Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, PRIVACY NEWS: Franken presses Justice Department, FTC on “stalking apps”, (May 20, 2015)

By Paul Kirby,TRDaily

Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s privacy, technology, and the law subcommittee, has asked Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez to continue to investigate “stalking apps.”

Franken sent a letter to the officials in the wake of the reported hack of mSpy, which touts itself as “the most popular monitoring and safety application in the market with millions of satisfied users around the globe.” The company said that its “discreet software works by tracking all activity in the background of the monitored phone including GPS location, web history, images, videos, email, SMS, Skype, WhatsApp, keystrokes and much more.”

In the letter, Franken indicates that, in October 2011, “I and eight of my colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to your agencies about the dangers of stalking apps. We asked your agencies to examine your existing authorities to investigate and prosecute developers and distributors of stalking apps,” Franken noted. “Last year, the Justice Department successfully pursued Hammad Akbar, the CEO of the company that made the mobile app known as StealthGenie. Mr. Akbar pleaded guilty to advertising and selling spyware that amounted to illegal wiretapping equipment.

“I hope the Justice Department will continue this important work and investigate whether other companies, such as mSpy, are likewise engaged in unlawful conduct,” he wrote. “I hope you will also continue to lend your support as I work to ensure that our federal laws fully address the threat of stalking apps. I believe that there must be explicit laws to outlaw the development and sale of stalking apps. I have a bill—the Location Privacy Protection Act—that would finally put an end to these appalling apps that allow abusers to secretly track their victims, and would give consumers more control over their very sensitive location data. The time has come for Congress to enact these important protections.”

The senator called for “a comprehensive approach” to protecting the sensitive information of consumers across the country. “That means we need to update our laws to make sure that stalking apps cannot continue to operate in any form, and we need to make sure that we are doing everything possible to address the ever-increasing threat of data breaches,” Franken said.

News: Privacy