“Big data will continue to contribute to and shape our society, and the Obama Administration will continue working to ensure that government and civil society strive to harness the power of these technologies while protecting privacy and preventing harmful outcomes,” wrote John Podesta, counselor to President Barack Obama, in a blog post Thursday announcing the White House’s release of an interim progress report on big data and privacy legislative efforts. The report’s release comes about a year after Podesta released a report on data collection in the U.S. “One novel finding of the working group report was the potential for big data technologies to circumvent longstanding civil rights protections and enable new forms of discrimination in housing, employment, and access to credit, among other areas,” Podesta said. The new report said the Obama administration has made progress on ensuring “student educational data is used only for educational purposes” and that “in the big-data era,” technologies aren't used “inadvertently or deliberately” to discriminate. The report includes six priority policy recommendations and “a host of smaller initiatives to further the conversation about big data and privacy,” such as creating a national standard for companies to notify customers in the event of a data breach, investing in big data research and technologies, and extending Privacy Act protections to non-U.S. persons. “Big data technologies raise serious concerns about how we protect personal privacy and our other values,” Podesta said. “As more data is collected, analyzed, and stored on both public and private systems, we must be vigilant in ensuring the balance of power is retained between government and citizens and between businesses and consumers.”

Pandora joined the Internet Association, becoming its 29th member, an IA news release said Wednesday. Other members include Amazon, Facebook and Google. IA asked Congress last week to renew Trade Promotion Authority and to consider limitations and exceptions for copyright (see 1501290054).

Legal research website Casetext raised $7 million in a Series A funding round, said a company news release Tuesday. The financing round was led by Union Square Ventures and included Formation 8 and former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer, it said. Casetext lets lawyers comment on court cases and legal statutes for free, it said.

Verizon’s new cookie opt-out plan is an “improvement” for consumer privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog post Tuesday. But the plan doesn’t “go nearly far enough to fix the problem,” it said. “The millions of Verizon customers who are unaware of the tracking header and their new ability to opt-out are still exposed to the risk of zombie cookies from firms less visible than Turn,” a digital marketing firm, EFF said. Such cookies allow previously deleted cookies to be uncovered and shared with other ad firms, EFF said in a January blog post. “Customers who assume their mobile OS' tracking opt-out or their browser's privacy modes will be respected by Verizon are also still vulnerable,” it said. EFF said Verizon made changes to its cookie program after pressure from Senate Commerce Committee leaders and an EFF petition to the FCC to investigate Verizon’s privacy practices. Verizon didn’t comment.

Intel said it agreed to buy German broadband access and networking solutions company Lantiq. By combining Intel’s cable gateway business and Lantiq’s broadband access technology, the companies hope to transform broadband customer premises equipment into a smart gateway that connects “an increasingly diverse roster of devices in the home,” Lantiq CEO Dan Artusi said Monday. The acquisition, for an undisclosed amount, will enable Intel to extend its offerings in the cable residential gateway market to other opportunities such as DSL, fiber, LTE, retail and Internet of Things smart routers, the companies said. By 2018, they predict there will be more than 800 million broadband households worldwide.

Google signed a new privacy agreement with the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office, an ICO news release said Friday. The ICO said Google’s privacy policy from March 2012 didn’t “include sufficient information for service users as to how and why their personal data was being collected." “This undertaking marks a significant step forward following a long investigation and extensive dialogue,” said Steve Eckersley, ICO enforcement head, in the release. “Google’s commitment today to make these necessary changes will improve the information UK consumers receive when using their online services and products. ... Ensuring that personal data is processed fairly and transparently is a key requirement of the Act.”

Google’s revenue in 2014 was $66 billion, up 19 percent year-over-year, the company said in a news release Thursday. Its Q4 revenue was $18.1 billion, a 15 percent increase from the same period in 2013, it said. The company’s net profit in Q4 was $4.76 billion, up $1.38 billion from Q4 2013. “Aggregate” paid clicks on Google sites and its network members were up 14 percent in Q4, and up 11 percent from Q3. The average cost per click on such sites decreased about 3 percent from Q3 and Q4 2013. Google had $64.4 billion in cash and market securities Dec. 31.

Three advertising associations urged their members to contribute to the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative to “speed up the transformation and maturation of digital measurement,” a joint letter from the agencies said Thursday. The American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers and Interactive Advertising Bureau said marketers, ad agencies and publishers need to provide the Media Rating Council with “specially structured data on viewability measurement results for their advertising campaigns.” The "most valuable data submissions would be those that illustrate significant vendor counting differences in systematic manners,” it said. “The next phase of 3MS, which has already begun, will focus on the creation of a common, audience-based GRP, followed by the development of common platforms for cross-media analytics.”

WikiLeaks’ lawyers sent a letter to Google and the U.S. Department of Justice Monday criticizing Google for violating the privacy and journalistic rights of its staff, after it was discovered that the company shared email content, subscriber information and other metadata for three WikiLeaks editors and journalists with the U.S. government in response to federal warrants. Investigations Editor Sarah Harrison, Section Editor Joseph Farrell and Senior Journalist and spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson were notified by Google in December that they were being investigated by the U.S. government on conspiracy and espionage charges, and for allegedly violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and that Google had handed over the information pursuant to the warrants two-and-a-half years ago. WikiLeaks lawyers said they were disappointed that “Google failed to notify the warrants’ targets immediately,” since as a result the three journalists were unable to “protect their interests including their rights to privacy, association and freedom from illegal searches.” Google said it was under a gag order from the U.S. government, but WikiLeaks said the company didn’t fight the gag order, as some other organizations, such as Twitter, have successfully done in the past. WikiLeaks lawyers asked that DOJ provide a list of all the information Google disclosed, copies of court orders requiring the company to share the information and all other communications regarding the related search warrants in the case.

CEA’s monthly index of consumer technology expectations jumped 0.3 points in January from December to reach 88.9, CEA said Tuesday in a report. The January index, which is a measure of consumer intentions on tech spending, is 5.2 points higher than in January 2014 and suggests “momentum from the holiday season is spilling into the new year,” CEA said. The association's separate index of consumer expectations, which measures consumer expectations about the “broader economy,” however, fell 2.2 points from December to 177.9, CEA said. But the January index is 10.6 points higher than that of January 2014, it said.