Author: Kathryn Taylor

Yesterday, the European Commission introduced a proposal for a new AI liability standard. This proposal consolidates the fragmented liability standards in effect in EU member countries. It has specific provisions for “lay[ing] down uniform rules for access to information and alleviation of the burden of proof in relation to damages caused by AI systems”. Existing EU-level legislation left out considerations for end-users, an omission which this proposal addresses.

Australia’s second largest telecommunications provider was breached this week. The hacker posted the information of 10,200 customers before apologizing and taking it down. A class action lawsuit may follow from this breach.

A new California law bars in-state companies and law enforcement from sharing abortion information requested by out-of-state warrants. It raises new legal questions for companies and sets up future legal battles, but furthers California’s goal of becoming a sanctuary for abortion-seekers.

The US Treasury Department issued guidance this week aimed at increasing internet service access for protestors in Iran. This update included new internet-related exceptions to Iranian sanctions, specifically expanding VPN, video-conferencing, and social media access.

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. It would provide an antitrust exemption for news outlets to collectively bargain with tech platforms over pricing, terms, and conditions.

A modification to California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code Act was introduced in the New York state senate this week. This legislation would outlaw advertising and data mining targeting minors and would require a hotline for parents to report content related emergencies to tech platforms. It faces staunch opposition from tech lobbyists, as it is even stricter than its California equivalent.
A recent TikTok about Turo hosts mocking a customer’s driving habits set off conversations about privacy when renting through the car sharing platform.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Jacob Leiken)

Yesterday, after more than a year of deliberation, Indonesia passed a sweeping data privacy law. Following a string of data breaches and leaks at government organizations, lawmakers greatly welcomed the bill.  Violating this new law can result in corporate fines (up to 2% of annual revenue) and even prison time. 

The Berkeley Consumer Laws Scholars Conference (March 2-3, 2023), from Berkeley’s Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice,  has extended their call for abstracts to this Friday, September 23. To submit an abstract, please fill out this form. 

California governor Gavin Newsom has just signed a huge bill (called the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act) protecting children’s online safety. The bill, strongly opposed by the tech industry, includes sweeping safeguards for users under 18 across a variety of online services: social media, games, connected toys, voice assistants, digital learning tools, and more. The law will take effect in 2024. 

The Federal Court in Canada has ruled in favor of two Somali women who were stripped of their refugee status after officials at the Canadian Border Services Agency used facial recognition technology to allege that they were actually Kenyan. The Agency used Clearview AI, a facial recognition surveillance technology company (which also has federal contracts with the U.S. government). 

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled yesterday that antitrust authorities, as part of their antitrust investigations, are allowed to assess whether companies are compliant with EU data protection rules (GDPR), dealing a blow to Meta. This case came to the CJEU from Germany, where Meta challenged a finding that it had taken advantage of its market power when it collected data without permission, which brought forth the question of whether antitrust investigations can cover data privacy issues. The CJEU answered yes, stating that potential violations of privacy laws are relevant to violations of antitrust laws.  

The CJEU also ruled that Germany’s data retention law is unlawful. In the opinion, the CJEU made clear that the blanket data collection law was to be applied very narrowly—only in situations involving serious national security threats—and was otherwise illegal. Member states had been banking on the vast data collection for the purposes of protecting national security and fighting crime.  

Spawning AI has just launched a tool, Have I Been Trained?, which allows you to see if your image has been used to train popular AI art models. The tool will search across a set of 5.8 billion images. Ontario is investing nearly $1.8 million in new video surveillance systems. This funding will go towards updated CCTV cameras, software, and installation.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Eunice Park)

Google must face most of Texas AG’s antitrust lawsuit, which alleges, among other things, that the company illegally monopolized the advertising technology market. Google won its motion to dismiss an allegation that it entered into an anticompetitive agreement in 2018 with Meta’s Facebook—codenamed Jedi Blue—with respect to advertising auctions. Despite Google having to face all but the one claim in the suit, the company is considering the dismissal a win, asserting that the dismissal highlights the flawed nature of the AG’s case.

Google lost a challenge against an EU antitrust decision, resulting in a record fine of €4.1 billion for the company. Europe’s General Court broadly upheld the Commission’s decision concluding that Google imposed unlawful restrictions on Android mobile device manufacturers and network operators in order to support the dominance of its search engine. 

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is seeking public comments related to its oversight project examining Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Section 702 is a key FISA provision permitting the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the United States, with the compelled assistance of electronic communication service providers, to acquire intelligence information.

At a “listening session” about tech platform accountability, the White House has renewed a call to remove the shield allowing platforms to disseminate content without liability. President Biden previously called for the revocation of the liability shield, also known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, on the campaign trail in 2020. Biden will need Congressional action for the change, but there is limited bipartisan consensus on how to fix the law. 

Apple added multiple new privacy and security features in its newly released iOS 16. One of the privacy features is called Safety Check and allows people to quickly reset data and location access sharing. According to Apple, the feature is aimed at those in domestic or intimate partner violence situations. For non-emergency situations, Apple has rolled out a Manage and Sharing Access walkthrough that allows individuals to review sharing permissions and data access.

Apple, who for years has been a vocal critic of data-intensive online advertising models, is now making a push to become a bigger seller of ads. Apple will likely face criticism that it is acting hypocritical, given that many features across its devices, operating system, and its safari browser have been designed to block tracking technologies and limit the sharing of person or device-level information. In order to be successful with its advertising efforts, the company must integrate its advertising initiatives into its ecosystem without detrimentally impacting its renowned user experience.

Google and Meta were hit with a whopping fines totaling ~$71.8M (100 billion KRW) by South Korean authorities due to a finding that the companies violated the country’s privacy law. According to South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), Google and Meta failed to receive legitimate consent in the process of collecting information from users. These penalties are the largest to date in South Korea for violation of the personal information protection laws.

The FTC published an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking to request public comment on the prevalence of commercial surveillance and data security practices that harm consumers. The Commission is specifically inviting comment on whether it should implement new trade rules or other regulatory alternatives concerning the ways in which “companies collect, aggregate, protect, use, analyze, and retain consumer data, as well as transfer, share, sell, or otherwise monetize that data in ways that are unfair or deceptive.” Comments must be received on or before October 21, 2022.

Upcoming NYC events:

• Simons Foundation Presidential Lecture: Algorithmic Fairness from a Sociotechnical Lens (Wednesday, September 21, 2022; 5:30pm doors)
• Cornell Tech’s 4th Annual Symposium on Applications of Contextual Integrity (Thursday, September 22-Friday, September 23)

(Compiled by Student Fellow Tanner Co)

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)

Last week, the United States and the European Commission committed to a new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework, which will foster trans-Atlantic data flows and address concerns raised in 2020 by the Court of Justice of the European Union when it struck down the Commission’s adequacy decision underlying the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework.

Parliament and Council negotiators agreed on new EU rules to limit the market power of big online platforms. The Digital Market Act will ban certain practices used by large platforms acting as “gatekeepers” and enable the Commission to carry out market investigations to sanction non-compliant behavior.

On March 24, 2022, the Utah Consumer Privacy Act was signed into law by the Utah Governor. This bill will take effect on December 31, 2023.

The Center for Social Media and Politics will hold a half-day symposium on “The Future of Social Media: Covering, Researching, and Regulating Platforms” on April 13, 2022. 

The District Court for the Western District of Texas Austin found the state’s prohibition of the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAV”) by journalists to be unconstitutional. 

Apple released its new privacy feature “Private Relay” and “Hide my Email” bringing new privacy protections months after releasing App Tracking Transparency. These features are only available to users who have an iCloud storage subscription.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Raisa Adila Andomi)

The Cyber Law and Policy Scholars Conference (CLPSC) published its Call for Papers. Submissions are due by May 1, 2022.

Last Friday, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia dismissed a lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc that accused the company of antitrust violations.  The Washington, D.C. attorney general filed the complaint last year, alleging that Amazon barred third-party sellers from offering better deals for their products elsewhere.

U.S. startup Clearview AI provided Ukraine’s defense ministry access to its facial recognition technology to use in the conflict with Russia.

The University of Florida is hosting The 2022 Technology, Media, & Privacy Law on Friday, March 25.

A federal class-action lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York accused the NYPD of unconstitutionally collecting possible suspect DNA from cigarette butts, empty cans, or bottles left in interrogation rooms.

The Justice Department (anti-trust) is requesting the District Court for the District of Columbia to sanction Google for explicitly and repeatedly instructing its employees to shield important business communications from discovery by using false requests for legal advice, thus misusing attorney-client privilege.

Last week, the California Attorney General’s Office released an opinion clarifying that a consumer’s right to know under the California Consumer Privacy Act covers business-generated inferences unless there’s a proven statutory exemption.

A panel (April 4th, 2022, online) organized by S.T.O.P. will explore the NYC Mayors’ proposed expansion of municipal data collection and digitization of city services and the danger this plan poses to undocumented New Yorkers.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Uria Beeri)

President Biden signed an executive order calling for a comprehensive review of the federal government’s stance toward cryptocurrencies, including an assessment of the risks to consumers, the financial system, and the climate. Agencies and regulators will prepare reports on digital assets, and the government will explore the creation of a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency.

The Utah legislature approved comprehensive privacy legislation, which would make Utah the fourth US state, and the first controlled by two Republican chambers, to do so, if the bill is signed by Governor Spencer Cox. The state privacy law lacks some measures preferred by privacy groups, such as a private right of action for violations.

Twitter became the latest tech company to launch a Tor onion service, which may allow users in Russia and around the world to bypass government censorship of the social network and news service. Twitter’s announcement may also further mainstream Tor’s network around the world.

A new report details profits made by prison telecommunication companies who distribute tablets to incarcerated populations and charge prisoners on a per-use basis for email “stamps,” video calls, and entertainment offerings. Use of tablets in prisons greatly expanded during the Covid-19 pandemic as other recreation and education programs were curtailed.

Amazon became the latest company to restrict services in Russia. In a blog post, the Seattle-based company announced suspension of all retail shipments and Prime Video streams to Russian customers, and noted they would stop accepting new AWS customers and third party sellers based in Russia or Belarus.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Corey Berman)