Daily Archives: February 7, 2022

The Philippine Tax Whiz explains House Bill No. 7425, which imposes value-added tax on digital transactions

Undoubtedly, e-commerce in the country is growing exponentially. Due to this undeniable growth in the number of digital transactions and as part of the development of the Philippines digital taxation, Congress has approved House Bill (HB) No. 7425, which imposes value-added tax (VAT) on digital transactions of non-resident digital service providers.

Who are the digital service providers (DSPs), according to HB 7425?

A DSP offers digital services or goods to buyers through an online platform or by making transactions for the provision of digital services on behalf of any person. It may be:

1. A third party that acts as a conduit for goods or services offered by a supplier to a buyer and receives commission

2. A platform provider for promotion that uses the internet to deliver marketing messages to attract buyers

3. A host of online auctions conducted through the internet, where the seller offers the product or service to the person who gives the highest bid

4. A supplier of digital services to a buyer in exchange for a regular subscription fee

5. A supplier of electronic and online services that can be delivered through the internet

Will tech giants like Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Netflix have to pay 12% VAT?

Yes, all the digital services provided by the non-resident DSPs including subscription-based services will be subjected to 12% VAT. Provided, further, that the annual gross sales or receipts of such digital service businesses have exceeded or are expected to exceed P3 million.

Are DSPs required to register with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) under the bill? If they are already registered, are they allowed to credit input tax against their output tax?

The bill requires non-resident DSPs to register if their gross sales or receipts for the past year have exceeded P3 million. It also provides a transition period of 180 days from the date of effectivity of the law to enable the BIR to establish implementation systems before VAT is imposed on DSPs.

The bill further precludes non-resident DSPs from claiming creditable input tax.

How would DSPs substantiate their sales or revenues? Are they allowed to issue electronic invoices or receipts?

The bill simplifies invoicing and registration requirements for VAT-registered non-resident DSPs. VAT-registered DSPs may issue an electronic invoice or receipt, subject to the rules and regulations to be prescribed by the finance secretary upon the recommendation of the internal revenue commissioner.

To know the tax compliance risk level of your business, avail of our free Annual Tax Health Check! Register throughthis linkor scan the QR code below. You may also email us atconsult@acg.phor contact (+63)9178010191 to book a consultation.

Rappler.com

Mon Abrea, CPA, MBA, is the co-chair of the Paying Taxes-EODB Task Force. With the TaxWhizPH mobile app as his brainchild, he was recognized as one of the Outstanding Young Persons of the World, an Asia CEO Young Leader, and one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines because of his tax advocacy and expertise. Currently, he is the chairman and CEO of the Asian Consulting Group and trustee of the Center for Strategic Reforms of the Philippines the advocacy partner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Department of Trade and Industry, and Anti-Red Tape Authority on ease of doing business and tax reform. Visitwww.acg.phfor more information or email him atmon@acg.phand download the TaxWhizPH app for free if you have tax questions.

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[Ask the Tax Whiz] Are tech giants subject to 12% VAT? - Rappler

Streaming giants must face tougher regulation if they cannot tackle anti-vax misinformation on its platforms, a leading MP has warned following controversy over Spotifys Joe Rogan podcast.

Spotify has removed 113 episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience after several musicians asked to have their music pulled from the platform in response to Covid-19 conspiracy theories and misinformation being spread on the show.

A number of scientists, doctors and academics also claimed Rogan repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine.

Podcasts are not subject to regulation in the same way as broadcast or on-demand television, which are overseen by watchdog Ofcom in the UK and the Federal Communications Commission in the US.

Lucy Powell, Labours shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media, Digital and Sport, accused the UK Government of failing to tackle tech giants platforming of misinformation, saying current rules were woefully lax.

She told i: The spread of anti-vax sentiment online must be tackled if were to boost the booster programme. Tackling fake news and misinformation more broadly is vital to safeguarding society.

Platforms that host harmful content have a responsibility to act in the public interest. If they and the Government fail, Labour will push for action to make executives accountable for the harmful content they host on their platforms, publish or promote.

The podcast advertising market has exploded in recent years and is currently attracting streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music to invest huge sums in original content.

Revenues in the US are forecast to rise from $758m (560m) in 2020 to $2.4bn (1.8bn) in 2025. In the UK, they are estimated to grow from 34m in 2020 to about 100m in 2025.

Spotify is believed to have paid $100m (74m) for the exclusive rights to The Joe Rogan Experience, episodes of which revolve around long one-on-one conversations with guests and is the most listened-to podcast in the UK.

While social media platforms were forced to swiftly publicise their policies for identifying and taking down misinformation and disinformation related to Covid early in the pandemic, Spotify only shared its own rules this week after musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their music from the platform in protest. Youngs former bandmates Crosby, Stills and Nash are also seeking to have their work removed from it.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last week Spotify must do more after its decision to add disclaimers to podcasts that discuss Covid-19 and subjects such as vaccines.

She said: This disclaimer is a positive step but we want every platform to continue doing more to call out mis- and disinformation while also uplifting accurate information. I mean, look at the facts.

Our hope is that all major tech platforms and all major news sources for that matter be responsible and vigilant to ensure the American people have access to accurate information on something as significant as Covid-19. That certainly includes Spotify.

Spotify has said it is working to add advisory warnings to any podcast discussing Covid-19. The company highlighted rules which give it the power to remove or suspend users or podcasts that promote dangerous falsehoods.

The companys chief executive Daniel Ek told investors the warning would send listeners to a resource hub with facts, information from experts, and links to trusted sources.

This new effort to combat misinformation will roll out to countries around the world in the coming days, he said.

In an instagram post,Mr Rogan also pledged to try harder to offer more balanced views on his podcast.

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Joe Rogan row: Streaming giants like Spotify must tackle anti-vax misinformation or face tougher rules - iNews

DETROIT Auto tech supplier Aptiv last week said it and Audi will invest $285 million in the Austrian vehicle software company TTTech Auto.

It's the latest move by Aptiv to boost its automotive software offerings as its automaker customers rethink vehicles to be more advanced and connected.

Aptiv will invest $228 million in TTTech Auto, with Audi investing $57 million, the companies said in a statement.

TTTech Auto designs software that automakers can use to manage data flowing from sensors and safety systems needed to automate driving.

"TTTech Auto's expertise in providing end-to-end real time behavior for safety-critical systems complements our software platform to accelerate development, integration, testing and validation," Aptiv CEO Kevin Clark said in a statement.

"This investment further advances our software strategy and adds to Aptiv's full-stack capabilities, enabling customers to democratize advanced safety systems faster and at a lower cost."

The investment comes within weeks of Aptiv saying it will buy software firm Wind River for $4.3 billion in cash from private equity firm TPG Capital. That move will give the supplier access to Wind River's Studio cloud-native software platform and to more than 1,000 technical employees.

Just days later, Aptiv followed the Wind River announcement by hiring former Microsoft executive Sophia Velastegui as its chief product officer. She will be based in Boston, where she will work closely with the Wind River team, Aptiv said.

Aptiv is planning to boost its software offerings to automakers and other companies as the industry moves deeper into software development and tech giants such as Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. establish larger presences in the automotive supply chain.

Aptiv also seeks to address concerns from its automaker customers about whether it can stay on the cutting edge.

Bloomberg, citing six people familiar with the thinking of automaker executives, reported in December that some companies were unhappy with Aptiv's automated-driving software.

Aptiv and Audi's investment in TTTech Auto will allow the software firm to expand its product portfolio and expand internationally, the companies said in a statement.

"We want to provide aerospace safety at automotive cost," TTTech Auto CEO Georg Kopetz said in an interview with Reuters.

TTTech Auto was formed in 2018 by aerospace firm TTTech Group, South Korean technology company Samsung, Audi and chipmaker Infineon.

Aptiv ranks No. 19 on the Automotive News list of the top 100 global suppliers, with worldwide sales to automakers of $11.5 billion in 2020.

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Aptiv joins Audi in software investment - Automotive News

Employees prioritize their own wellbeing over a game of pool with the boss. Who'd have thought?

As hiring becomes more difficult, businesses are having to put more thought into the benefits they can offer prospective employees. It's no longer about salary alone: new expectations centred around flexible working and the employee experience means organizations will need to be more thoughtful than ever they hope to find the staff they need.

Plush offices are also less likely to have the same magnetic appeal as they once might have, particularly if employees are perfectly capable of doing the job they are paid to do from home. A round of pool at lunchtime and free beer on a Friday might have brought a spark of fun to an otherwise dull day, but are employees willing to wake up extra early and suffer rush-hour traffic for it? Probably not.

Don't just take my word for it, though: According to a survey of 576 employees by workplace management platform Robin, superficial perks like ping pong tables and free cold brew still have their appeal in the new hybrid workplace, but they're no longer as valuable to workers as there once were. Instead, employees expect businesses to support both their chosen working style and their physical and mental wellbeing whether that's more time off, health and wellness perks, or financial stipends for things like broadband and home-working equipment.

SEE: Tech workers are preparing to quit. Persuading them to stay won't be easy

Snacks and social gatherings are also out. Prior to 2019, said Robin, these were among the top three most common workplace perks, along with work from home days. Fast forward to 2022 and working from home feels less a privilege and more a practical means of freeing oneself from workplace distractions, saving money and staying rid of any nasty illnesses that offices incubate.

Given the very clear and concerted change in employees' expectations of work, how are businesses reacting? Unfortunately though perhaps not surprisingly many are burying their heads in the sand. Not only are some companies spending inordinate amounts of cash on new officesin an attempt to lure employees back to their desks, but many are resisting doing the things that they know will help keep them competitive amid a huge shake-up to the workforce.

Skilled workersare quitting their jobs for better offers. Employers know that. They also know that the number of tech vacancies greatly outstrips the number of available candidates. And they know that employeeswant more flexibility in how they work and for their bosses to care about their wellbeing. So why does it feel as though so many businesses are simply waiting for employees to change their minds and decide that, actually, they do want to work from an office for eights hours a day, five days a week after all?

Robin's survey found that 65% of employees said their employer hadn't created any new perks since the onset of the pandemic. At the same time, 23% of respondents said their company's perks had been wiped out. Truly, the worst of both worlds.

SEE: The IT skills gap is getting worse. Here are 10 ways you can avoid a crisis

You'd be forgiven for thinking that employers simply aren't listening. Take last year's Future Forum Pulse Survey by Slack, for example. It found that 75% of company executives want to work from an office 3-5 days a week, compared to just 34% of employees. Meanwhile, 66% of executives are designing post-pandemic workforce plans with little to no direct input from employees. That hardly sounds like having your finger on the pulse.

Equally infuriating are findings from NTT Data and research group Oxford Economics in November. In a survey of more than 1,000 IT and businesses leaders, only 16% said employee retention and engagement was a priorityto them. Not only that, but just 21% of executives rated flexible-working options as a top contributor to employee satisfaction. The disconnect is baffling when you consider that organizations are acutely aware of the difficulties they will face hiring skilled workers in 2022 and beyond - unless action is taken.

Change is hard. We all get that. Trying to strategize and implement a complete rethinking of how your workforce operates is no easy task. The ripples of the pandemic are still being felt, and more cautious organizations are likely waiting for them to settle before making any big decisions. The problem is: time is not on their side. Employees' attitudes have already changed. The workforce is already on the move. Recruiters are knocking down developers' doors and offering them pretty much everythingin exchange for a few lines of code. The new normal has begun.

Companies that are slow to prioritize employees' needs risk falling behind and probably already have. Rethinking perks and the wider employee experience will require more creative thinking than ping pong and pool tables. But the potential payoff for businesses and their employees is far too valuable to ignore.

The Monday Morning Opener is our opening salvo for the week in tech, written by members of our editorial team. Since we run a global site, this editorial publishes on Monday at 8:00am AEST in Sydney, Australia, which is 6:00pm Eastern Time on Sunday in the US, 10:00PM GMT in London.

Read more here:

Tech workers are on the move. Pool tables and perks won't be enough to keep them - ZDNet

What does Meta/Facebooks favorite new phrase to bandy around in awkward earnings calls as it warns of regulatory headwinds cutting into its future growth actually mean when you unpack it?

Its starting to look like this breezy wording means the law is finally catching up with murky adtech practices which have been operating under the radar for years tracking and profiling web users without their knowledge or consent, and using that surveillance-gleaned intel to manipulate and exploit at scale regardless of individual objections or the privacy people have a legal right to expect.

This week a major decision in Europe found that a flagship ad industry tool which since April 2018 has claimed to be gathering peoples consent for tracking to run behavioral advertising has not in fact been doing so lawfully.

The IAB Europe was given two months to come up with a reform plan for its erroneously named Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) and a hard deadline of six months to clean up the associated parade of bogus pop-ups and consent mismanagement which force, manipulate or simply steal (legitimate interest) web users permission to microtarget them with ads.

The implications of the decision against the IAB and its TCF are that major ad industry reforms must come and fast.

This is not just a little sail realignment as Facebooks investor-soothing phrase suggests. And investors are perhaps cottoning on to the scale of the challenges facing the adtech giants business given the 20% drop in its share price as it reported Q4 earnings this week.

Facebooks ad business is certainly heavily exposed to any regulatory hurricane of enforcement against permission-less Internet tracking since it doesnt offer its own users any opt out from behavioral targeting.

When asked about this the tech giant typically points to its data policies where it instructs users it will track them and use their data for personalized ads but doesnt actually ask for their permission. (It also claims any user data it sucks into its platform from third parties for ad targeting has been lawfully gathered by those partners in one long chain of immaculate adtech compliance!)

Fb also typically points to some very limited controls it provides users over the type of personalized ads they will be exposed to via its ad tools instead of actually giving people genuine control over whats done with their information which would, yknow, actually enable them to protect their privacy.

The problem is Meta cant offer people a choice over what it does with their data because peoples data is the fuel that its ad targeting empire runs on.

Indeed, in Europe where people do have a legal right to privacy the adtech giant claims users of its social media services are actually in a contract with it to receive advertising! An argument that the majority of the EUs data protection agencies look minded to laugh right out of the room, per documents revealed last year by local privacy advocacy group noyb which has been filing complaints about Facebooks practices for years. So watch that space for thunderous regulatory headwinds.

(noybs founder, Max Schrems, is also the driving force behind another Meta earnings call caveat, vis-a-vis the little matter of the viability of transatlantic data transfers and their potential impact on our European operations, as its CFO Dave Wehner put it. That knotty issue may actually require Meta to federate its entire service if, as expected, an order comes to stop transferring EU users data over the pond, with all the operational cost and complexity that would entail So thats quite another stormy breeze on the horizon.)

While regulatory enforcement in Europe against adtech has been a very slow burn there is now movement that could create momentum for a cleansing reboot.

For one thing, given the interconnectedness of the tracking industry, a decision against a strategic component like the TCF (or indeed adtech kingpin Facebook) has implications for scores of data players and publishers who are plugged into this ecosystem. So knock-on effects will rattle down (and up) the entire adtech value chain. Which could create the sort of tipping point of mass disruption and flux that enables a whole system to flip to a new alignment.

European legislators frustrated at the lack of enforcement are also piling further pressure on by backing limits on behavioral advertising being explicitly written into new digital rules that are fast coming down the pipe making the case for contextual ad targeting to replace tracking. So the demands for privacy are getting louder, not going away.

Of course Meta/Facebook is not alone in being especially prone to regulatory headwinds; the other half of the adtech duopoly Alphabet/Google is also heavily exposed here.

As Bloomberg reported this week, digital advertising accounts for 98% of Metas revenue, and a still very chunky 81% of Alphabets meaning the pair are especially sensitive to any regulatory reset to how ad data flows.

Bloomberg suggested the two giants may yet have a few more years grace before regulatory enforcement and increased competition could bite into their non-diversified ad businesses in a way that flips the fortunes of these data-fuelled growth engines.

But one factor that has the potential to accelerate that timeline is increased transparency.

Even the most complex data trail leaves a trace. Adtechs approach to staying under the radar has also, historically, been more one of hiding its people-tracking ops in plain sight all over the mainstream web vs robustly encrypting everything it does. (Likely as a result of how tracking grew on top of and sprawled all over web infrastructure at a time when regulators were even less interested in figuring out what was going on.)

Turns out, pulling on these threads can draw out a very revealing picture as a comprehensive piece of research into digital profiling in the gambling industry, carried out by researcher Cracked Labs and just published last week, shows.

The report was commissioned by UK based gambling reform advocacy group, Clean Up Gambling, and quickly got picked up by the Daily Mail in a report headlined: Suicidal gambling addict groomed by Sky Bet to keep him hooked, investigation reveals.

What Cracked Labs research report details in unprecedented detail is the scale and speed of the tracking which underlies an obviously non-compliant cookie banner presented to users of a number of gambling sites whose data flows it analyzed, offering the usual adtech fig-leaf mockery of (Accept-only) compliance.

The report also explodes the notion that individuals being subject to this kind of pervasive, background surveillance could practically exercise their data rights.

Firstly, the effort asymmetry that would be required to go SARing such a long string of third parties is just ridiculous. But, more basically, the lack of transparency inherent to this kind of tracking means its inherently unclear who has been passed (or otherwise obtained) your information so how can you ask whats being done if you dont even know whos doing it?

If that is a system functioning then its clear evidence of systemic dysfunction. Aka, the systemic lawlessness that the UKs own data protection regulator already warned the adtech industryin a report of its own all the way back in 2019.

The individual impact of adtechs data-driven marketing, meanwhile, is writ large in a quote in the Daily Mails report from one of the high value gamblers the study worked with, who accuses the gambling service in question of turning him into an addict and tells the newspaper: It got to a point where if I didnt stop, it was going to kill me. I had suicidal ideation. I feel violated. I should have been protected.

It was going to kill me is an exceptionally understandable articulation of data-driven harms.

Heres a brief overview of the scale of tracking Cracked Labs analysis unearthed, clipped from the executive summary:

The investigation shows that gambling platforms do not operate in a silo. Rather, gambling platforms operate in conjunction with a wider network of third parties. The investigation shows that even limited browsing of 37 visits to gambling websites led to 2,154 data transmissions to 83 domains controlled by 44 different companies that range from well-known platforms like Facebook and Google to lesser known surveillance technology companies like Signal and Iovation, enabling these actors to embed imperceptible monitoring software during a users browsing experience. The investigation further shows that a number of these third-party companies receive behavioural data from gambling platforms in realtime, including information on how often individuals gambled, how much they were spending, and their value to the company if they returned to gambling after lapsing.

A detailed picture of consentless ad tracking in a context with very clear and well understood links to harm (gambling) should be exceedingly hard for regulators to ignore.

But any enforcement of consent and privacy must and will be universal, as the law around personal data is clear.

Which in turn means that nothing short of a systemic adtech reboot will do. Root and branch reform.

Asked for its response to the Cracked Labs research, a spokeswoman for the UKs Information Commissioners Office (ICO) told TechCrunch: In relation to the report from the Clean Up Gambling campaign, I can confirm we are aware of it and we will consider its findings in light of our ongoing work in this area.

We also asked the ICO why it has failed to take any enforcement action against the adtech industrys systemic abuse of personal data in real-time bidding ad auctions following the complaint it received in September 2018, and the issues raised in its own report in 2019.

The watchdog said that after it resumed its work in this area following a pause during the coronavirus pandemic it has issued assessment notices to six organisations. (It did not name these entities.)

We are currently assessing the outcomes of our audit work. We have also been reviewing the use of cookies and similar technologies of a number of organisations, the spokeswoman also said, adding: Our work in this area is vast and complex. We are committed to publishing our final findings once our enquiries are concluded.

But the ICOs spokeswoman also pointed to a recent opinion issued by the former information commissioner before she left office last year, in which she urged the industry to reform warning adtech of the need to purge current practices by moving away from tracking and profiling, cleaning up bogus consent claims and focusing on engineering privacy and data protection into whatever for of targeting it flips to next.

So the reform message at least is strong and clear, even if the UK regulator hasnt found enough puff to crack out any enforcement yet.

Asked for its response to Cracked Labs findings, Flutter the US-based company that owns Sky Betting & Gaming, the operator of the gambling sites whose data flows the research study tracked and analyzed sought to deflect blame onto the numerous third parties whose tracking technologies are embedded in its websites (and only referenced generically, not by name, in its Accept & close cookie notice).

So that potentially means onto companies like Facebook and Google.

Protecting our customers personal data is of paramount importance to Sky Betting & Gaming, and we expect the same levels of care and vigilance from all of our partners and suppliers, said the Sky Bet spokesperson.

The Cracked Labs report references data from both Sky Betting & Gaming and the third parties that we work with. In most cases, we are not and would never be privy to the data collected by these parties in order to provide their services, they added.Sky Betting & Gaming takes its safer gambling responsibilities very seriously and, while we run marketing campaigns based on our customers expressed preferences and behaviours, we would never seek to intentionally advertise to anyone who may potentially be at risk of gambling harm.

Regulatory inaction in the face of cynical industry buck passing whereby a first party platform may seek to deny responsibility for tracking carried out by its partners, while third parties which also got data may claim its the publishers responsibility to obtain permission can mire complaints and legal challenges to adtechs current methods in frustrating circularity.

But this tedious dance should also be running out of floor. A number of rulings by Europes top court in recent years have sharpened guidance on exactly these sorts of legal liability issues, for example.

Moreover, as we get a better picture of how the adtech ecosystem functions thanks to forensic research work like this to track and map the tracking industrys consentless data flows pressure on regulators to tackle such obvious abuse will only amplify as it becomes increasingly easy to link abusive targeting to tangible harms, whether to vulnerable individuals with sensitive interests like gambling; or more broadly say in relation to tracking thats being used as a lever for illegal discrimination (racial, sexual, age-based etc), or the democratic threats posed by population scale targeted disinformation which weve seen being deployed to try to skew and game elections for years now.

TechCrunch contacted a number of the third parties listed in the report as receiving behavioral data on the activities of one of the users of the Sky Betting sites a large number of times to ask them about the legal basis and purposes for the processing which included seeking comment from Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

Facebook and Google are of course huge players in the online advertising market but Microsoft appears to have ambitions to expand its advertising business. And recently it acquired another of the adtech entities thats also listed as receiving user data in the report namely Xandr (formerly AppNexus) which increases its exposure to these particular gambling-related data flows.

(NB: the full list of companies receiving data on Sky Betting users also includes TechCrunchs parent entity Verizon Media/Yahoo, along with tens of other companies, but we directed questions to the entities the report named as receiving detailed behavioral data and which were found receiving data the highest number of times*, which Cracked Labs suggests points to extensive behavioural profiling; although it also caveats its observation with the important point that: A single request to a host operated by a third-party company that transmits wide-ranging information can also enable problematic data practices; so just because data was sent fewer times doesnt necessarily mean it is less significant.)

Of the third parties we contacted, at the time of writing only Google had provided an on-the-record comment.

Microsoft declined to comment.

Facebook provided some background information pointing to its data and ad policies and referring to the partial user controls it offers around ads. It also confirmed that its ad policies do permit gambling as an targetable interest with what it described as appropriate permissions.

Meta/Facebook announced some changes to its ad platform last November when it expanded what it refers to as its Ad topic controls to cover some sensitive topics and it confirmed that gambling is included as a topic people can choose to see fewer ads with related content on.

But note thats fewer gambling ads, not no gambling ads.

So, in short, Facebook admitted it uses behavioral data inferred from gambling sites for ad targeting and confirmed that it doesnt give users any way to completely stop that kind of targeting nor, indeed, the ability to opt out from tracking-based advertising altogether.

While its legal basis for this tracking is we must infer its claim that users are in a contract with it to receive advertising.

Which will probably be news to a lot of users of Metas family of apps. But its certainly an interesting detail to ponder alongside the flat growth it just reported in Q4.

Googles response did not address any of our questions in any detail, either.

Instead it sent a statement, attributed to a spokesperson, in which it claims it does not use gambling data for profiling and further asserts it has strict policies in place that prevent advertisers from using this data.

Heres what Google told us:

Google does not build advertising profiles from sensitive data like gambling, and has strict policies preventing advertisers from using such data to serve personalised ads. Additionally, tags for our ad services are never allowed to transmit personally identifiable information to Google.

Googles statement does not specify the legal basis it is relying upon for processing sensitive gambling data in the first place. Nor if it really isnt using this data for profiling or ad targeting why its receiving it at all.

We pressed Google on these points but the company did not respond to follow up questions.

Its statement also contains misdirection thats typical of the adtech industry when it writes that its tracking technologies are never allowed to transmit personally identifiable information.

Setting aside the obvious legalistic caveat Google doesnt actually state that it never gets PII; it just says its tags are never allowed to transmit PII; ergo its not ruling out the possibility of a buggy implementation leaking PII to it the tech giants use of the American legal term personally identifiable information is entirely irrelevant in a European legal context.

The law that actually applies here concerns the processing of personal data and personal data under EU/UK law is very broadly defined, covering not just obvious identifiers (like name or email address) but all sorts of data that can be connected to and used to identify a natural person, from IP address and advertising IDs to a persons location or their device data and plenty more besides.

In order to process any such personal data Google needs a valid legal basis. And since Google did not respond to our questions about this its not clear what legal basis it relies upon for processing the Sky Betting users behavioral data.

When data subject 2 asked Sky Betting & Gaming what personal data they process about them, they did not disclose information about personal data processing activities by Google. And yet, this is what we found in the technical tests, says research report author Wolfie Christl, when asked for his response to Googles statement.

We observed Google receiving extensive personal data associated with gambling activities during visits to skycasino.com, including the time and exact amount of cash deposits.

We did not find or claim that Google received personally identifiable data, this is a distraction, he adds. But Google received personal data as defined in the GDPR, because it processed unique pseudonymous identifiers referring to data subject 2. In addition, Google even received the customer ID that Sky Betting & Gaming assigned to data subject 2 during user registration.

Because Sky Betting & Gaming did not disclose information about personal data processing by Google, we cannot know how Google, SBG or others may have used personal data Google received during visits to skycasino.com.

Without technical tests in the browser, we wouldnt even know that Google received personal data, he added.

Christl is critical of Sky Betting for failing to disclose Googles personal data processing or the purposes it processed data for.

But he also queries why Google received this data at all and what it did with it zeroing in on another potential obfuscation in its statement.

Google claims that it does not build advertising profiles from sensitive data like gambling. Did it build advertising profiles from personal data received during visits to skycasino.com or not? If not, did Google use personal data received from Sky Betting & Gaming for other kinds of profiling?

Christls report includes a screengrab showing the cookie banner Sky Betting uses to force consent on its sites by presenting users with a short statement at the bottom of the website, containing barely legible small print and which bundles information on multiple uses of cookies (including for partner advertising), next to a single, brilliantly illuminated button to accept and close meaning users have no choice to deny tracking (short of not gambling/using the website at all).

Under EU/UK law, if consent is being relied upon as a legal basis to process personal data it must be informed, specific and freely given to be lawfully obtained. Or, put another way, you must actually offer users a genuine choice to accept or deny and do so for each use of non-essential (i.e. non-tracking) cookies.

Moreover if the personal data in question is sensitive personal data and behavioral data linked to gambling could certainly be that, given gambling addiction is a recognized health condition, and health data is classed as special category personal data under the law there is a higher standard of explicit consent required, meaning a user would need to affirm every use of this type of highly sensitive information.

Yet, as the report shows, what actually happened in the case of the users whose visits to these gambling sites were analyzed was that their personal data was tracked and transmitted to at least 44 third party companies hundreds of times over the course of just 37 visits to the websites.

They did not report being asked explicitly for their consent as this tracking was going on. Yet their data kept flowing.

Its clear that the adtech industrys response to the tightening of European data protection law since 2018 has been the opposite of reform. It opted for compliance theatre designing and deploying cynical cookie pop-ups that offer no genuine choice or at best create confusion and friction around opt-outs to drum up consent fatigue and push consumers to give in and agree to give over their data so it can keep tracking and profiling.

Legally that should not have been possible of course. If the law was being properly enforced this cynical consent pantomime would have been kicked into touch long ago so the starkest failure here is regulatory inaction against systemic law breaking.

That failure has left vulnerable web users to be preyed upon by dark pattern design, rampant tracking and profiling, automation and big data analytics and data-driven marketers who are plugging into an ecosystem thats been designed and engineered to quantify individuals value to all sorts of advertisers regardless of individuals rights and freedoms not to be subject to this kind of manipulation and laws that were intended to protect their privacy by default.

By making Subject Access Requests (SARs), the two data subjects in the report were able to uncover some examples of attributes being attached to profiles of Sky Betting site users apparently based on inferences made by third parties off of the behavioral data gathered on them which included things like an overall customer value score and product specific value bands, and a winback margin (aka a predictive model for how much a customer would be worth if they returned over next 12 months).

This level of granular, behavioral background surveillance enables advertising and gaming platforms to show gamblers personalized marketing messages and other custom incentives tightly designed to encourage them return to play to maximize engagement and boost profits.

But at what cost to the individuals involved? Both literally, financially, and to their health and wellbeing and to their fundamental rights and freedoms?

As the report notes, gambling can be addictive and can lead to a gambling disorder. But the real-time monitoring of addictive behaviours and gaming predilections which the reports technical analysis lays out in high dimension detail looks very much like a system thats been designed to automate the identification and exploitation of peoples vulnerabilities.

How this can happen in a region with laws intended to prevent this kind of systematic abuse through data misuse is an epic scandal.

While the risks around gambling are clear, the same system of tracking and profiling is of course being systematically applied to websites of all sorts and stripes whether it contains health information, political news, advice for new parents and so on where all sorts of other manipulation and exploitation risks can come into play. So whats going on on a couple of gambling sites is just the tip of the data-mining iceberg.

While regulatory enforcement should have put a stop to abusive targeting in the EU years ago, there is finally movement on this front with the Belgian DPAs decision against the IAB Europes TCF this week.

However where the UK might go on this front is rather more murky as the government has been consulting on wide-ranging post-Brexit changes to domestic DP law, and specifically on the issue of consent to data processing, which could end up lowering the level of protection for peoples data and legitimizing the whole rotten system.

Asked about the ICOs continued inaction on adtech, Rai Naik a legal director of the data rights agency AWO, which supported the Cracked Labs research, and who has also been personally involved in long running litigation against adtech in the UK said: The report and our case work does raise questions about the ICOs inaction to date. The gambling industry shows the propensity for real world harms from data.

The ICO should act proactively to protect individual rights, he added.

A key part of the reason for Europes slow enforcement against adtech is undoubtedly the lack of transparency and obfuscating complexity the industry has used to cloak how it operates so people cannot understand what is being done with their data.

If you cant see it, how can you object to it? And if there are relatively few voices calling out a problem, regulators (and indeed lawmakers) are less likely to direct their very limited resource at stuff that may seem to be humming along like business as usual perhaps especially if these practices scale across a whole sector, from small players to tech giants.

But the obfuscating darkness of adtechs earlier years is long gone and the disinfecting sunlight is starting to flood in.

Last December the European Commission explicitly warned adtech giants over the use of cynical legal tricks to evade GDPR compliance at the same time as putting the blocs regulators on notice to crack on with enforcement or face having their decentralized powers to order reform taken away.

So, by hook or by crook, those purifying privacy headwinds gonna blow.

*Per the report: Among the third-party companies who received the greatest number of network requests while visiting skycasino.com, skybet.com, and skyvegas.com, are Adobe (499), Signal (401), Facebook (358), Google (240), Qubit (129), MediaMath (77), Microsoft (71), Ve Interactive (48), Iovation (28) and Xandr (22).

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On Metas regulatory headwinds and adtechs privacy reckoning - TechCrunch

Nairobi, Kenya, Feb 4th , 2022 The African tech ecosystem will finally have the opportunity to connect again in person at the fourth edition of Africa Tech Summit taking place in Nairobi, Kenya on February 23-24, 2022.

The leading African tech event will once again provide unrivalled insights, networking, and business opportunities across three Summits and brings together tech leaders from the African ecosystem and international players under one roof with Techpoint Africa announced as a media partner.

The 2022 edition will host three tracks TheMoney and DeFi Summit,Africa Start-up Summitand theAfrica Mobile Summitwhich drive interaction and a future line of sight across a range to sectors.

With the exponential growth of FinTech and use of cryptocurrencies across the continent, theMoney and DeFi Summitsupported by Celo and VerifyMe will feature African fintech leaders, platforms and thought-leaders as they deep-dive on the opportunities in FinTech, Crypto and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) on the Continent.

As funding into African tech start-ups rapidly grew to$4.27 billion in 2021theAfrica Startup Summitcontinues to showcase the rapidly moving startup ecosystem, unpacking key trends and insights for 2022 with leading investors, corporates and start-ups showcasing investment opportunities.

TheAfrica Mobile Summitsupported by Gebeya, will deliver a cross-sectional view of new technologies, solutions, and growth opportunities across the vast mobile and digital landscape. With keynotes, panels and breakout sessions from tech giants, MNOs, OEMs, regulators, mobile industry leaders, innovators and corporates join the Africa Mobile Summit to hear inspiring and revolutionary insights on the future of the mobile with a focus on MarTech, Gaming, Content, Connectivity, Cyber-security, HealthTech, Agtech and Apps.

Andrew Fassnidge, Founder of Africa Tech Summit (ATS) shared We are delighted to be back in person for the fourth edition of Africa Tech Summit, live in Nairobi. ATS is synonymous for connecting industry leaders and driving business and investment forward, and we are excited to expand the Summit in Kenya, with support from our partners across Africa.

The event connects over 500 tech leaders over two days from across the African tech ecosystem, with three Summits, workshops, expo, deal room, venture showcases and unparalleled networking opportunities. Super early bird tickets are on sale now for a limitedtime here.

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Africa Tech Summit Nairobi

Africa Tech Summit Nairobi (ATSNBO) is a leading African tech event providing insight and networking with the African tech ecosystem. ATSNBO brings together tech leaders, MNOs, corporates, start-ups, international investors, entrepreneurs, governments, trade bodies, media and leading ventures to drive investment and business in African tech.

Africa Tech Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, holding on 23rd and 24th Feb 2022 will bring tech leaders from the African ecosystem and international players together, under one roof. Tickets are on sale,get yours now.

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4th edition of Africa Tech Summit set to take place live in Nairobi on Feb 23-24th - Techpoint Africa

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GaN powered Chargers Market Next Big Thing | Major Giants Xiaomi, RAVPower, Infineon Technologies The Tech Talk - The Tech Talk

Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., discusses Facebook, Big Tech regulations and censorship on social media.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn't alone in her belief that Facebook needs a serious reboot.

The New York Democrat said in an interview with Yahoo Finance published Tuesday that Meta formerly known as Facebook should be broken up because it has too many assets built into one company.

"Facebook should be broken up," Ocasio-Cortez said. "We should pursue antitrust activity on Facebook."

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks during a news conference discussing the introduction of rent legislation outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., September 21, 2021. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz (Reuters Photos)

"They are acting as an advertiser, they are acting as both platform and vendor, they are a communications platform, which has historically been a well-established domain of antitrust," she said in the interview.

AOC SAYS FACEBOOK 'SHOULD BE BROKEN UP,' 'SUBJECT TO ANTITRUST ACTIVITY'

Rhode Island Democratic Rep. David Cicilline, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee's Antitrust Subcommittee, echoed a similar tune back in July at the end of a congressional hearing with the CEOs of Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google.

"This hearing has made one fact clear to methese companies as they exist today have monopoly power," Cicilline said following the July 29 hearing. "Some need to be broken up; all need to be properly regulated and held accountable."

Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I.

Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also said Congress must take action against Facebook.

"It could not be more clear that unregulated tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple have become too big to care and too powerful to put people over profits," Jayapal, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement to FOX Business Friday. "We cant stand by while big tech dominates small businesses with monopolistic practices.

"We need legislation, like my bipartisan Ending Platform Monopolies Act, to rein in their anti-competitive behaviors and support fairness and innovation," Jayapal said.

In June, after a marathon markup, the House Judiciary Committee passed a package of bills aimed at reining in Big Tech and making it easier to break up tech giants. Among the bills that passed were Jayapal's Ending Platform Monopolies Act to curb anti-competitive behaviors.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, center, along with other lawmakers, talks with reporters outside the West Wing of the Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021, following their meeting with President Joe Bid (AP Newsroom)

But a bipartisan group of lawmakers from California where tech companies have created many jobs - couldn't support the package of six bills.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said in a joint statement that reforms would "radically change Americas leading tech companies" and pose "harm to American consumers and the U.S. economy." She's proposed online privacy legislation.

The antitrust Big Tech legislation has not yet passed the full House.

For his part, Biden has pressed for more scrutiny of Big Tech companies and signed an executive order in July aimed at cracking down on anti-competitive behavior.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a January news conference that "the president has been very clear in his view that we need more competition in the tech industry." She said Big Tech's "power gives them unfair opportunities" over small businesses.

BIDEN TARGETS BIG TECH IN SWEEPING NEW EXECUTIVE ORDER CRACKING DOWN ON ANTI-COMPETITIVE PRACTICES

In the last decade, the largest tech platforms have acquired hundreds of companies, "including alleged killer acquisitions meant to shut down a potential competitive threat, thats not a healthy place for the system," Psaki said.

White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki speaks during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on January 21, 2022. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images) (Getty Images)

The Senate is also taking steps to tackle some Big Tech abuses. The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday advanced bipartisan legislation that would rein in Apple and Google's app stores, with lawmakers saying the tech giants are wielding too much market power.

In October 2020, the House Judiciary Committees Antitrust Subcommittee released findings of its more than 16-month long investigation that found Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook have expanded and exploited their power in anti-competitive ways and should be subjected to new antitrust enforcement actions.

APP-STORE BILL TARGETING APPLE, GOOGLE IS APPROVED BY SENATE PANEL

"Our investigation leaves no doubt that there is a clear and compelling need for Congress and the antitrust enforcement agencies to take action," Cicilline and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in a statement announcing the findings.

Republicans and Democrats alike have raised concerns about the power of Big Tech, but they have diverged at times on the best solutions. Conservatives have honed in on censorship issues, such as kicking former President Trump off of platforms, whereas Democrats have been critical of Facebook for not doing more to stop the spread of disinformation.

Representative Bill Huizenga, a Republican from Michigan and chairman of the House Capital Markets, Securities, and Investment Subcommittee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, D.C. (Zach Gibson/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich, is a member of the House Republican Big Tech task force and said AOC's suggestion of breaking up Facebook is "worth the conversation."

He hasn't backed that approach personally, but he's floated the idea of regulating Big Tech much like a utility company.

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"How would we feel if there was a phone company or an electric company that decided that it just simply wasn't going to serve one section of town because of the thought process of those people," said Huizenga, in making an analogy to conservative censorship.

"To me, breaking them up is a different question than regulating them as a utility," Huizenga said. "We don't force the phone company to get broken up or force the gas company to divest we just then regulate how they operate.

"[It's] maybe two different sides of the same coin or same objective here, but it's certainly worth the conversation," he said.

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AOC has allies on bid to break up Facebook - Fox Business