With a $5 million grant in hand from the Craig Newmark (Craigslist founder) Philanthropies, Consumer Reports plans to give consumers tools they need to gird against cyber threats – and to advocate for the same from business and government. This is part of a much larger initiative by the charity to build civic infrastructure and policy frameworks.
Switzerland is under pressure from the UN to change long-standing bank secrecy laws and allow its Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) access to bank accounts considered a security risk. This follows a February Credit Suisse data leak, which showed criminals & human rights abusers were using bank services there. The UN says the country’s Article 47, which allows jailing or fining whistleblowers for revealing secret bank data, is in violation of human rights agreements Switzerland has signed.
A program designed to curb youth violence and curtail gang activity is proving controversial for London’s Metropolitan police. Project Alpha, which is funded by the Home Office, has claimed it consulted with a range of youth organizations before launching its initiative to monitor social media favored by youth for warning signs of threats. But several of the organizations listed as being contacted for consultation have said they had never been formally approached and questions have been raised about whether racial profiling of teens has taken place.
CDP mParticle is being acquired by ecommerce platform Rokt for a price of $300 million. It’s the third acquisition of a leading independent CDP in a little over one month, following Uniphore’s purchase of ActionIQ and Contentstack’s purchase of Lytics. All three buyers offer some type of customer-facing technology; apparently they’ve decided that adding real-time profiles from CDP will give them a competitive edge. (See this blog post for more analysis.)