The complaint, filed jointly with the US digital privacy rights organisation Epic, claims that real-time budding technology compromises the security of Americans by handing sensitive data to adversarial countries

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has jointly launched new legal action against Google, claiming that the tech giant’s use of ’real time bidding’ (RTB) ad technology compromises national security in the US by exposing sensitive details to China’s security forces.

The ICCL complaint, launched jointly with the US digital privacy organisation Epic and filed with the US Federal Trade Commission, alleges that Google “has known for at least a decade” that RTB advertising technology “broadcasts sensitive data without any security”. The filing claims to cite internal Google discussions to support the complaint, taken under the US’s recently-enacted Protecting Americans' Data from Foreign Adversaries Act.

“Google sends enormous quantities of sensitive data about Americans to China and other foreign adversaries,” the ICCL said in a statement.

“Google's real-time bidding system dominates online advertising and operates on 33.7 million websites, 92pc of Android apps, and 77pc of iOS apps. Much of Google's $237.9 billion advertising revenue is RTB.”

It’s not the first time that the ICCL has launched an offensive against Google and other tech giants over RTB ad technology.

Over the last four years, it has published multiple reports and initiated several complaints alleging that the RTB system exposes sensitive security details in the EU, US and Australia to Russian and Chinese interests.

It is now seeking to use the Protecting Americans' Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 202, which prohibits commercial firms from profiting from the transfer of data of US individuals to ‘foreign adversary’ countries or to entities controlled by North Korea, China, Russia or Iran.

"We can now be certain Google knew about the security flaw in its advertising system for at least a decade,” said Dr Johnny Ryan, director of Enforce, a new unit within the ICCL set up to advocate and litigate issues.

“Despite this, it continued to vent sensitive data, betraying America and her allies. The FTC must act to end Google's security crisis.”

The complaint draws from the Enforce's 2023 report on RTB ad technology which claimed that data about active US military personnel, national security leaders and judges were available for purchase on the commercial data market. The report claimed that the data included information about people's health conditions, debt, gambling, sexuality, politics and gun ownership.

"Google has time and again proven that it cannot be trusted to protect our data,” said Sara Geoghegan, senior counsel with Epic, which is jointly filing the complaint.

“The FTC must act to rein in Google's data abuses, which expose Americans' data to foreign adversaries, undermine democracy and threaten our national security,"

Reporting on:independent.ie