The San Francisco City Attorney's office is suing 16 of the most frequently visited AI-powered "undressing" websites, often used to create nude deepfakes of women and girls without their consent. From a report: The landmark lawsuit, announced at a press conference by City Attorney David Chiu, says that the targeted websites were collectively visited over 200 million times in the first six months of 2024 alone.

The offending websites allow users to upload images of real, fully clothed people, which are then digitally "undressed" with AI tools that simulate nudity. One of these websites, which wasn't identified within the complaint, reportedly advertises: "Imagine wasting time taking her out on dates, when you can just use [the redacted website] to get her nudes."

Security researcher Bill Demirkapi unveiled a massive trove of leaked developer secrets and website vulnerabilities at the Defcon conference in Las Vegas. Using unconventional data sources, Demirkapi identified over 15,000 exposed secrets, including credentials for Nebraska's Supreme Court IT systems and Stanford University's Slack channels.

The researcher also discovered 66,000 websites with dangling subdomain issues, making them vulnerable to attacks. Among the affected sites was a New York Times development domain. Demirkapi's tack involved scanning VirusTotal's database and passive DNS replication data to identify vulnerabilities at scale. He developed an automated method to revoke exposed secrets, working with companies like OpenAI to implement self-service deactivation of compromised API keys.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google now displays convenient AI-based answers at the top of its search pages -- meaning users may never click through to the websites whose data is being used to power those results. But many site owners say they can't afford to block Google's AI from summarizing their content. That's because the Google tool that sifts through web content to come up with its AI answers is the same one that keeps track of web pages for search results, according to publishers. Blocking Alphabet's Google the way sites have blocked some of its AI competitors would also hamper a site's ability to be discovered online.

Google's dominance in search -- which a federal court ruled last week is an illegal monopoly -- is giving it a decisive advantage in the brewing AI wars, which search startups and publishers say is unfair as the industry takes shape. The dilemma is particularly acute for publishers, which face a choice between offering up their content for use by AI models that could make their sites obsolete and disappearing from Google search, a top source of traffic.

ISPs have asked the US Supreme Court to strike down a New York law that requires broadband providers to offer $15-per-month service to people with low incomes. From a report: On Monday, a Supreme Court petition challenging the state law was filed by six trade groups representing the cable, telecom, mobile, and satellite industries. Although ISPs were recently able to block the FCC's net neutrality rules, this week's petition shows the firms are worried about states stepping into the regulatory vacuum with various kinds of laws targeting broadband prices and practices. A broadband-industry victory over federal regulation could bolster the authority of New York and other states to regulate broadband. To prevent that, ISPs said the Supreme Court should strike down both the New York law and the FCC's broadband regulation, although the rulings would have to be made in two different cases.

A situation in which the New York law is upheld while federal rules are struck down "will likely lead to more rate regulation absent the Court's intervention," ISPs told the Supreme Court. "Other States are likely to copy New York once the Attorney General begins enforcing the ABA [Affordable Broadband Act] and New York consumers can buy broadband at below-market rates. As petitioners' members have shown, New York's price cap will require them to sell broadband at a loss and deter them from investing in expanding their broadband networks. As rate regulation proliferates, those harms will as well, stifling critical investment in bringing broadband to unserved and underserved areas." The New York law was upheld in April by the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which reversed a 2021 District Court ruling. New York Attorney General Letitia James agreed last week not to enforce the $15 broadband law while the Supreme Court considers whether to take up the case.

EmagGeek writes: Kim Dotcom, who is facing criminal charges relating to the defunct filesharing website Megaupload, is to be extradited to the US, the New Zealand justice minister says, which could end more than a decade of legal wrangling. German-born Dotcom has New Zealand residency and has been fighting extradition to the US since 2012 after an FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion. The high court in New Zealand first approved his extradition in 2017, with an appeal court reaffirming the finding the year after. In 2020, the country's supreme court again affirmed the finding but opened the door for a fresh round of judicial review.

Now, the justice minister, Paul Goldsmith, has signed an extradition order for Dotcom, a spokesperson said on Thursday. "I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be surrendered to the US to face trial," Goldsmith said. "As is common practice, I have allowed Mr Dotcom a short period of time to consider and take advice on my decision. I will not, therefore, be commenting further at this stage."

Ars Technica's Ashley Belanger reports: Artists defending a class-action lawsuit are claiming a major win this week in their fight to stop the most sophisticated AI image generators from copying billions of artworks to train AI models and replicate their styles without compensating artists. In an order on Monday, US district judge William Orrick denied key parts of motions to dismiss from Stability AI, Midjourney, Runway AI, and DeviantArt. The court will now allow artists to proceed with discovery on claims that AI image generators relying on Stable Diffusion violate both the Copyright Act and the Lanham Act, which protects artists from commercial misuse of their names and unique styles.

"We won BIG," an artist plaintiff, Karla Ortiz, wrote on X (formerly Twitter), celebrating the order. "Not only do we proceed on our copyright claims," but "this order also means companies who utilize" Stable Diffusion models and LAION-like datasets that scrape artists' works for AI training without permission "could now be liable for copyright infringement violations, amongst other violations." Lawyers for the artists, Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick, told Ars that artists suing "consider the Court's order a significant step forward for the case," as "the Court allowed Plaintiffs' core copyright-infringement claims against all four defendants to proceed."

New submitter beamdriver writes: As is being reported in Newsday, Disney has asked a Florida court to dismiss a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the husband of a Carle Place physician who suffered a fatal allergic reaction after eating at a Disney Springs restaurant.

The company cited legal language agreed to years earlier when Jeffrey Piccolo, widower of Kanokporn Tangsuan, 42, of Plainview, signed up for a one-month trial of the Disney+ streaming service that requires users to arbitrate all disputes with the company, records show.

Kanokporn Tangsuan, died in October after dining with her husband, Jeffrey Piccolo, at a restaurant in a section of the Walt Disney World Resort. Despite informing the waitstaff several times of her severe peanut and dairy allergies and receiving assurances that her meal would be allergen-free, she began having severe difficulty breathing shortly after dinner. She self-administered an epi-pen and was transported to a hospital, where she later died.

A medical examiner attributed her death to anaphylaxis due to elevated levels of dairy and nuts in her system, according to the suit.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Florida's ban on cultivated meat is being challenged in federal court in a lawsuit that was filed yesterday. The case is being brought by the cultivated meat firm Upside Foods and the Institute of Justice (IJ), a nonprofit public interest law firm. Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed the legislation making the sale of cultivated meat illegal in Florida on May 1, and the bill came into effect on July 1. Alabama passed a similar bill banning cultivated meat that will come into effect from October 1. The case brought by Upside Foods and the IJ argues that Florida's ban is unconstitutional in three different ways. First, they argue, the ban violates theSupremacy Clause that gives federal law priority over state law in certain instances. The court case argues that the Florida ban violates two different provisions in the Federal Meat Inspection Act and Poultry Products Inspection Act.

The legal complaint (PDF) also alleges that the ban violates theCommerce Clause, which gives the US Congress exclusive power to regulate interstate commerce. The IJ argues that the Commerce Clause restricts states from enacting laws that unduly restrict interstate commerce, and that Florida's ban in its current form has the effect of discriminating against it. "Florida's law has nothing to do with protecting health and safety," said IJ senior attorney Paul Sherman in a press conference today. "It is a transparent example of economic protectionism." Sherman said that Upside Foods and the IJ would also apply for a preliminary injunction that would allow the company to sell cultivated meat in Florida while the legal challenge is still ongoing. The complaint says that Upside had planned to distribute its cultivated chicken at Art Basel in Miami in early December 2024. The company protested the Florida ban by holding a tasting of its chicken on June 27 in Miami, shortly before the ban came into effect. Sherman said that the Alabama ban was also "in our sights" but that the IJ had targeted the Florida law as it came into effect before the Alabama ban. "We're hoping we'll be able to get a quick ruling [in Florida] on a preliminary injunction there," and use that as a precedent to challenge the Alabama ban, he said. "Consumers should decide what kind of meat they want to buy and feed their families -- not politicians," said the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit focused on advancing alternative proteins and which is serving as a consulting consul in this case. "This lawsuit seeks to protect these consumer rights, along with the rights of companies to compete in a fair and open marketplace."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ExtremeTech: The family of a French mariner who died on the imploded Titan submersible last year has sued Titan's maker, OceanGate Expeditions, for more than $50 million. The lawsuit claims OceanGate is responsible for explorers' suffering immediately preceding their deaths, as well as for failing to disclose the extent of the submersible's risks. Among those risks are Titan's cheap materials, including the $30 Logitech gaming controller used aboard the vehicle. [...]

The lawsuit points at Titan's "hip, contemporary, wireless electronics system" and then alleges that none of the controllers or gauges inside Titan would operate without a constant source of power and a wireless signal. One of those controllers was a modified Logitech F710 Gamepad, a $30 to $40 device designed for, well, gaming. The gamepad quickly became the subject of internet mockery following the loss of Titan; some speculators said the submersible must have been doomed to fail if it used such cheap components. The lawsuit even claims the controller's Bluetooth (rather than wired) connectivity set it up for failure. Still, other speculators believe the controller wouldn't have had much impact on the submersible's operational durability. Instead, the issue would have been with the vehicle's carbon fiber pressure cylinder, which Rush allegedly bought off Boeing at a discount after the material passed its "airplane shelf life." Regardless of the exact material, it seems the consensus among members of the public is that for OceanGate, quality was an afterthought.

A rare bid to break up Alphabet's Google is one of the options being considered by the Justice Department after a landmark court ruling found that the company monopolized the online search market, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The move would be Washington's first push to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft two decades ago.

Less severe options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. Regardless, the government will likely seek a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of its case against Google. If the Justice Department pushes ahead with a breakup plan, the most likely units for divestment are the Android operating system and Google's web browser Chrome, said the people. Officials are also looking at trying to force a possible sale of AdWords, the platform the company uses to sell text advertising, one of the people said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): In a major decision on Friday, the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held (PDF) that geofence warrants are "categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment." Closely following arguments EFF has made in a number of cases, the court found that geofence warrants constitute the sort of "general, exploratory rummaging" that the drafters of the Fourth Amendment intended to outlaw. EFF applauds this decision because it is essential that every person feels like they can simply take their cell phone out into the world without the fear that they might end up a criminal suspect because their location data was swept up in open-ended digital dragnet. The new Fifth Circuit case, United States v. Smith, involved an armed robbery and assault of a US Postal Service worker at a post office in Mississippi in 2018. After several months of investigation, police had no identifiable suspects, so they obtained a geofence warrant covering a large geographic area around the post office for the hour surrounding the crime. Google responded to the warrant with information on several devices, ultimately leading police to the two defendants.

On appeal, the Fifth Circuit reached several important holdings. First, it determined that under the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Carpenter v. United States, individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the location data implicated by geofence warrants. As a result, the court broke from the Fourth Circuit's deeply flawed decision last month in United States v. Chatrie, noting that although geofence warrants can be more "limited temporally" than the data sought in Carpenter, geofence location data is still highly invasive because it can expose sensitive information about a person's associations and allow police to "follow" them into private spaces. Second, the court found that even though investigators seek warrants for geofence location data, these searches are inherently unconstitutional. As the court noted, geofence warrants require a provider, almost always Google, to search "the entirety" of its reserve of location data "while law enforcement officials have no idea who they are looking for, or whether the search will even turn up a result." Therefore, "the quintessential problem with these warrants is that they never include a specific user to be identified, only a temporal and geographic location where any given user may turn up post-search. That is constitutionally insufficient."

Unsurprisingly, however, the court found that in 2018, police could have relied on such a warrant in "good faith," because geofence technology was novel, and police reached out to other agencies with more experience for guidance. This means that the evidence they obtained will not be suppressed in this case.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A patent lawsuit filed by one of 3D printing's most established firms against a consumer-focused upstart could have a big impact on the wider 3D-printing scene. In two complaints, (1, 2, PDF) filed in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, against six entities related to Bambu Lab, Stratasys alleges that Bambu Lab infringed upon 10 patents that it owns, some through subsidiaries like Makerbot (acquired in 2013). Among the patents cited are US9421713B2, "Additive manufacturing method for printing three-dimensional parts with purge towers," and US9592660B2, "Heated build platform and system for three-dimensional printing methods."

There are not many, if any, 3D printers sold to consumers that do not have a heated bed, which prevents the first layers of a model from cooling during printing and potentially shrinking and warping the model. "Purge towers" (or "prime towers" in Bambu's parlance) allow for multicolor printing by providing a place for the filament remaining in a nozzle to be extracted and prevent bleed-over between colors. Stratasys' infringement claims also target some fundamental technologies around force detection and fused deposition modeling (FDM) that, like purge towers, are used by other 3D-printer makers that target entry-level and intermediate 3D-printing enthusiasts.

"A lawsuit has accused a Florida data broker of carelessly failing to secure billions of records of people's private information," reports the Register, "which was subsequently stolen from the biz and sold on an online criminal marketplace." California resident Christopher Hofmann filed the potential class-action complaint against Jerico Pictures, doing business as National Public Data, a Coral Springs-based firm that provides APIs so that companies can perform things like background checks on people and look up folks' criminal records. As such National Public Data holds a lot of highly personal information, which ended up being stolen in a cyberattack. According to the suit, filed in a southern Florida federal district court, Hofmann is one of the individuals whose sensitive information was pilfered by crooks and then put up for sale for $3.5 million on an underworld forum in April.

If the thieves are to be believed, the database included 2.9 billion records on all US, Canadian, and British citizens, and included their full names, addresses, and address history going back at least three decades, social security numbers, and the names of their parents, siblings, and relatives, some of whom have been dead for nearly 20 years.
Hofmann's lawsuit says he 'believes that his personally identifiable information was scraped from non-public sources," according to the article — which adds that Hofmann "claims he never provided this sensitive info to National Public Data...

"The Florida firm stands accused of negligently storing the database in a way that was accessible to the thieves, without encrypting its contents nor redacting any of the individuals' sensitive information." Hofmann, on behalf of potentially millions of other plaintiffs, has asked the court to require National Public Data to destroy all personal information belonging to the class-action members and use encryption, among other data protection methods in the future... Additionally, it seeks unspecified monetary relief for the data theft victims, including "actual, statutory, nominal, and consequential damages."

Google's loss in an antitrust trial is just the beginning. According to Yahoo Finance's senior legal reporter, Google now also has to defend itself "against another perilous antitrust challenge that could inflict more damage." Starting in September, the tech giant will square off against federal prosecutors and a group of states claiming that Google abused its dominance of search advertising technology that is used to sell, buy, and broker advertising space online... Juggling simultaneous defenses "will definitely create a strain on its resources, productivity, and most importantly, attention at the most senior levels," said David Olson, associate professor at Boston College Law School.... The two cases targeting Google have the potential to inflict major damage to an empire amassed over the last two decades.

The second case that begins next month began with a lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia by the Justice Department and eight states in December 2020... Prosecutors allege that since at least 2015 Google has thwarted meaningful competition and deterred innovation through its ownership of the entities and software that power the online advertising technology market. Google owns most of the technology to buy, sell, and serve advertisements online... Google's share of the US and global advertising markets — when measured either by revenue or impressions — exceeded 90% for "many years," according to the complaint.

The government prosecutors accused Google of siphoning off $0.35 of each advertising dollar that flowed through its ad tech tools.
Thanks to Slashdot reader ZipNada for sharing the article.

Bruce66423 writes: Sellafield [U.K.'s largest nuclear site] has apologised after pleading guilty to criminal charges relating to a string of cybersecurity failings at Britain's most hazardous nuclear site, which it admitted could have threatened national security.

Among the failings at the vast nuclear waste dump in Cumbria was the discovery that 75% of its computer servers were vulnerable to cyber-attacks, Westminster magistrates court in London heard. Information that could threaten national security was left exposed for four years, the nuclear watchdog revealed, and Sellafield said it had been performing critical IT health checks that were not, in fact, being carried out.

The Guardian's investigation also revealed concerns about external contractors being able to plug memory sticks into Sellafield's system while unsupervised and that its computer servers were deemed so insecure that the problem was nicknamed Voldemort after the Harry Potter villain because it was so sensitive and dangerous.

The good news is that the problem has been spotted. The bad news is that there can be no meaningful punishment for a government owned company. One can only hope that they will do better in the future.

Nikhilesh De writes via CoinDesk: A federal judge ordered Ripple to pay $125 million in civil penalties and imposed an injunction against future securities law violations on Wednesday. District Judge Analisa Torres, of the Southern District of New York, imposed the fine (PDF) after finding that 1,278 institutional sale transactions by Ripple violated securities law, leading to the fine. The $125.035 million fine is well below the $1 billion in disgorgement and prejudgment interest and $900 million in civil penalties the SEC sought. Wednesday's order on remedies follows the judge's July 2023 ruling in the case itself, finding that Ripple violated federal securities laws through its direct sale of XRP to institutional clients, though she also ruled that Ripple's programmatic sales of XRP to retail clients through exchanges did not violate any securities laws. The SEC tried unsuccessfully to appeal that portion of the ruling while the case was ongoing.

Elon Musk has reignited his legal battle against OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, by filing a new lawsuit in a California federal court. The suit, which revives a six-year-old dispute, accuses OpenAI founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of breaching the company's founding principles by prioritizing commercial interests over public benefit.

Musk's complaint alleges that OpenAI's multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft contradicts the original mission to develop AI responsibly for humanity's benefit. The lawsuit describes the alleged betrayal in dramatic terms, claiming "perfidy and deceit... of Shakespearean proportions." OpenAI has not yet commented on the new filing. In response to Musk's previous lawsuit, which was withdrawn seven weeks ago, the company stated its commitment to building safe artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity.

"Five years ago, Brian Frye set an elaborate trap," writes Decrypt.co. "Now the law professor is teaming up with a singer-songwriter to finally spring it" on America's Security and Exchange Commission "in a novel lawsuit — and in the process, prevent the regulator from ever coming after NFT art projects again." Over and again, the SEC has sued cherry-picked NFT projects it says qualify as unregistered securities — but never once has the regulator defined what types of NFT projects are legal and which are not, casting a chill over the nascent industry... [In 2019] Frye, an expert in securities law and a fan of novel technologies, minted an NFT of a letter he sent to the SEC in which he declared his art project to constitute an illegal, unregistered security. If the conceptual art project wasn't a security, Frye challenged the agency, then it needed to say so. The SEC never responded to Frye — not then, and not after several more self-incriminating correspondences from the professor. But in due time, the agency began vigorously pursuing, and suing, NFT projects.
So 10 months ago, Jonathan Mann — who writes a new song every day and shares it online — crafted a song titled "This Song is A Security." As a seller of NFTs himself, Mann wrote the song "to fight back against the SEC, and defend his right — plus the rights of other artists like him — to earn revenue," according to the article: Frye, who'd practically been salivating for such an opportunity for half a decade, was a natural fit.... In the lawsuit filed against the SEC in Louisiana earlier this week, they challenged the SEC's standing to regulate their NFT-backed artworks as securities, and demanded the agency declare that their respective art projects do not constitute illegal, unregistered securities offerings.
More from the International Business Times: The complaint asked the court to clarify whether the SEC should regulate art and whether artists were supposed to "register" their artworks before selling the pieces to the general public. The complaint also asked whether artists should be "forced to make public disclosures about the 'risks' of buying their art," and whether artists should be "required to comply" with federal securities laws...

The Blockchain Association, a collective crypto group that includes some of the biggest digital asset firms, asserted that the SEC has no authority over NFT art. "We support the plaintiffs in their quest for legal clarity," the group said.
In an interview with Slashdot, Mann says he started his "Song a Day" project almost 17 years ago (when he was 26 years old) — and his interest in NFTs is sincere: "Over the years, I've always sought a way to make Song A Day sustainable financially, through video contests, conference gigs, ad revenue, royalties, Patreon and more.

"When I came across NFTs in 2017, they didn't have a name. We just called them 'digital collectibles'. For the last 2+ years, NFTs have become that self-sustaining model for my work.

"I know most people believe NFTs are a joke at best and actively harmful at worst. Even most people in the crypto community have given up on them. Despite all that, I still believe they're worth pursuing.

"Collecting an NFT from an artist you love is the most direct way to support them. There's no multinational corporation, no payment processor, and no venture capitalists between you and the artist you want to support."
Slashdot also tracked down the SEC's Office of Public Affairs, and got an official response from SEC public affairs specialist Ryan White.

Slashdot: The suit argues that the SEC's approach "threatens the livelihoods of artists and creators that are simply experimenting with a novel, fast-growing technology," and seeks guidance in the face of a "credible threat of enforcement". Is the SEC going to respond to this lawsuit? And if you don't have an answer at this time, can you give me a general comment on the issues and concerns being raised?

SEC Public Affairs Specialist Ryan White: We would decline comment.

Decrypt.co points out that the lawsuit "has no guarantee of offering some conclusive end to the NFT regulation question... That may only come with concrete legislation or a judgment by the Supreme Court."

But Mann's song still makes a very public show out of their concerns — with Mann even releasing a follow-up song titled "I'm Suing the SEC." (Its music video mixes together wacky clips of Mila Kunis's Stoner Cats and Fonzie jumping a shark with footage of NFT critics like Elizabeth Warren and SEC chairman Gary Gensler.)

And an earlier song also used auto-tune to transform Gensler's remarks about cryptocurrencies into the chorus of a song titled "Hucksters, Fraudsters, Scam Artists, Ponzi Schemes".

Mann later auctioned an NFT of the song — for over $3,000 in Ethereum.

An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from the blog 9to5Mac: In 2022, Apple agreed to pay a $50 million dollar settlement for certain eligible 2015-2019 MacBook owners who experienced problems with their butterfly keyboards. The claims process opened in late 2022, and the settlement got final approval last May. Starting today, eligible MacBook owners are finally receiving their payouts...

Apple finally moved away from the butterfly keyboard on the 16-inch MacBook Pro in late 2019. By mid 2020, the 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air also moved to the new Magic Keyboard. However, that wouldn't be the end of the story for Apple... In mid 2022, Apple was required to pay a $50 million settlement. The claims process started later that year, although there were some caveats. For one, you could only claim this settlement if you lived in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, or Washington. This excludes 43 US states, so a good number of people with butterfly keyboards weren't even covered. Additionally, the estimated payout amount varied depending on the severity of your keyboard problems:

- Up to $395 for 2 or more top case replacements
- Up to $125 for 1 top case replacement
- Up to $50 for keycap replacements

Obviously, this wasn't the most ideal outcome for customers, but if you were eligible and filed a claim (or multiple), you're in luck!
The original goal "was to make the keyboards thinner and the laptops slimmer," remembers ZDNet. This backfired spectacularly as MacBook owners started complaining that the keys would easily stick or get jammed by dust, crumbs, or other tiny objects. Noted tech blogger John Gruber even called the new keyboards "the worst products in Apple's history."
Gruber's headline? "Appl Still Hasn't Fixd Its MacBook Kyboad Problm"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit Friday against TikTok and parent company ByteDance for failing to protect children's privacy on the social media app as the Biden administration continues its crackdown on the social media site. The government said TikTok violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act that requires services aimed at children to obtain parental consent to collect personal information from users under age 13. The suit (PDF), which was joined by the Federal Trade Commission, said it was aimed at putting an end "to TikTok's unlawful massive-scale invasions of children's privacy." Representative Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the suit "underscores the importance of divesting TikTok from Chinese Communist Party control. We simply cannot continue to allow our adversaries to harvest vast troves of Americans' sensitive data."

The DOJ said TikTok knowingly permitted children to create regular TikTok accounts, and then create and share short-form videos and messages with adults and others on the regular TikTok platform. TikTok collected personal information from these children without obtaining consent from their parents. The U.S. alleges that for years millions of American children under 13 have been using TikTok and the site "has been collecting and retaining children's personal information." The FTC is seeking penalties of up to $51,744 per violation per day from TikTok for improperly collecting data, which could theoretically total billions of dollars if TikTok were found liable. TikTok said Friday it disagrees "with these allegations, many of which relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed. We are proud of our efforts to protect children, and we will continue to update and improve the platform."