Privacy & New Media

EPIC

Nov. 5, 2020

California voters this week approved Proposition 24, the California Privacy Rights Act, with 56% of voters supporting the measure. EPIC previously published an analysis of Proposition 24, nothing that the measure “would make some important improvements to privacy protections for California residents, particularly through the establishment of a California Privacy Protection Agency.” In 2018, the State of California enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”), the first comprehensive consumer privacy law enacted in the United States. Proposition 24 significantly changes the CCPA. EPIC has also published a resource to help California residents exercise their rights under the CCPA.

The content in this post was found at:
<https://epic.org/2020/11/california-voters-pass-califor.html>

Clicking the title or link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of privacynnewmedia.com.

 

New York Attorney General Letitia James has announced an agreement with Zoom Video Communications following an investigation into Zoom’s consumer safeguards. Zoom agreed to enhance encryption protocols, perform yearly penetration testing, and add privacy-enhancing features to its platform. The agreement also provides enhanced privacy controls for education accounts. Last month, EPIC urged the FTC to issue best practices for online conferencing.

Epic
May 26, 2020

Through a government records request EPIC has obtained the contract between North Dakota and ProudCrowd, LLC for the Care19 contact tracing app launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The one-year software license agreement between ProudCrowd and North Dakota provides the state use of the contact tracing app and use of server space. According to the state, the Care19 app generates a random ID number for each user when it is tracking users’ movements. North Dakota’s privacy policy states that the location data is kept private (not sent to third parties) and stored securely on ProudCrowd servers. The state has not explained why it would store private health data on a storage system not controlled by the government. But a recent report indicates that the Care19 app sends location data and a unique user identifier to Foursquare and a software bug tracking company called Bugfender. The app also sends the phone’s advertising ID to Google. ProudCrowd states that it will update the app and its privacy policies in the future. EPIC has told Congress that private companies must establish privacy safeguards for digital contact tracing.

The content in this post was found at:

https://epic.org/2020/05/epic-obtains-north-dakota-cont.html

Clicking the title or link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of privacynnewmedia.com.

Epic
June 23, 2020

The Indiana Supreme Court ruled today that the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination prevents law enforcement from compelling an individual to unlock their smartphone. The court declared that an exception to the Fifth Amendment did not apply because the type and amount of information cell phones contain make compelled production of their contents different than compelled production of physical documents, citing the Supreme Court’s decisions in Riley v. California and Carpenter v. United States. The court wrote that “the Supreme Court has hesitated to apply even entrenched doctrines to novel dilemmas, wholly unforeseen when those doctrines were created.” EPIC urged the New Jersey Supreme Court to adopt the same reasoning in State v. Andrews, arguing that, under Riley and Carpenter, individuals cannot be compelled to decrypt their cell phones. The New Jersey court has not yet issued a ruling in the case.

The content in this post was found at:
https://epic.org/2020/06/indiana-supreme-court-says-no-.html

Clicking the title or link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of privacynnewmedia.com.

This past week, the operator of the popular Weather Channel (“TWC”) mobile phone app entered into a Stipulation of Settlement with the Los Angeles City Attorney, Mike Feuer (“City Attorney”), closing the books on one of the first litigations to focus on the collection of locational data through mobile phones. (People v. TWC Product and Technology, LLC, No. 19STCV00605 (Cal. Super., L.A. Cty, Stipulation Aug. 14, 2020)). While the settlement appears to allow TWC to continue to use locational information for app-related services and to serve advertising (as long the app includes some agreed-upon notices and screen prompts to consumers), what is glaringly absent from the settlement is a discussion of sharing locational information with third parties for purposes other than serving advertising or performing services in the app. Because applicable law, industry practice and the policies of Apple and Google themselves have narrowed the ability to share locational information for such purposes, the allegations of the case were, in a sense, subsumed in the tsunami of attention that locational information sharing has attracted. While some are viewing this settlement as a roadmap for locational information collection and sharing, in fact the settlement is quite narrow.

The content in this post was found at:
https://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2020/08/18/eclipsed-by-evolving-law-policy-and-technology-seminal-mobile-location-data-case-settled/

Clicking the title or link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of privacynnewmedia.com.

Epic
July 7, 2020

 

A federal court has rejected a challenge from internet services providers to Maine’s broadband privacy law. Enacted last year, the law prohibits broadband providers from using, disclosing, or selling consumers’ personal data without express consent. The ISPs had argued that the Maine law conflicted with Congress’s 2017 overturning of broadband privacy rules issued by the Federal Communications Commission and the FCC’s 2018 disclaimer of regulatory authority over broadband providers. But the ISPs’ “attempt to manufacture a conflict in this case is unavailing,” Judge Lance E. Walker wrote. The court also refused to hold that the Maine law violates the First Amendment or is unconstitutionally vague. EPIC has long advocated for comprehensive privacy legislation that would protect states’ ability to enact stronger privacy laws.

EPIC
August 6, 2020
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled this week that the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights protects the right to privacy in the areas around one’s home from warrantless pole camera surveillance over several months. The court held that residents are constitutionally protected against extended surveillance when, “in the aggregate, [it] expose[s] otherwise unknowable details of a person’s life.” The court also refused to make privacy rights “contingent upon an individual’s ability to afford to install fortifications and a moat around his or her castle.” The court cited Commonwealth v. Connolly, which declared that Massachusetts residents have a right to be free from warrantless GPS surveillance under the Declaration of Rights. EPIC filed an friend of the court brief in Connolly. EPIC regularly files briefs in cases that involve emerging privacy and civil liberties issues.