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Oracle faces lawsuit for ‘worldwide surveillance machine’ which tracked 5 billion people

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Oracle faces a class-action lawsuit for tracking and collecting personal information on billions of people, reaping more than $40 billion a year in the process.

Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) senior fellow Johnny Ryan has launched the suit in California.

It accuses the tech giant of building a "worldwide surveillance machine," which has gathered detailed dossiers on almost 5 billion people.

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The state has the most advanced privacy laws in the US.

The company and its ad tech and advertising subsidiaries are charged with "violating the privacy of the majority of the people on Earth".

The suit claims the data amassed includes names, home addresses, emails, online and offline transactions and even physical movements in the real world.

It also has additional data on income, interests and political opinions, and a detailed record of online activity.

The company is also accused of coordinating a global dossier trade about people through the Oracle Data Marketplace.

Dr. Johnny Ryan is one of three class representatives named in the complaint.

He said: "Oracle has violated the privacy of billions of people across the globe. 

“This is a Fortune 500 company on a dangerous mission to track where every person in the world goes, and what they do. 

“We are taking this action to stop Oracle’s surveillance machine."

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The Texas-based firm makes $42.4 billion in annual revenue and is an "important part of the tracking and data industry."

The case is huge in scope, with the representatives acting "on behalf of worldwide Internet users who have been subject to Oracle's privacy violations," which equals billions of individuals.

This allegation is backed up by a video of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on the ICCL website.

He explains how the company's real-time machine learning system gathers this data and verifies the 5 billion profiles recorded in the "Oracle Data Cloud."

The profiles are labeled as a "Consumers Identity Graph."

Oracle is accused of violating the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the State of California Constitution, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, competition law, and common law.

Source: PCMag

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