Photo of Libbie Canter

Libbie Canter

Libbie Canter represents a wide variety of multinational companies on privacy, cyber security, and technology transaction issues, including helping clients with their most complex privacy challenges and the development of governance frameworks and processes to comply with global privacy laws. She routinely supports clients on their efforts to launch new products and services involving emerging technologies, and she has assisted dozens of clients with their efforts to prepare for and comply with federal and state privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act and California Privacy Rights Act.

Libbie represents clients across industries, but she also has deep expertise in advising clients in highly-regulated sectors, including financial services and digital health companies. She counsels these companies — and their technology and advertising partners — on how to address legacy regulatory issues and the cutting edge issues that have emerged with industry innovations and data collaborations.

As part of her practice, she also regularly represents clients in strategic transactions involving personal data and cybersecurity risk. She advises companies from all sectors on compliance with laws governing the handling of health-related data. Libbie is recognized as an Up and Coming lawyer in Chambers USA, Privacy & Data Security: Healthcare. Chambers USA notes, Libbie is "incredibly sharp and really thorough. She can do the nitty-gritty, in-the-weeds legal work incredibly well but she also can think of a bigger-picture business context and help to think through practical solutions."

Contact:Read more about Libbie CanterEmail

The New York Office of Attorney General (OAG) recently published guidance for website privacy controls. Although New York does not have a comprehensive privacy law, business’ privacy-related practices and statements may be subject to New York’s consumer protection laws, which generally prohibit businesses from engaging in deceptive acts and practices. Accordingly, the OAG noted that “statements about when and how website visitors are tracked should be accurate, and privacy controls should work as described.”Continue Reading New York AG Issues Guidance on Website Privacy Controls

On August 2, 2024, Illinois’ governor signed into law S.B. 2979, a significant amendment to the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The law states that an entity that, in more than one instance, obtains the same biometric identifier or biometric information from the same person using the same method of collection in violation of BIPA’s notice and consent requirement has committed a single violation. As a result, each aggrieved person is entitled to, at most, one recovery for a single collective violation.Continue Reading Illinois Enacts BIPA Amendment Limiting Violation Accrual

An Illinois federal court has dismissed a proposed class action alleging X Corp. violated the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) through its use of PhotoDNA software to create “hashes” of images to scan for nudity and related content. The court held that Plaintiff failed to allege that the hashes identified photo subjects and therefore failed to allege that the hashes constituted biometric identifiers. Martell v. X Corp., 2024 WL 3011353, at *4 (N.D. Ill. June 13, 2024).Continue Reading Illinois Federal Court Dismisses BIPA Suit Against X, Holding “Biometric Identifiers” Must Identify Individuals

On June 6, the Texas Attorney General published a news release announcing that the Attorney General has opened an investigation into several car manufacturers.  The news release states that the investigation was opened “after widespread reporting that [car manufacturers] have secretly been collecting mass amounts of data about drivers directly from their vehicles and then…

On May 16, 2024, Alabama enacted a genetic privacy bill (HB 21), which regulates consumer-facing genetic testing companies.  HB 21 continues the recent trend of states enacting genetic privacy legislation aimed at regulating direct-to-consumer (“DTC”) genetic testing companies, such as in Nebraska and Virginia, with more than 10 states now having similar laws on the books. Continue Reading Alabama Enacts Genetic Privacy Bill

Last month, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced its enforcement action against telehealth firm, Cerebral, Inc. (“Cerebral”), for its alleged unauthorized disclosures of consumers’ sensitive personal health information and other sensitive data to third parties for advertising purposes in violation of the FTC Act.  The complaint also alleges that Cerebral violated the Opioid Addiction Recovery Fraud Prevention Act (“OARFPA”), and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (“ROSCA”), which permits the court to order permanent injunctive relief, civil penalties, and other monetary relief for actions in violations of specific sections of the FTC Act, the OARFPA, and the ROSCA.  According to the proposed order, Cerebral must pay more than $7 million in civil penalties and consumer refunds.  In addition, Cerebral will be banned from using or disclosing consumers’ personal and health information (including online identifiers, such as IP addresses or other persistent identifiers) for advertising and must obtain consumers’ affirmative express consent before disclosing such information to outside parties.

Below is a discussion of the complaint and proposed order.Continue Reading FTC Announces Health Privacy Enforcement Action Against Telehealth Company, Cerebral

HHS Modifies Privacy Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy

On April 26, 2024, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (“HHS”) published a final rule that modifies the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information (“Privacy Rule”) under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) regarding protected health information (“PHI”) concerning reproductive health. We previously covered the proposed rule (hereinafter, “the NPRM”), which was published on April 17, 2023. The final rule aligns closely with the NPRM.Continue Reading HHS Modifies Privacy Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy

On April 26, 2024, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (“HHS”) published a final rule that modifies the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information (“Privacy Rule”) under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) regarding protected health information (“PHI”) concerning reproductive health. We previously covered the proposed rule (hereinafter, “the NPRM”), which was published on April 17, 2023. The final rule aligns closely with the NPRM.Continue Reading HHS Modifies Privacy Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy

In 2020, Illinois residents whose photos were included in the Diversity in Faces dataset brought a series of lawsuits against multiple technology companies, including IBM, Facefirst, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google alleging violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act.[1] In the years since, the cases against IBM and FaceFirst were dismissed at the agreement of both parties, while the cases against Microsoft, Amazon, and most recently, Google were dismissed at summary judgment.Continue Reading What the Diversity in Faces Litigation Means for Biometric Technologies