General Law and Lawsuits

[RTH10260]

FTC sends $5.6 million in refunds to Ring customers as part of video privacy settlement
The Federal Trade Commission is sending more than $5.6 million in refunds to consumers as part of a settlement with Amazon-owned Ring, which was charged with failing to protect private video footage from outside access

WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS AP business writer
April 25, 2024, 5:08 PM

NEW YORK -- The Federal Trade Commission is sending more than $5.6 million in refunds to consumers as part of a settlement with Amazon-owned Ring, which was charged with failing to protect private video footage from outside access.

In a 2023 complaint, the FTC accused the doorbell camera and home security provider of allowing its employees and contractors to access customers' private videos. Ring allegedly used such footage to train algorithms without consent, among other purposes.

Ring was also charged with failing to implement key security protections, which enabled hackers to take control of customers' accounts, cameras and videos. This led to “egregious violations of users’ privacy,” the FTC noted.

The resulting settlement required Ring to delete content that was found to be unlawfully obtained, establish stronger security protections and pay a hefty fine. The FTC says that it's now using much of that money to refund eligible Ring customers.

According to a Tuesday notice, the FTC is sending 117,044 PayPal payments to impacted consumers who had certain types of Ring devices — including indoor cameras — during the timeframes that the regulators allege unauthorized access took place.

Eligible customers will need to redeem these payments within 30 days, according to the FTC — which added that consumers can contact this case's refund administrator, Rust Consulting, or visit the FTC's FAQ page on refunds for more information about the process.

In a statement sent to The Associated Press, Ring said that bad actors took emails and passwords that were “stolen from other companies to unlawfully log into Ring accounts of certain customers" who used the same credentials on multiple sites back in 2019 — adding that the company promptly addressed this by notifying those it discovered to be "exposed in a third-party, non-Ring incident” and taking action to protect impacted accounts.



https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ftc ... -109627879

[Sam the Centipede]

According to a Tuesday notice, the FTC is sending 117,044 PayPal payments to impacted consumers who had certain types of Ring devices — including indoor cameras — during the timeframes that the regulators allege unauthorized access took place.

Eligible customers will need to redeem these payments within 30 days, according to the FTC

I wonder how many customers will receive that and think "The FTC and Amazon want to send money? That's a laugh! Very nicely done, I could almost believe it, those people in Nigeria have done a good job, but I'm no fool, into the bin you go!"

[raison de arizona]

Boy, that will sure make them stand up and take notice. Consumers are in the catbird seat, woohoo!
https://x.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/17 ... 3578973276

Amazon accessed private home videos via Ring security cameras without telling customers.

Its punishment? A $5.6 million fine, equal to 0.001% of Amazon's annual revenue.

That's just a cost of doing business.

[RTH10260]

Canada - rather crazy situation for renters of apartments

Canadian court ruling https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/tcc/doc/20 ... tcc37.html

[RTH10260]

Convicted rapist in Lousisana sentenced to physical castration in addition to 50-year prison sentenc

FOX 26 Houston
27 Apr 2024

Prosecutors say 50 years in prison wasn't enough for a man who raped a 14-year-old girl. The agreement they came up with was to castrate a rapist.

[keith]

I would have thought that that might just fit the definition of "cruel and unusual punishment".

Whether he deserves it or not.

[raison de arizona]

The LA Police Foundation sent a C&D letter to the seller of shirts that said "FUCK THE LAPD."

The Foundation said it holds exclusive IP rights to the word "LAPD."

The seller's response was succinct:

[chancery]

Way to go Mike!

[sugar magnolia]

And to think we knew him when.

[Ben-Prime]

And to think we knew him when.

Indeed, I'm all kinds of proud. I tell people that one of my few regrets was that he wasn't still in the UK while I was serving there so I could bring him in as a guest and treat him to a pint at the Embassy's in-house pub.

[Flatpoint High]

And to think we knew him when.

I love his "litigation disaster tourism" For the Fandoms twitch.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

[RTH10260]

Does the American Diabetes Association work for patients or companies? A lawsuit dared to ask
The ADA just settled an explosive legal case accusing the organization of betraying people with diabetes

Neil Barsky
Thu 2 May 2024 12.01 CEST

Acloak of silence has descended over the recent whistleblower lawsuit claiming that the American Diabetes Association, or ADA, accepted corporate money in return for recommending recipes that threatened the health of people with diabetes.

Elizabeth Hanna, the ex-ADA chief nutritionist who alleged that her former employer fired her over her refusal to endorse Splenda-filled salads, has quietly settled her case. In a statement to the Guardian, Hanna’s attorney, Lauren Davis, said that “the matter has been resolved”. No details were provided either by Davis or by a spokesperson for the ADA, which declined to comment.

For Hanna, accepting a settlement from the ADA was no doubt a simpler and less stressful and risky alternative to a trial, but for me and the country’s other 38 million people with diabetes, it is a letdown. What a great opportunity a trial would have been to expose the inner workings of the ADA, the patient advocacy organization up to its eyeballs in big-business funding.

I recently wrote about Hanna’s lawsuit as part of our series Death by Diabetes: America’s Preventable Epidemic. My view is that diabetes is an urgent national scandal. Over 100 million Americans have diabetes or prediabetes, and 100,000 die from the condition annually. In addition, every year hundreds of thousands of people with diabetes have limbs amputated or suffer blindness or kidney disease. Diabetes costs our country $400bn annually to treat.

And although type-2 diabetes is often reversible through a low-carbohydrate diet, the ADA and the pharmaceutical industry don’t seem very interested in acknowledging that. Instead, they promote a laundry list of corporate deals and pharmaceutical treatments that have failed to stem the disease’s lethal and expensive impact on American life.

Hanna’s complaint, filed last year in a New Jersey court, alleged a litany of wrongdoings by one of the country’s most powerful patient advocacy organizations. Hanna said that ADA higher-ups pressured her to approve recipes that included generous helpings of the artificial sweetener Splenda, despite research published in the ADA’s own scientific journal finding that artificial sweeteners may raise consumers’ risk of type-2 diabetes.




https://www.theguardian.com/global/comm ... on-lawsuit

[bob]

What is so clever about this is that it was intended for public consumption. Viral "marketing" intended to bolster the client's position. Maybe not how the old guard would practice, but effective nonetheless.

[bob]

And the client:

[Sam the Centipede]

C'mon, we know that Mike – our kid – is channeling his memories of discussions of Arkell v. Pressdram on the pages of Ye Olde Fogbowe, the debates that took the lad from the squalid alleys of military life and the festering pits of evolutionary biology to the bright lights and sun-soaked beaches of statute-wrangling.

[RTH10260]

The full letter of the IMG company reproduced in article https://www.techdirt.com/company/cola-corporation/

Funny - they list 4 trademarked slogans, mentioning the acronym LAPD, but non of them is F.... T.. LAPD. Nor do they claim to own other variants