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UK High Court Blocks Billion-Dollar Privacy Lawsuit Against Google (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The High Court has blocked a bid to sue Google for allegedly unlawfully taking data from 4.4 million UK iPhone users. The legal case was mounted by a group called Google You Owe Us, led by former Which director Richard Lloyd. It sought compensation for people whose handsets were tracked by Google for several months in 2011 and 2012. Mr Lloyd said he was "disappointed" by the ruling and his group would appeal, but Google said it was "pleased" and thought the case was "without merit."
Mr Justice Warby who oversaw the case explained that it was blocked because the claims that people suffered damage were not supported by the facts advanced by the campaign group. Another reason for blocking it, he said, was the impossibility of reliably calculating the number of iPhone users affected by the alleged privacy breach. The complaint made by Google You Owe Us alleged that the cookies were used by Google to track people and get around settings on Apple's Safari browser that blocked such monitoring. Ads were sold on the basis of the personal information gathered by Google's cookies. The Safari workaround was used by Google on lots of different devices but the UK case centered on iPhone users. The group hoped to win $1.3 billion in compensation for affected users.
Mr Justice Warby who oversaw the case explained that it was blocked because the claims that people suffered damage were not supported by the facts advanced by the campaign group. Another reason for blocking it, he said, was the impossibility of reliably calculating the number of iPhone users affected by the alleged privacy breach. The complaint made by Google You Owe Us alleged that the cookies were used by Google to track people and get around settings on Apple's Safari browser that blocked such monitoring. Ads were sold on the basis of the personal information gathered by Google's cookies. The Safari workaround was used by Google on lots of different devices but the UK case centered on iPhone users. The group hoped to win $1.3 billion in compensation for affected users.
The only thing worth a billion dollars are some babies. I hear.
That's £ibn to you.
Dollars and pounds may be changeable, but they are not directly interchangeable.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Because Big Brother Google loves us all.
...SO you can get away with flagrantly breaking the law so long as your victims can't show harm.
Very good to know.
This is called the legal system, where laws are to be observed. I don't like Google taking/using private data, but otoh, if the "Group" couldn't make their stance clear in court and win, that's not the court fault. Hope they get better prepared for the appeal.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Laws are observed yes, but where the law is unclear it should be decided in due judicial process in a court, not thrown out beforehand by a judge just because in his personal opinion it doesn't have merit. I suspect he doesn't even fully understand the case since most legal types - especially judges who tend to be somewhat senior in age - are often technologically fairly clueless.
Wait is this different than someone pirating data or software, music or movies and then being sued by a giant company for anomalous or excessive amounts?
You took data that wasn't yours
being "unaccountable" for their actions. People act as if Google et al, are somehow needed for daily life, and like bread and water, touching them is anathema. No one is too big to fail or too big to take on. It's stuff like this that makes me believe that this and the upcoming Google hearing with the Senate will amount to nothing but the proverbial "slap on the wrist". Bread and circuses...
If you value your privacy, which is admittedly hard to come by, at least use a provider that respects that privacy. I long ago moved by family to Fastmail. Paid, but at least I'm a customer, not a product.
because the claims that people suffered damage were not supported by the facts advanced by the campaign group
Well of course... damage caused by violating certain human rights such as privacy tend to be intangible and not even possible to directly draw causal relationships between, just because you can't easily quantify it in monetary terms doesn't make it invalid or worthless.
This is one of the most basic concepts in civil law. In any situation you must be able to establish that you suffered some damage that the court can rectify. Note CIVIL LAW is not the place to punish corporations for bypassing regulations. That is the responsibility of the government under criminal law.