Meta subsidiaries ordered to pay $20 million to Australian government over 'misleading' ads for security app

Two subsidiaries of Facebook owner Meta have been ordered to pay the Australian government $20 million for misleading customers by not adequately advising them a free security app was mining their data.

Key points:

Facebook Israel and Onavo Inc were ordered to pay $10 million each

Australia's consumer watchdog had claimed the companies misled customers in advertising a security app

The Federal Court heard the app mined data for a "range of commercial purposes"

Consumer watchdog the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched action against Meta companies Facebook Israel and Onavo Inc in the Federal Court, claiming they misled customers in promoting an app advertised as protecting users' data.

The VPN app, Onavo Protect, was spruiked on app stores on Android and Apple devices as a way to "keep your data safe when you browse and share information on the web".

But, the court heard, the ads did not make clear that tech giant Meta used Onavo Protect as a "business intelligence tool", allowing it to "know nearly everything" users were doing on their mobile devices.

The companies accepted they contravened the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 in that the listings for Onavo Protect were likely to mislead or deceive consumers about how their data would be used.

Justice Wendy Abraham ordered on Wednesday that the companies, both owned by Meta, pay $10 million each to the Commonwealth of Australia.

"While Onavo Protect was advertised and promoted as protecting users' personal information and keeping their data safe, in fact, Facebook Israel and Onavo used the app to collect an extensive variety of data about users' mobile device usage," she wrote in her judgement.

"An anonymised and aggregated form of that data was provided to their parent company, Meta Platforms Inc (Meta), and used by Meta for a range of commercial purposes."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-26/meta-subsidiaries-ordered-to-pay-aus-govt-20-million/102649008

Ep. 10 Stay in your lane: our drive through South Central LA with Ice Cube.

(next episode: Ice Cube sits down with us at his studio)

https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1683973828416884736

Tottenham’s billionaire owner Joe Lewis charged with insider trading in US

British billionaire Joe Lewis, owner of the Tottenham Hotspur soccer club and majority owner of Australia’s biggest premium beef producer AACo, has been charged with insider trading in the US.

Federal prosecutors alleged in an indictment in New York that the 86-year-old passed on inside information from companies in which he was a large investor to friends, including his personal pilots, assistants, and romantic partners. Lewis, the founder of investment firm Tavistock Group, faces more than a dozen charges, including securities fraud.

“None of this was necessary, Joe Lewis was a wealthy man,” Damian Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement on Tuesday. “But as we allege he used inside information as a way to compensate his employees or shower gifts on his friends and lovers.”

Prosecutors didn’t announce Lewis’ arrest with the indictment.

“The government has made an egregious error in judgment in charging Mr Lewis, an 86-year-old man of impeccable integrity and prodigious accomplishment,” Lewis’s lawyer David M. Zornow said in a statement. “Mr Lewis has come to the US voluntarily to answer these ill-conceived charges, and we will defend him vigorously in court.”

Lewis has a 51 per cent stake in AACo through his own investment vehicle Tavistock. The $1 billion-plus company is the nation’s largest cattle herd operator and owns about 6.4 million hectares, equivalent to 1 per cent, of Australia’s landmass.

‘The government has made an egregious error in judgment in charging Mr Lewis, an 86-year-old man of impeccable integrity and prodigious accomplishment.’

David M. Zornow, Joe Lewis’ lawyer

Prosecutors claim Lewis was engaged in insider trading for eight years, passing on material non-public information about several companies, including Solid Biosciences, Australian Agricultural Co and Mirati Therapeutics. In one instance, Lewis allegedly loaned his pilots $US500,000 ($741,000) each so they could buy shares before a company’s clinical trial news became public.

A call and email to Tavistock’s media team after hours weren’t immediately returned. Tottenham didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Lewis, who has a net worth of $US6.6 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is the latest figure to be swept up in an insider-trading crackdown led by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Last month, prosecutors announced criminal charges against 10 people in four separate cases, including investors in a special acquisition company poised to take Donald Trump’s fledgling media company public.

But Lewis is the highest-profile investor the office has prosecuted for insider trading this year. The Bahamas-based businessman’s firm has stakes in more than 200 businesses, with investments across real estate, hotels and sports, in 13 countries.

Prosecutors also accuse Lewis of defrauding the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Mirati Therapeutics, by hiding his true ownership of shares through shell corporations and false filings.

For several years, authorities say, Lewis used his access to corporate boardrooms to tap valuable information and leak it to his associates before it became public. In 2019, members of Australian Agricultural’s board of directors told Lewis the company had suffered material losses following widespread flooding and that insurance wouldn’t cover its cattle losses.

https://www.theage.com.au/business/companies/tottenham-s-billionaire-owner-joe-lewis-charged-with-insider-trading-in-us-20230726-p5dre7.html

Brother of San Francisco Mayor Sees Sentence Reduced for Role in Girlfriend’s Death

A judge on Monday resentenced Napoleon Brown, the brother of San Francisco Mayor London Breed, to a shorter term in prison for his role in the 2000 death of his girlfriend following a robbery.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Brendan Conroy reduced Mr. Brown’s sentence from 44 years to 31 years and four months for involuntary manslaughter, armed robbery, and carjacking, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The resentencing comes in the wake of California’s revised legal definition for murder. Judge Conroy ruled in March that Mr. Brown was eligible for resentencing.

“There are mixed emotions,” Mr. Brown’s attorney Marc Zilversmit said in an interview. “We are pleased that the judge recognized that changes in the law required a lower sentence.”

However, he believed the new definition supported an even shorter sentence, adding that the legal team had asked for a greater reduction. According to Mr. Zilversmit, his client has already served nearly 22 years in prison.

In June 2000, Mr. Brown and a companion robbed a San Francisco diner and fled over the Golden Gate Bridge. Lenties White, Mr. Brown’s girlfriend—who was driving the getaway car—somehow fell out of the vehicle. Moments later, she was mortally wounded by a drunk driver who had veered into a safety lane blocked by cones.

With her last words, Ms. White told police that she’d been pushed out of the car by her boyfriend, which eventually led to a murder conviction for Mr. Brown.

A judge later overturned the murder conviction, stating that Mr. Brown’s trial lawyer had represented him incompetently. The convictions for robbery and carjacking stood, however. After the state pushed to prosecute the murder charge again in 2011, Mr. Brown pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter. He was subsequently sentenced to 42 years in prison.

In 2017, Mr. Brown was caught in possession of heroin in prison. As a result, another two years were added to his sentence.

In 2018, Mayor Breed asked former Gov. Jerry Brown per mail to commute her brother’s prison sentence. The outgoing governor turned down her request, but the letter, written on personal stationery with her mayoral title in block letters at the top, raised questions about a public figure’s involvement in a family member’s criminal case.

Thirteen years before she became mayor, Ms. Breed had tried to provide her brother with an alibi, testifying in the trial that he was at home, sleeping on the couch “late in the evening time.” According to police, the robbery occurred around 12:30 a.m.

A spokesperson for the D.A.’s office said that Mr. Brown was expected to serve 85 percent of the new sentence, or about 26 ½ years, although his lawyer said it was too soon to determine his release date.

https://www.ntd.com/brother-of-san-francisco-mayor-sees-sentence-reduced-for-role-in-girlfriends-death_932802.html