Inside Privacy

Contact:Email

Washington State Hearing on Latest Privacy Bill Highlights Competing Interests For Best Practices and Data Minimization 

On January 14, 2020, Washington’s State Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology received public testimony about Senate Bill 5062, the “Washington Privacy Act.”  Representatives from trade associations, the Attorney General’s Office, and civil rights groups offered recommendations to eliminate perceived loopholes and clarify bill provisions.

This post highlights recurring issues from the public hearing.
Continue Reading Washington State Hearing on Latest Privacy Bill Highlights Competing Interests For Best Practices and Data Minimization

In a new post of the Covington Digital Health blog, our colleagues discuss the proposed rule issued by the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to modify the Privacy Rule promulgated under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”)…
Continue Reading HHS Announces Proposed Changes to HIPAA’s Privacy Rule

Last week, an Ohio district court found that violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) occurring between 2015 and July 2020 cannot be enforced because the law was unconstitutional at the time.  The case is captioned Lindenbaum v. Realgy, LLC, No. 19-CV-02862 (N.D. Ohio), and the opinion builds on an earlier decision from a Louisiana district court that reached a similar conclusion in Creasy v. Charter Communications Inc., No. 20-CV-01199 (E.D. La.).
Continue Reading Courts Find TCPA Unenforceable for Acts Prior to July 2020

In a new post on the Covington Digital Health blog, our colleagues discuss California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s recent settlement against Glow, Inc., resolving allegations that the fertility app had “expose[d] millions of women’s personal and medical information.” The post explains the allegations and settlement terms, as well as…
Continue Reading California AG Settlement Suggests Privacy and Security Practices of Digital Health Apps May Provide Fertile Ground for Enforcement Activity

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) seeking comment on a proposal to review and potentially revise a number of existing exemptions that the FCC has adopted with respect to certain Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) requirements.  The FCC’s review could end up narrowing or eliminating some of these longstanding exemptions, imposing consent requirements or other obligations that today are not required for certain kinds of calls and texts.
Continue Reading FCC Reevaluating Certain TCPA Compliance Exemptions

Consistent with the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s ongoing focus on cyber-enabled financial crime, on October 1, 2020, two components of the Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence issued guidance on ransomware-related payments.  One, an advisory issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), describes the significant U.S. sanctions risks of facilitating ransomware payments, and expresses a strong policy preference against doing so.  The second, an advisory issued by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”), alerts financial institutions to trends and indicators of ransomware-related money laundering.  Both underscore the difficult decisions faced by ransomware victims and third parties who assist them as they seek to navigate the loss of access to key data on the one hand, and increasingly significant regulatory risks that making a ransomware payment could entail on the other.
Continue Reading Coordinated OFAC and FinCEN Guidance on Ransomware Attacks Underscores the Regulatory Risk and Complexity of Paying a Ransom

In the wake of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (“ECJ”) Schrems II decision invalidating the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield (“Privacy Shield”) but upholding the validity of standard contractual clauses (“SCCs”), the U.S. government has released a White Paper entitled “Information on U.S. Privacy Safeguards Relevant to SCCs and Other EU Legal Bases for EU-U.S. Data Transfers after Schrems II.”  The Schrems II ruling requires companies relying on SCCs “to verify, on a case-by-case basis,” whether the level of protections afforded by the SCCs are respected and observed in the recipient country.  According to the cover letter accompanying the White Paper, it “outlines the robust limits and safeguards in the United States pertaining to government access to data” as part of “an effort to assist organizations in assessing whether their transfers offer appropriate data protection in accordance with the ECJ’s ruling.”

The cover letter emphasizes that while the White Paper is intended to help companies make the case that they can transfer personal data from the EU to the United States in compliance with EU law, it does not “eliminate the urgent need for clarity from European authorities or the onerous compliance burdens generated by the Schrems II decision.”  It concludes by citing the importance of the “$7.1 trillion transatlantic economic relationship” and stating that “the Trump Administration is exploring all options at its disposal and remains committed to working with the European Commission to negotiate a solution that satisfies the ECJ’s requirements while protecting the interests of the United States.”
Continue Reading U.S. Government Issues White Paper on Privacy Safeguards Following Schrems II

Last month marks two years since the Supreme Court held, in Carpenter v. United States, that the Fourth Amendment applies to cell phone company records that detail a cell phone user’s location and movements.  Under Carpenter, police are generally required to use a warrant to obtain seven days or more of a user’s cell-site location information from phone companies.

As we previously reported, Carpenter redefined how the Fourth Amendment applies to information held by technology companies in the digital age.  Prior to Carpenter, the Court applied the third-party doctrine, under which a person who voluntarily revealed information to third parties—such as telephone companies, banks, or technology companies—lacks a reasonable expectation of privacy in that information and therefore forfeits Fourth Amendment protections.  In Carpenter, the Court declined to apply the third-party doctrine to cell-site location information, even though the cell phone user revealed their location information to their phone company.  Despite the significance of this ruling, the Court said that its decision in Carpenter was a “narrow one” that did not “address other business records that might incidentally reveal location information” or “consider other collection techniques involving foreign affairs or national security.”
Continue Reading Two Years of Carpenter

Today, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, which addressed the constitutionality of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).  Although the Court splintered in its reasoning—producing four separate opinions—the justices nevertheless coalesced around two core conclusions: (1) the TCPA’s exception for government debt collection calls is unconstitutional, and (2) the exception can be severed from the rest of the TCPA.  Six justices determined that the TCPA’s government-debt exception violates the First Amendment, and seven justices concluded that the exception is severable from the rest of the statute.  The end result is that the government-debt exception is invalid but the rest of the TCPA—including its general prohibition on automated calls and text messages to mobile numbers—remains intact.  The narrow scope of this ruling suggests that it may have limited practical effect for most parties.

As we previously explained, the TCPA, as originally enacted in 1991, restricts the use of an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) to transmit calls or texts to mobile numbers without the recipient’s prior express consent (the ATDS prohibition).  In 2015, Congress amended the TCPA to exempt from the ATDS prohibition calls made to collect a debt owed to the United States.  The question before the Supreme Court was whether the government-debt exception violates the First Amendment and, if so, whether the proper remedy is to sever the exception—leaving intact the rest of the TCPA—or invalidate the entire ATDS prohibition.
Continue Reading Supreme Court Invalidates TCPA Government-Debt Exception