Oracle faces a class action lawsuit alleging its 'worldwide surveillance machine' has amassed detailed data profiles on approximately five billion people without their consent, violating privacy laws through extensive tracking and data collection practices.
Oracle Corporation is facing a class action lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California in August 2022, alleging the company operates a 'worldwide surveillance machine' that has collected detailed data profiles on approximately five billion people. The lawsuit was filed by Dr Johnny Ryan (Irish Council for Civil Liberties), Michael Katz-Lacabe (Center for Human Rights and Privacy), and Dr Jennifer Golbeck (University of Maryland computer science professor) representing worldwide Internet users. The complaint alleges Oracle and its adtech subsidiaries collect vast amounts of data from Internet users without their consent, using this surveillance intelligence to profile individuals and enrich profiles via its data marketplace. The allegations include violations of the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, California Constitution, California Invasion of Privacy Act, competition law, and common law. The suit claims Oracle uses proxies for sensitive data to circumvent privacy controls and threatens people's privacy on a vast scale. This follows earlier European legal challenges against Oracle and Salesforce regarding GDPR violations, though those faced procedural difficulties in Dutch and UK courts. The U.S. lawsuit represents an attempt to pursue similar privacy claims in a different legal environment where no comprehensive federal privacy law exists.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that memorize and leak sensitive personal data or infer private information about individuals without their consent. Unexpected or unauthorized sharing of data and information can compromise user expectation of privacy, assist identity theft, or cause loss of confidential intellectual property.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed