Month: April 2021

Apple Faces French Privacy Complaint Over Tracking

By Robert Bateman

Apple Inc. faces an investigation by the French privacy regulator after a coalition of French startups alleged that the company was violating EU data-protection law.

France Digitale, an advocacy group comprising nearly 2,000 French businesses, contend that Apple tracked user behavior on iPhones and iPads by default, violating EU privacy laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which took effect in 2018.

Apple officials retorted that the group’s allegations, filed in a March 8 complaint to the Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), as “patently false.”

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‘Terribly Sad’

Will China Make Cameras Compulsory in Hong Kong Classrooms?

By Patrick McShane

In these occasional reports, Digital Privacy News examines the fallout from China’s “national security law” on Hong Kong.

The first push to place surveillance cameras inside Hong Kong classrooms came last summer.

The issue originated during a government discussion on education, when one of the city’s pro-Beijing legislators, Tommy Cheung, suggested that closed-circuit TV cameras be installed inside classrooms to check whether teachers were making “non-patriotic” or “subversive” remarks during lessons.

Another lawmaker, Martin Liao, also a deputy to China’s National People’s Congress, said: “If some teachers have ulterior political motives and hope to bring (anti-China) politics into schools, their untrue claims made in classrooms could deeply impact students negatively.

“We should take the initiative to identify the horses that spoil the whole herd,” Liao said.

However, the controversial topic seemed to fade away over the autumn and winter months, as Hong Kong battled COVID-19 and the ensuing global economic downturn.

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