Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Saturday 29 September 2018

A U.S. privacy law could be good for Google - but bad for you

By MARCY GORDON and John Thune of South Dako-
MATT O'BRIEN ta, said both Republicans
Associated Press and Democrats now want
WASHINGTON (AP) — Con- to reach consensus on a
gress is taking the first steps national privacy law that
toward setting national "will help consumers, pro-
rules governing how com- mote innovation, reward
panies use consumers data organizations with little to
— although one of its goals hide and force shady prac-
might be to prevent states titioners to clean up their
from enacting stronger pri- act."
vacy protections of their An early move in President
own. Donald Trump's tenure set
The approach being pon- the tone on data privacy.
dered by policymakers He signed a bill into law in
and pushed by the inter- April 2017 that allows in-
net industry leans toward a ternet providers to sell in-
relatively light government formation about their cus-
touch. That's in contrast to tomers' browsing habits.
stricter European rules that The legislation scrapped
took effect in May and a Obama-era online privacy
California law that takes rules aimed at giving con-
effect in 2020. Other states In this Sept. 5, 2018, file photo, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., speaks with reporters after the sumers more control over
are also considering more Republican's policy luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington. how broadband compa-
aggressive protections. Associated Press nies like AT&T, Comcast
However it works out, any ocratic senators warned Google, Twitter and Char- vice president of software and Verizon share that in-
regulatory push will find it that a national law could ter Communications all told technology, said the bar formation.
challenging to reconcile simply be used to over- senators that they support would have to be "high Allie Bohm, policy coun-
the concerns of privacy ride state efforts. Calling a federal proposal that enough in the federal legis- sel at the consumer group
advocates who want peo- that pre-emption the "Holy could negate "inconsistent" lation" to provide meaning- Public Knowledge, said ex-
ple to have more control Grail" for the industry, Dem- state privacy laws. Face- ful consumer protections. amples abound of compa-
over the use of their person- ocratic Sen. Brian Schatz of book, which faced a major The Senate Commerce nies not only using the data
al data — where they've Hawaii said it won't get the congressional grilling over Committee hearing comes to market products but also
been, what they view, who bipartisan support it needs privacy back in April, was amid increasing anxiety to profile consumers and
their friends are —and the if the goal is merely to re- not present at the hearing. over safeguarding consum- restrict who sees their offer-
powerful companies who place California's law with Apple, which doesn't rely ers' data online and recent ings: African Americans not
mine that information for a weaker, "non-progres- on advertising for revenue, scandals that have stoked getting access to ads for
profit. sive" federal statute. was the most vocal in sup- outrage among users and housing, minorities and old-
During a Senate hearing Senior executives from port of a stronger federal politicians. The committee's er people excluded from
Wednesday, several Dem- AT&T, Amazon, Apple, law. Bud Tribble, Apple's chairman, Republican Sen. seeing job postings.q

Facebook unveils Quest, its new virtual-reality headset

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE after paying $2 billion to augmented reality will in-
AP Technology Writer buy Oculus. crease 31 percent from last
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — That implies fewer than year to 4.2 million.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuck- 10 million people are us- That's still a relatively small
erberg is off to a slow start ing Oculus products, and number for a form of tech-
in his mission to bring virtual recent data from the re- nology that has been
reality to the masses, so search firm International drawing major investments
perhaps it's appropriate his Data Corp. shows the still- from Facebook and other
company's next VR head- nascent VR market has industry heavyweights such
set will be called Quest. been losing momentum. as Google, Microsoft, Sony,
The headset from Face- Shipments of VR headsets Samsung and Apple.
book's Oculus division will dropped 34 percent from As he was last year when
be a stand-alone device last year during the April- he announced the Oculus
that won't require a smart- June period, according to Go, Zuckerberg is count-
phone or a connection to IDC. But the Oculus Go and ing on the Quest to widen
a personal computer to a copycat, budget-priced VR's appeal. VR so far has
create artificial worlds. This undated product image provided by Oculus shows the headset from China's Xiao- attracted people interest-
The Quest won't be avail- virtual reality headset Quest, which Facebook CEO Mark mi fared reasonably well, ed in playing video games
able until next spring, al- Zuckerberg unveiled at an Oculus conference on Wednesday, IDC said, with 212,000 de- on them, but Zuckerberg
though Zuckerberg un- Sept. 26, 2018. vices shipped. That was believes it's only a matter
veiled the new headset at Associated Press even though they weren't of time before outside de-
an Oculus conference held alone Oculus Go released people using virtually real- available for the entire sec- velopers introduce other
Wednesday in San Jose, earlier this year. But it's the ity, but he acknowledged ond quarter. applications that will help
California. same price as the Oculus Wednesday that Face- For all of 2018, IDC predicts lure people into buy one
Priced at $399, the Quest Rift that tethers users to a book may not have even shipments of VR headsets of Oculus' three different
will cost twice as much as PC.Zuckerberg eventu- reached 1 percent of that and devices built for a simi- headsets to enter artificial
the less powerful, stand- ally hopes to have 1 billion goal more than four years lar technology known as realms.q