42 US lawmakers from the Democratic party have urged Google CEO Sundar Pichai in an open letter on Tuesday to stop collecting and keeping unnecessary or non-aggregated location data that could be used to identify people seeking abortions, CNBC reports.

The letter comes ahead of the anticipated reversal of a US Supreme Court decision in a case, widely known in the US as Roe v. Wade, that protected people’s right to an abortion. News of the imminent reversal became public after political news and analysis site Politico published a draft opinion by the court that was confirmed by the US Chief Justice to be authentic.

The prospect has raised fears that location data or search histories could be used against people seeking abortions or those who offer them in American states where they are illegal to obtain, according to CNBC.

Clearview AI, which has amassed a database of 20 billion images of people’s faces around the world, was fined close to $10 million by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, the country’s information and privacy regulator, said in a statement on Monday.

The British government agency slapped this fine on Clearview for using images of people in the country and elsewhere that were collected without any consent from the web and social media to create a global online database that could be used for facial recognition.

John Edwards, the UK’s information commissioner, said in the ICO’s statement: “The company not only enables identification of those people but effectively monitors their behaviour and offers it as a commercial service. That is unacceptable.”

Arcadia, an energy data technology company, has acquired Urjanet, the largest utility data provider in the world. Urjanet's global data access tech will integrate with Arcadia's data and API platform, called Arc, the US-based company said in a press release yesterday. Urjanet has a strong presence in Chennai, India. The two companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal.

“Without data access, it will be impossible to meet the urgency and size of the climate crisis,” Kiran Bhatraju, CEO of Arcadia, said in the release. “Urjanet has built a fantastic business capturing utility data across 30 percent of the Fortune 500. With Urjanet joining Arcadia, we will be able to serve customers globally with the most comprehensive software solution in climate tech.”

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