obtain the user data from Yahoo! Inc., located in the U.S..  An official diplomatic channel exists between the U.S. and Belgium to facilitate appropriate information exchange (set up under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty), but this route was not taken by the Belgian authorities despite our encouragement to do so.

On 30 June 2010, the Belgian Court of Appeal overturned the March 2009 judgment. The Court of Appeal found there was insufficient jurisdiction to bring Yahoo! Inc.’s actions under Belgian telecommunications laws, and Yahoo! Inc. was acquitted of all charges and fines against it.

This judgment is a win for both the privacy of our users and also for common sense in international law enforcement:  the global nature of the internet does not subject companies offering services online – and their customers’ data – to the jurisdiction of every country globally.  We hope this judgment can send a signal to law enforcement authorities to use established legal process in their investigations; following such procedures is the best way to ensure that information gathering for law enforcement is conducted effectively and efficiently, whilst safeguarding data privacy and freedom of expression over the Internet.

by Jen Swallow | Legal Director, Product Compliance EMEA; and Albert Yung | Legal Intern | Yahoo! UK

Flickr Creative Commons | Mirry

Reporters Sans Frontieres | June 25, 2010

Reporters Without Borders today launched the world’s first “Anti-Censorship Shelter” in Paris for use by foreign journalists, bloggers and dissidents who are refugees or just passing through as a place where they can learn how to circumvent Internet censorship, protect their electronic communications and maintain their anonymity online.

“At a time when online filtering and surveillance is becoming more and more widespread, we are making an active commitment to an Internet that is unrestricted and accessible to all by providing the victims of censorship with the means of protecting their online information,” Reporters Without Borders said.

“Never before have there been so many netizens in prison in countries such as China, Vietnam and Iran for expressing their views freely online,” the press freedom organisation added. “Anonymity is becoming more and more important for those who handle sensitive data.”

Reporters Without Borders and the communications security firm XeroBank have formed a partnership in order to make high-speed anonymity services, including encrypted email and web access, available free of charge to those who user the Shelter.

By connecting to XeroBank through a Virtual Private Network (VPN), their traffic is routed across its gigabit backbone network and passes from country to country mixed with tens of thousands of other users, creating a virtually untraceable high-speed anonymity network.

This network will be available not only to users of the Shelter in Paris but also to their contacts anywhere in the world and to all those – above all journalists, bloggers and human rights activists – who have been identified by Reporters Without Borders. They will be able to connect with the XeroBank service by means of access codes and secured, ready-to-use USB flash drives that can be provided on request.

XeroBank is a communications security firm that has cornered the market on one of the rarest commodities in the world: online privacy. It specializes in communication solutions that protect its clients from all eavesdroppers.

The best-known free encryption and censorship circumvention software is also available to users of the Shelter, along with manuals and Wiki entries on these issues. A multimedia space is planned for journalists and Internet users who want to film and send videos.

The Shelter will eventually also have a dedicated website for hosting banned content. Egyptian blogger Tamer Mabrouk’s reports on the pollution of Egypt’s lakes, which are banned in his country, and articles that are banned in Italy by its new phone-tap law will all have a place in what is intended to be a refuge for those who still being censored.

The Shelter is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. Anyone wanting to use it should make a reservation by sending an email to shelter@rsf.org.

The Shelter could not have been created without the support of the Paris city hall.

Reporters Without Borders points out that around 60 countries are currently subject to some form of online censorship and that Internet filtering is in effect in around 40 of them. About 120 netizens (bloggers, Internet users, and citizen journalists) are currently in prison worldwide.

Read the latest “Enemies of the Internet” report and its introduction “Web 2.0 v. Control 2.” – link

Flickr Creative Commons | Simon Hua

Radio Free Asia | June 25, 2010

New controls on cybercafes reach Sichuan as Beijing publishes an Internet policy paper.

HONG KONG—Tough new regulations aimed at monitoring Internet usage are being rolled out across China, with Internet cafes in the southwestern province of Sichuan now requiring a swipe of smart ID cards before allowing people online.

“You have to have a second-generation ID card now,” an employee who answered the phone at one Internet cafe in the provincial capital, Chengdu, said. “And it has to belong to you.”

Local media reports said a new clampdown would get under way in Sichuan from June to September this year, following a similar police campaign in the central city of Wuhan, in which people using their relatives’ ID cards were taken into administrative detention.

Government regulations are calling for Internet cafes in the province to hook up their surveillance cameras to a central viewing channel monitored by the provincial government by the end of the year, with punishments and fines for businesses that do not comply.

Li Yonglong, an official of Internet management at the general office of the Sichuan provincial government, confirmed the crackdown is part of government policy.

“That’s correct,” he said, when asked to confirm news reports. However, he declined to give further details. “I can’t give interviews,” Li said. “There are rules here.”

Sichuan-based writer Ran Yunfei said that while the government claims that the new regulations are in place to protect underage netizens from inappropriate and pornographic content, they are also used by the ruling Communist Party to limit content that Chinese netizens can view online.

“This won’t affect me too much because I rarely use Internet cafes, but not everyone’s like me. Our rights should be protected,” Ran said.

He said that hidden behind the government’s management of Internet cafes is an attempt to limit the explosion of public opinion that has occurred on Chinese Web sites in recent years.

And Beijing-based author Yu Jie said the scheme infringes upon the rights of ordinary people to privacy.

The ’safe flow of information’

The move to control and monitor access to the Internet through public cybercafes was initiated last year, as the government made it harder for Internet cafes to start up in business and announced a series of franchises for nationwide chains.

Last September, government-backed Internet Cafe Associations in 30 major Chinese cities and provinces issued a statement titled Self-regulating Declaration on Cleaning Up the Internet Cafe Industry, vowing to abide by China’s laws and regulations concerning the Internet.

In a policy paper on the Internet issued earlier this month, the Chinese government said it attaches “great importance” to the “safe” flow of information online, and seeks to “actively guide” people to manage Web sites “in a wholesome and correct way.”

It lists as forbidden any content that “endangers state security,” “divulges state secrets,” or “subverts state power”—all  charges that have been levied against prominent dissidents and human rights activists in recent years in Chinese courts, often resulting in lengthy prison sentences.

Any content that  jeopardizes “ethnic unity,” interferes with government religious policies, propagates “heretical or superstitious ideas,” or “disrupts social stability” is also banned, according to the regulations governing China’s Internet.

Such charges have been brought against Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other ethnic minorities who voice open disagreement with or protest against Beijing’s policies in their homelands, or who call peacefully for independence or greater autonomy from Chinese rule.

According to Rebecca MacKinnon, visiting fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, the White Paper shows that Beijing is consciously developing its control of the Internet as part of its authoritarian rule, and intends also to wield influence over how it develops internationally.

“The Chinese government is not running scared from the Internet,” MacKinnon wrote in a June 15 blog post titled China’s Internet White Paper: Networked Authoritarianism in Action.

“It is embracing the Internet head-on, intends to be a leader in its global evolution, and intends to assert its influence on how the global Internet is governed and regulated.”

Original reporting in Mandarin by Xin Yu. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated from the Chinese and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

Flickr Creative Commons | Jan Smith

By John Poirier | Reuters | June 24, 2010

WASHINGTON(Reuters) – The United States is urging Syria to open up its markets to U.S. companies’ computers and software, but fears over piracy and Internet access restrictions are holding back American technology companies from investing there.

Senior executives of five big U.S. technology companies including Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Dell Inc (DELL.O) expressed their concerns to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a five-day trip last week, two members of the delegation told Reuters.

The trade mission was led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top technology adviser, Alec Ross, and Jared Cohen, a member of her Policy Planning Staff.

U.S. tech companies expect Syria’s population to double in the next seven years and they want to tap into the youth to promote U.S. businesses and Washington’s human rights agenda.

The talks last week represent a new stage in U.S. diplomatic efforts in which the issue of Internet censorship is increasingly placed on the agenda during direct talks with other governments.

U.S. tech companies are carefully watching moves by the State Department, especially after Google Inc (GOOG.O) in March announced that it was going to move its China servers to Hong Kong following the high profile diplomatic spat with Beijing over censorship.

Senior executives from Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O), VeriSign Inc (VRSN.O) and Symantec Corp (SYMC.O) also traveled with the delegation in a trip that included meetings with academics, students and small- and medium-size businesses.

One delegation member said that during the trip they tried to clear up a misperception in Syria that U.S. companies can’t invest there because of U.S. sanctions against trade and investment.

They told officials in Damascus that exemptions for some technology granted in 2004 under former President George W. Bush allow for companies to sell their products to Syria as long as those tools are not used against the Syrian people, the delegation member said.

“You can sell Dell computers, you can sell Microsoft Office, you can sell Cisco routers, but despite that waiver that is not happening,” the delegation member told Reuters on Wednesday on the condition of anonymity.

The companies told Syrian officials that they are worried about the lack of enforcement to combat piracy and intellectual property theft, and widespread corruption, another member said.

They also sought assurances by the government that the technology will not be used against Syria’s general population, they said, adding that Syrian officials pledged to adopt some laws aimed at improving the environment for tech investments this year.

Sheldon Himelfarb, an expert on technology and diplomacy at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said U.S. officials need to become smarter about relationships between sanctions and the impact on citizen activists in closed societies.

“We need more trips like this,” Himelfarb said.

The mission to Syria was unique because it was a high-level engagement during a strained relationship between the two countries. Their ties, however, have improved since U.S. President Barack Obama took office.

Syria has emerged from a five-year diplomatic isolation, with the United States and European Union seeking closer ties with Damascus and pushing for a resumption of peace talks between Syria and Israel.

The trip also follows an issue of waivers by Washington in March to allow U.S. technology companies to export chat and social media software to Iran, Sudan and Cuba, with the hope the move will help their citizens communicate with the outside world.

The Internet was an important communication channel for Iranian protesters disputing election results last year.

“If the next generation of Syrians are able to get access to these tools of technology, then they’re going to have connections to the outside world,” another delegation member said.

(Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Flickr Creative Commons | James Cridland

Reporters Without Borders | June 18, 2010

Iceland’s parliament, the Alpinghi, has unanimously approved a resolution known as the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) that calls on the government to draft legislation in line with its recommendations for the protection of media, journalists and bloggers.

Reporters Without Borders hails this ambitious and positive initiative, adopted on 15 June, and calls on the government to do its utmost to respect the parliament’s will when it drafts the law.

“This proposal is on the right track,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It regards freedom of expression as a fundamental right and would create optimal conditions for investigative journalism. Even if the precise impact of this proposed law remains to be seen, especially as regard journalists’ legal protection, Iceland has established itself as a pioneer.”

The press freedom organisation added: “We hope this will serve as an example to other governments. It is certainly a promising departure from the general tendency, especially in democratic countries, for press freedom to be eroded and for harassment of journalists and their sources to increase.”

Assembling elements from the best legislation in the world, Iceland wants to become a global safe haven for journalists and new media that are being threatened or harassed and want to take advantage of the best protection available anywhere.

The transparency and independence of news and information are the initiative’s keywords. The declared aims are “to strengthen freedom of expression around world and in Iceland, as well as providing strong protections for sources and whistleblowers” (see the IMMI website). It also aims to secure communications and protect journalists and bloggers from unwarranted defamation suits both in Iceland and abroad.

Iceland wants to be seen as the ideal place for online media and data storage banks to locate their servers in order to shield themselves from the threats of censorship, filtering and closure, and to provide the best protection for the personal data of their users.

The initiative came about partly in response to a press issue that had a lot of impact in Iceland. In August 2009, the RUV television station was prevented at the last moment from broadcasting a story about Kaupthing Bank, which was immersed in a financial crisis.

The story was based on information from Wikileaks, which specialises in getting confidential information from whistleblowers in return for guarantees of anonymity, and which had already published extracts from the bank’s accounts. An injunction obtained by Kaupthing Bank prevented RUV from broadcasting the item, but the station told its viewers what had happened.

Flickr Creative Commons | anjči

By Elena Ignatova | Global Voices | June 17, 2010

On June 16, 2010, the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia adopted changes to the Law of Electronic Communications, which now violates the privacy of the citizens. With these changes, the Ministry of Interior Affairs will have constant and direct access to the electronic communications networks, which is against the fundamental postulates of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia. You can read more on the negative aspects of this law in the “Call for protection of citizens’ privacy in the Republic of Macedonia,” published by Metamorphosis: Foundation for Sustainable ICT Solutions.

BoingBoing published an article titled Macedonia introduces universal, deep telco/Internet wiretapping; hardly any MPs bother to vote, stating this:

A reader writes, “Today the Law of Electronic Communications was amended in the Macedonian parliament with 55 for and 9 votes against (of 120 total, 91 were present, the remainder abstained). In a very Orwellian manner, the law grants the government constant and direct access to electronic communication networks (mainly telcos and internet providers) and obliges the providers of these services to enable the government (Ministry of Interior) to download of traffic data without oversight, through equipment which provides an interface to logs for phone-calls, TCP/UDP/IP traffic and every other means of transferring data to and from machines. The provided link is from an NGO that started to raise awareness for the law, but sadly as the government here doesn’t pay much attention to independent thinking, they ignored the whole initiative.”

GV author Filip Stojanovski, who blogs at Razvigor, in his post “Amendment 1984 of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia” [MKD], shares an excerpt from the Constitution:

As a reminder, Article 17 from the Constitution:

(1) The freedom and confidentiality of correspondence and other forms of communication is guaranteed.
(2) Only a court decision may authorize non-application of the principle of the inviolability of the confidentiality of correspondence and other forms of communication, in cases where it is indispensable to a criminal investigation or required in the interests of the defense of the Republic.

He continues, giving his opinion on the Law:

The negative aspects of this step by the government are tremendous: for the people who now can be “legally” eavesdropped on without court order, and without any possibility to prevent potential abuse, but also for Macedonia’s international reputation.

At the end of his post, he calls for action:

It is necessary for the public to see the consequences from this act and to declare its opinion. If you care about your privacy, and the privacy of your loved ones, get them to be active on the subject. Share information, and join the future activities for protection of personal data.

[…]

Is there a way to know which Parliament member voted for and against these changes? It would be great if you write them an email or on their Facebook profiles what your opinions on this act are. And, of course, remind those of them who can read to read the Constitution, at least once. […]

“Withdrawal of the undemocratic changes of the Law on Electronic Communications” [MKD] is a “cause” on Facebook for those who want to support the initiative.

For further discussion on the topic you can follow hashtag #privatnost on Twitter [MKD].

For video of the event, see here.

Flickr Creative Commons | Sébastien Bertrand

By David Kravets | Wired Magazine | June 11, 2010

A hard drive with perhaps several hundred gigabytes of internet surfers’ private data resides under lock and key in a Portland, Oregon, federal courthouse.

Regulators and private lawyers across Europe and the United States are demanding, and in some cases obtaining, access to data that Google sniffed for the past three years from unsecured Wi-Fi hot spots across the globe.

The requests are coming in some of the eight proposed class actions targeting Google that have cropped up across the United States, as well as from various governments investigating whether Google violated their laws.

The demands for data raise a paradox of sorts: How many eyeballs, in the name of privacy, will eventually see the data that likely includes snippets of e-mail, web surfing, documents and other private data?

“It will be relevant evidence in our lawsuit. We will ask for production of that data. Lawyers representing plaintiffs in the case will review the data,” said Patrick Keyes, a top lawyer in one of the proposed class actions lodged in the District of Columbia. “This would be in the context of presenting the legal interests of those who have had their data intercepted, and would typically be produced under a protective order.”

Google has already said it would forward to German, French and Spanish authorities the portion of the data intercepted in those countries.

No government agency in the United States has yet demanded a copy of the intercepted data, but several are investigating Google.

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said he wanted to “scrutinize this situation” while Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has demanded “detailed records on any information taken from networks” from his state.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz told Congress, “We’re going to take a very, very close look at this.”

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said Friday that Google’s actions “warrants a hearing, at minimum.”

Ironically, it appears that protecting privacy and administering justice might just involve violating privacy.

“That’s true. All of this raises a lot of First Amendment questions,” said Jeffrey Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “It is problematic. Some of these lawyers see a quick buck without thinking of the consequences.”

U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman in Oregon has locked away the data (.pdf) as that class action proceeds. ISec Partners, a San Francisco security consulting firm, has made encrypted copies of the drives at Google’s request and destroyed the originals.

“The encryption keys for these drives are possessed by only myself and one other person. and the hard drives are securely stored in a safe controlled by Google’s physical security team,” (.pdf) Alexander Stamos, one of iSec’s founding partners, told the Oregon judge in a court filing before the data was forwarded to the Portland courthouse.

But Aaron Zigler, a lawyer in the Illinois class action, said, “I don’t want to see the actual data that has been intercepted.”

Class members of the lawsuits can be determined without actually reading the contents of the payload data packets, he said. “There is enough data to figure out who everyone is: date, time and location, and unique MAC addresses of the Wi-Fi network they intercepted,” he said.

Pablo Chavez, director of public policy for Google, said in a letter to Congress released Friday that Google is “aware of only two instances when any Google engineer even viewed the payload data.”

“The first instance involved the individual engineer who designed the software,”  (.pdf) he wrote. “The second instance was when we became aware that payload data may have been collected from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, and a single security engineer tested the data to verify that this was the case.”

Google has repeatedly said it is working with the relevant government investigators, and is demanding that all the litigation be consolidated in California, where it’s headquartered.

The Mountain View internet giant maintains the collection of data while taking photos for its Street View program was inadvertent –- the result of a programming error with code written for an early experimental project that wound up in the Street View code (.pdf), an explanation some of the lawyers suing Google have disputed.

Google said it didn’t realize it was sniffing packets of data on unsecured Wi-Fi networks in dozens of countries for the last three years, until German privacy authorities questioned what data Google’s Street View cameras were collecting. Street View is part of Google Maps and Google Earth, and provides panoramic pictures of streets and their surroundings across the globe.

And Google said no U.S. wiretapping laws were breached because the Wi-Fi signals were “readily accessible to the general public” (.pdf).

At least insofar as the proposed class actions were concerned, Jennifer Granick, a civil liberties attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, suggested having a judge or a so-called “special master” sift through the data to determine whose data Google obtained. That should only happen if Google is found to have done something unlawful, she said.

“This raises my eyebrows,” she said. “I don’t think we need to know what any of this data is yet, because there’s nothing to suggest Google did this intentionally.”