San Francisco, Aug 22: Cloud major Oracle has been hit by a privacy class-action lawsuit in the US, claiming that the company’s “worldwide surveillance machine” has amassed detailed dossiers on nearly 5 billion people, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) claimed on Monday.
The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, accused the company and its ad tech and advertising subsidiaries of “violating the privacy of the majority of the people on Earth”.
Oracle is an “important part of the tracking and data industry” and generates $42.4 billion in annual revenue.
Dr Johnny Ryan, Senior Fellow of the ICCL, is one of three class representatives in a new lawsuit filled against Oracle.
“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,” Dr Ryan said in a statement.
Oracle’s dossiers about people include names, home addresses, emails, purchases online and in the real world, physical movements in the real world, income, interests and political views, and a detailed account of online activity.
“For example, one Oracle database included a record of a German man who used a prepaid debit card to place a 10 euro bet on an esports betting site,” said the ICCL. Oracle also coordinates a global trade in dossiers about people through the Oracle Data Marketplace, it alleged.
Ryan filed the lawsuit along with Michael Katz-Lacabe, director of research at The Center for Human Rights and Privacy; and Dr Jennifer Golbeck, a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland.
The complaint against Oracle alleges violations of the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Constitution of the State of California, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, competition law, and the common law. Oracle was yet to comment on the lawsuit.
