Articles Posted in Privacy

Senators Chuck Schumer and Tom Cotton recently sent a letter to US intelligence officials requesting an investigation of the security risk.

Gigi Sohn, a former counselor to the Federal Communications Commission during the administration of President Barack Obama, has urged the federal government to pass a law to protect the privacy of consumers. Sohn argued that consumers may suffer more than just financial losses due to violations of their privacy. She noted…

Senator Chuck Schumer sent a letter to the FBI and the FTC last Wednesday expressing his concerns regarding FaceApp, stating that it could “post national security and privacy risks for millions of U.S. citizens.”

New Jersey has become just the second state in the U.S. to prohibit retail stores and restaurants from refusing to accept cash. The law targets stores that accept payments only by credit cards or through an app.

On Wednesday, March 6, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit decided Patrick Hately v. Dr. David Watts, ruling that opened and read emails are covered by the federal Stored Communications Act's privacy protections. Watts used a password provided to him by the mother of Hately's children, with whom Watts was having an affair, to browse Hately's emails in an attempt to uncover evidence of a relationship between Hately and Watts's ex-wife. The Fourth Circuit ultimately found that the district court erred in finding Hately did not demonstrate the statutory injury required under state law and in finding that Hately's opened and read emails were not statutorily protected "electronic storage" under federal law.

Two sources familiar with the matter say that the Chinese company, Huawei, is preparing a lawsuit against the U.S. government for hindering federal agencies from using the company's products. According to the sources, who requested to be anonymous to uphold confidentiality, the lawsuit would be filed in the Eastern District of Texas, the home of Huawei's American headquarters. An announcement about the lawsuit from the company is expected to be released this week.

In what will potentially become a landmark decision, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California gave the order as a part of a denial of a search warrant for a property in Oakland.

In a lawsuit filed on Thursday on behalf of Californians, the City of Los Angeles alleged that the operator of The Weather Channel's mobile phone application has been "covertly mining the private data of users and selling the information to third parties, including advertisers."

On December 19, the attorney general of Washington, DC, filed a lawsuit in DC court against Facebook. The complaint alleges that Facebook's poor oversight and misleading privacy policies enabled Cambridge Analytica to gain access to the data of hundreds of thousands of DC residents, in violation of the Consumer Protection Procedures Act, D.C. Code §§ 28-3901, et seq., and asks the court to enjoin the social media company from continuing to violate the CPPA as well as for civil damages.

California legislators have proposed a tax on text messages to increase funds for programs that provide underserved residents with connectivity. The new tax plan, proposed by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), would not charge per text message, but would implement a monthly fee based on a cellular bill that includes any charges for text messages. Most cellular carriers charge a flat fee for texting and include similar fees for other services, such as calls. The specifics of the charge associated with the tax would vary across carriers.