A steady stream of tens of thousands of people filed into St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday to pay their respects to former Pope Benedict XVI at the start of three days of laying in state ahead of his funeral.

Benedict died on Saturday at the age of 95 in the secluded Vatican monastery where he had lived since his shock resignation in 2013.

“I feel like he was a grandfather to us,” Veronica Siegal, 16, a Catholic high school student from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who is in Rome for a programme of religious study, told Reuters in St. Peter’s Square after viewing the body.

She said she had read one of Benedict’s books on Jesus for one of her courses.

“I know that he is in a better place because he was a holy man and he led so well,” said her classmate, Molly Foley, also 16, from Atlanta, Georgia. A third girl in the group wore an American flag on her back.

Benedict’s body, dressed in red and gold liturgical vestments and placed on a simple dais, was moved in a procession just before dawn through the Vatican Gardens from the monastery to a spot in front of the main altar of Christendom’s largest Church.

Two Swiss Guards stood at attention on either side of the body, which bore no papal insignia or regalia, such as a crosier, the silver staff with a crucifix, or a pallium, a band of cloth worn around the neck worn by archdiocesan bishops.

Both were on Pope John Paul’s body when it lay in state in 2005.

Security was tight, with visitors going through several check points before entering the basilica. Many stopped to pray after viewing the body or stayed to attend Mass in side chapels.

Before the Church was opened to the public, Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Georgia Meloni were the first outsiders to pay their respects.

Benedict’s closest aide, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, sat in the first pew to the side of the body along with Benedict’s household and medics who looked after him in his final days.

After a few hours, they rose to pray before the body. Ganswein stayed behind to receive condolences from visitors.

“I had to come,” Sri, a woman visiting from Jakarta, Indonesia, told Reuters. “He was the pope and I am a Catholic,” she said, declining to give her surname.

Benedict will lie in state until Wednesday evening. His funeral will be held on Thursday in St Peter’s Square and be presided over by Pope Francis. The Vatican has said it will be a simple, solemn and sober ceremony in keeping with Benedict’s wishes.

The Vatican has painstakingly elaborate rituals for what happens after a reigning pope dies but none for a former pope, so what happens in the next few days could become the template for future ex-popes.

While the number of visitors was large, there were no signs of the huge crowds who came to pay their respects to Pope John Paul II, when millions waited for hours to enter the basilica.

In 2020, Benedict’s authorised biographer, Peter Seewald, was quoted as telling Bavarian newspaper Passauer Neue Presse that the emeritus pope had prepared a spiritual testament stating that he wanted to be buried in the same crypt where John Paul II was originally laid to rest.

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Google will pay $29.5 million to settle two different lawsuits in the US over its deceptive location tracking practices.

Google decided to pay $29.5 million to settle two different lawsuits brought by the states of Indiana and Washington, D.C., over its deceptive location tracking practices.

The IT giant will pay $9.5 million to D.C. and $20 million to Indiana after the states filed two lawsuits against the company charging it with having tracked users’ locations without their express consent.

“Given the vast level of tracking and surveillance that technology companies can embed into their widely used products, it is only fair that consumers be informed of how important user data, including information about their every move, is gathered, tracked, and utilized by these companies. Significantly, this resolution also provides users with the ability and choice to opt of being tracked, as well as restrict the manner in which user information may be shared with third parties,” said Attorney General Karl A. Racine while announcing that Google will pay $9.5 million. “I am proud of how the exceptional lawyers and professionals in my office have creatively applied the District’s strong consumer protection laws to set the standard nationally and provide users far greater control of their personal information.”

“We sued because Google made it nearly impossible for users to stop their location from being tracked. Now, thanks to this settlement, Google must also make clear to consumers how their location data is collected, stored, and used.” Racine added.

Google is currently facing two similar lawsuits in Texas and Washington.

In November, Google agreed to pay $391.5 million to settle with 40 US states for misleading users about the collection of personal location data. The settlement is the largest attorney general-led consumer privacy settlement ever, states the announcement published by DoJ.

“Google misled its users into thinking they had turned off location tracking in their account settings, when, in fact, Google continued to collect their location information. In addition to the multimillion-dollar settlement, as part of the negotiations with the AGs, Google has agreed to significantly improve its location tracking disclosures and user controls starting in 2023.” reads the DoJ’s press release.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who led the settlement along with Nebraska AG Doug Peterson, pointed out that for years Google has prioritized profit over their users’ privacy.

The authorities started the investigation into Google collection practice following a 2018 Associated Press article that revealed Google “records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.”

According to the article, there are two settings responsible for the location data collection, the “Location History” and “Web & App Activity”. The former is “off” by default while the latter is automatically enabled when users set up a Google account, including all Android users.

Location data represent the core of the digital advertising business of the IT giant. However, location data can be used to expose a person’s identity and routines, and even infer personal details.

Google violated state consumer protection laws by misleading consumers about its location tracking practices since at least 2014. Google confused its users about the use of the account and device settings to limit Google’s location tracking.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, privacy)

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While militarily neutral, Switzerland has matched the economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the neighbouring EU over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine