News
Google agreed to pay $392 million to 40 states — the largest multi-state privacy settlement in U.S. history — in response to allegations that it broke consumer protection laws by tracking individuals through their devices after location tracking had been turned off. A Google spokesman indicated it no longer tracks individuals in this manner, and that it now allows individuals to use Google Maps incognito.
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Apple for violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act by tracking consumers in mobile apps even with iPhone privacy settings indicating tracking is off.
Two Massachusetts citizens filed a class action lawsuit in federal court alleging the Massachusetts health department installed COVID-19 tracking software on over one million Android phones without users’ consent.
Recent departures from Twitter include CISO Lea Kissner, chief privacy officer Damien Kieran, and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty, raising questions on whether it complies with the GDPR’s requirement to have a chief data protection officer.
National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo announced a greater focus on employee surveillance, requesting regional personnel “vigorously” enforce existing doctrine and proposing “a new framework for protecting employees from intrusive or abusive forms of electronic monitoring and automated management that interfere with Section 7 activity.”
Germany’s Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) submitted a question to the European Court of Justice regarding whether consumer protection authorities can bring data protection claims against Meta on behalf of data subjects.
The United Kingdom is pushing to develop a new data privacy law that might deviate from the GDPR, which will reportedly address the adequacy agreement with the EU that allows UK-EU data flows.
Events
On Thursday, Nov. 24 from 9am to 10am EST, Guarini Global Law and Tech Executive Director Thomas Strein presented a keynote presentation at Digital Legal Talks 2022 on “The Future of European Data Law.”
On Tuesday, Nov. 29 from 12pm to 1pm EST, Winston Wenyan Ma, an adjunct professor of law at the NYU School of Law, will present a U.S.-Asia Law Institute talk on “The Future of US-China Tech Relations: Blockchain, Crypto, and Central Bank Digital Currency.”
(Compiled by Student Fellow Cooper Aspegren)