San Francisco, Aug 22 : Cloud major Oracle has been victimized by a class-action privacy suit in the US in which the plaintiff claims that Oracle’s “worldwide surveillance system” has accumulated extensive dossiers on more than 5 billion people according to the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) declared on Monday.The lawsuit that was brought in the Northern District of California, accused the company, along with its advertising and adtech subsidiary of “violating the privacy of the vast majority of the population who live on Earth”.
Oracle is an “important component of the industry of tracking and data” and produces $42.4 billion in annual revenue.
Dr Johnny Ryan, Senior Fellow of the ICCL is one of three class representatives in the latest lawsuit filed against Oracle.
“Oracle has infringed on the privacy of billions of people around the world.It is an Fortune 500 company on a risky mission to monitor the places that every individual in the world travels, and the activities they engage in.We’re taking this step to end Oracle’s surveillance device,” Dr Ryan said in an announcement.
Oracle’s files on people include names, addresses for homes email addresses, purchases made online as well as in the real world physical movement in the real world income, interests and political opinions, as well as an in-depth report of online activities.
“For instance, an Oracle database contained a trace of an German man who utilized a debit card that was prepaid to place a 10-euro bet on an online sports betting site,” said the ICCL.
Oracle also manages global trade in documents about individuals via the Oracle Data Marketplace It is claimed.
Ryan has filed the suit together 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 filed against Oracle claims that there are violations of the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Constitution of the State of California and the California Invasion of Privacy Act and competition law, as well as the common law.
Oracle has yet to comment regarding the suit.
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