By Alex Berengaut On Monday, October 29, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Clapper v. Amnesty International (No. 11-1025), a challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008. The FAA amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 by authorizing new procedures for electronic … Continue Reading
On October 26, 2012, the FTC finalized settlements with Georgia auto dealer Franklin Budget Car Sales, Inc. and Utah-based debt collector EPN Inc. over charges that each company illegally exposed sensitive personal information of consumers by allowing peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software to be installed on their corporate computer systems. The final settlements follow a notice-and-comment period … Continue Reading
By Kurt Wimmer and Josephine Liu The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has released a report warning that terrorists are increasingly using the Internet to spread propaganda, recruit and train supporters, finance their activities, and plan terrorist attacks. Besides providing an overview of the existing legal frameworks to address terrorists’ use of the … Continue Reading
In follow up to our previous blog entry on the subject, comment deadlines were set for additional petitions seeking to clarify TCPA provisions and related FCC rules. Comments on these Petitions are due on November 23, 2012, and reply comments are due on December 10, 2012. The Westfax Petition asks the FCC to clarify whether … Continue Reading
This week, the FTC released a staff report urging companies to adopt best practices for commercial uses of facial recognition technology. The report, entitled Facing Facts: Best Practices for Common Uses of Facial Recognition Technologies, follows a workshop held last December and more than 80 public comments addressing issues raised at the workshop. Facing Facts … Continue Reading
At the Wired for Change conference earlier this week, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz noted that the FTC is developing a “nutrition label” for data collection and use, modeled after the nutrition facts label for food and beverages. Leibowitz reportedly said that the agency’s chief technologist and the Bureau of Consumer Protection are working to identify … Continue Reading
Last week, Judge Ungaro of the Southern District of Florida granted in part and denied in part a motion to dismiss in Burrows v. Purchasing Power, LLC. The court found that the plaintiff had asserted a plausible claim under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA), granted the plaintiff leave to amend his … Continue Reading
Just one day after an official of the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce (SIC) announced that Colombia’s new data protection law would come into force within the coming weeks, on October 17 the law received the necessary sanción from the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos. With that action, Colombia became the latest in a string … Continue Reading
A number of key developments affecting telemarketing emerged over the past week: 1. The distinction between informational and telemarketing calls was further defined. The 9th Circuit held that calls intended to impart information about a customer rewards program could be construed as “dual purpose” calls subject to federal and state telemarketing restrictions. See Chesbro v. … Continue Reading
By Fredericka Argent This month, following an inquiry by the Australian Law Reform Commission (“ALRC”) into the effectiveness of the Australian Privacy Act 1988, the Australian government launched a discussion paper which calls for views from the public on whether a mandatory data breach notification scheme should be introduced in Australia. This scheme refers to … Continue Reading
On 16 October 2012, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) ruled in favour of the European Commission in its claim against Austria that the Austrian Data Protection Authority, the Datenschutzkommission (“DSK”), was not independent from the Austrian government as required under Article 28 of the EU’s Data Protection Directive. The Commission’s action was … Continue Reading
By Dan Cooper On 16 October, 2012, the French data protection authority, the CNIL, released a report on behalf of the Article 29 Working Party that examines Google’s compliance with European data protection law. The report marks a new stage in an investigation which began nine months ago, when Google announced that it intended to … Continue Reading
Earlier today in Bogota, the supervisor of the Colombian data protection authority (within the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce) announced that the country’s new data protection law will receive final approval from President Juan Manuel Santos this month or next. The supervisor, José Alejandro Bermúdez, made the announcement in an interview with the Spanish news … Continue Reading
Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued the National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2012. The Registry provides a way for consumers to avoid receiving most telemarketing calls. The Data Book, which is in its fourth year of publication, contains statistical data regarding: consumer registrations on the Registry subscriptions of entities, … Continue Reading
The Federal Trade Commission has announced that it will host a public workshop on December 6 to discuss the privacy issues raised by the collection of data about consumers’ online activities by so-called large platform providers. According to the scheduling notice, the FTC seeks to explore the potential privacy issues raised by the collection of … Continue Reading
According to TechWeek Europe, the United States Department of Commerce is working with the United States Chamber of Commerce to lobby European Union officials in an effort to change certain provisions of the EU’s proposed General Data Protection Regulation. If enacted, the Regulation, which was published in draft form in January 2012, would supersede the … Continue Reading
The Worldwide Web Consortium’s Tracking Protection Working Group concluded a three-day international stakeholder meeting in Amsterdam on October 5 without reaching consensus on certain key issues concerning a global do-not-track standard. There are reportedly three major unresolved questions: (1) what the default setting should be—whether do not track should be turned on or off by … Continue Reading
The convening of the 34th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners in Punta del Este, Uruguay on Oct. 22-26 — on the heels of last year’s conference in Mexico City — underscores the importance of the Latin American region in the global debate around data privacy regulation. From 2000 to 2008, only Argentina … Continue Reading
By Lindsey Tonsager and Mike Nonaka On October 2, 2012, the Federal Trade Commission filed a proposed consent decree resolving claims that Artist Arena LLC violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting and disclosing email addresses, birth dates and other personal information from more than 100,000 children younger than the age of … Continue Reading
In a new opinion on the Commission’s proposal for a Regulation on electronic identification (“eID”) and trusted services, the European Data Protection Supervisor (“EDPS”) has called, amongst other things, for security measures that trust service providers must apply to their services to be specified directly in legislation rather than left to the Commission to define … Continue Reading
On Monday, the Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program, which monitors compliance with the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising, issued a decision finding that the auto company Kia had failed to adhere to the Principles. The Accountability Program also issued decisions stating that Kia’s ad agency–and the ad network the agency had used to place … Continue Reading
Last week, Judge Armstrong of the Northern District of California dismissed a putative class action against Pandora alleging the Internet radio service had violated two Michigan state statutes by disclosing to third parties information about the plaintiff’s listening activity. The plaintiff in Deacon v. Pandora Media, Inc. alleged that by (1) making publicly available his Pandora … Continue Reading
Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a study comparing credit scores sold to creditors and those sold to consumers. The study found that approximately 1 in 5 consumers would, upon purchasing their credit score from a consumer reporting agency, receive a different credit score than the score provided to creditors for use in … Continue Reading
