Month: April 2022

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held this week that web scraping of publicly accessible data is legal. The case initially arose when LinkedIn sued a company, Hiq Labs, for scraping data off its site in order to evaluate employee attrition. 

The Dutch tax authority was recently fined €3.7 million for GDPR violations stemming from the ‘child care benefits scandal’ first uncovered in 2019. The authority had utilized an algorithm that mistakenly flagged as high-risk tens of thousands of people––many belonging to low income or dual citizen households––as potentially engaging in child care benefits fraud. Mistakenly flagged individuals were denied certain services as a result of their high risk profile, including payment arrangements and debt restructuring. 

The 10th annual Freedom of Expression Scholars Conference will take place on Saturday, April 30 and Sunday, May 1st. It will be preceded by a Symposium organized by the Journal of Free Speech Law on Friday, April 29th at 5pm EST. As in previous years, the conference will be a mix of plenary sessions (one panel discussing multiple papers) and breakout sessions (simultaneous panels, each discussing one paper). All sessions will take place on Zoom. Papers can be found here.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Addison Yang)

Recently, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a “shields up” message to U.S. organizations, warning of potential cyberattacks relating to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While no definite threats have been confirmed or issued, the agency has provided guidance on vulnerabilities and common tactics and has cataloged known vulnerabilities. 

The Center for Social Media and Politics hosted a symposium on the future of social media. The panels at that symposium discussed how to cover, research, and regulate social media in the wake of the Facebook Papers.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Justin Jin)

The ACLU put out an op ed on the privacy implications of digital currencies, highlighting that the technology may pose more threats to privacy than previously anticipated.

The European Union court of justice (CJEU) ruled once again that EU continues to preclude the general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data relating to electronic communications for the purposes of combating serious crime.

The NYU Center for Social Media and Politics (CSMAP) is holding a virtual symposium on April 13, 2022: The Future of Social Media: Covering, Researching, and Regulating Platforms.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Margarita Boyarskaya)