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Data Privacy: the Current Legal Landscape February 2016
DATA PRIVACY: THE CURRENT LEGAL LANDSCAPE FEBRUARY 2016 By Mark C. Mao, Ronald Raether, Ashley Taylor, Sheila Pham, Sofia Jeong, Reade Jacob, Ryan Lewis, Julie Hoffmeister, and Jessica Lohr troutmansanders.com TROUTMAN SANDERS LLP DATA PRIVACY: THE CURRENT LEGAL LANDSCAPE • FEBRUARY 2016 I. Introduction P. 3 A. An Overview of Privacy Law In The United States B. Trends In 2015 Continue Into 2016 II. New U.S. Legislation, Amendments, And Updates P. 5 A. USA Freedom Act B. Cyber Information Security Act C. Other Significant Legislative Developments 1. Driverless And “Smart” Cars 2. Power Grids 3. Education Privacy 4. California III. Evolving Case Law P. 8 A. Data Breach Litigation 1. Motions to Dismiss: Standing And Damages 2. New Trends & Arguments: a. Defending On The Standard of Care b. Derivative Liability c. Business to Business Litigation B. Impermissible “Tracking” Cases 1. Expanding The Definition of “PII” 2. Persistent Identifiers, URL Tracking, And “Content Scanning” 3. Cross-Device Tracking 4. The Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) And The Use of Pseudonyms 5. Consumer Profiling IV. Developments In Regulatory Enforcement P.12 A. The Federal Trade Commission B. The Federal Communications Commission C. HIPAA Enforcement D. State Attorneys General E. Other Administrative Enforcement Efforts V. Notable International Developments P.17 A. The “Privacy Shield” for Transatlantic Data Protection Framework B. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) C. The Network Information Security (NIS) Directive D. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement VI. Conclusion P.20 Page 2 TROUTMAN SANDERS LLP DATA PRIVACY: THE CURRENT LEGAL LANDSCAPE • FEBRUARY 2016 I. INTRODUCTION 1 A. An Overview of Privacy Law In The United States Privacy law in the United States is generally viewed as Telecommunication entities such as “(telecommunication) following a “sectoral model.” Unlike the European Union (EU) carriers,” cable television, and “video tape service providers” are and Canada, the US does not have comprehensive national also subject to federal legislation. -
Privacy and Data Security Update 2016
Privacy & Data Security Update: 2016 Federal Trade Commission January 2016 - December 2016 The Federal Trade Commission (FTC or Commission) is an independent U.S. law enforcement agency charged with protecting consumers and enhancing competition across broad sectors of the economy. The FTC’s primary legal authority comes from Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices in the marketplace. The FTC also has authority to enforce a variety of sector specific laws, including the Truth in Lending Act, the CAN-SPAM Act, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act. This broad authority allows the Commission to address a wide array of practices affecting consumers, including those that emerge with the development of new technologies and business models. How Does the FTC Protect Consumer Privacy and Ensure Data Security? The FTC uses a variety of tools to protect consumers’ privacy and personal information. The FTC’s principal tool is to bring enforcement actions to stop law violations and require companies to take affirmative steps to remediate the unlawful behavior. This includes, when appropriate, implementation of comprehensive privacy and security programs, biennial assessments by independent experts, monetary redress to consumers, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, deletion of illegally obtained consumer information, and provision of robust transparency and choice mechanisms to consumers. If a company violates an FTC order, the FTC can seek civil monetary penalties for the violations. The FTC can also obtain civil monetary penalties for violations of certain privacy statutes and rules, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Telemarketing Sales Rule. -
The Safeguards of Privacy Federalism
THE SAFEGUARDS OF PRIVACY FEDERALISM BILYANA PETKOVA∗ ABSTRACT The conventional wisdom is that neither federal oversight nor fragmentation can save data privacy any more. I argue that in fact federalism promotes privacy protections in the long run. Three arguments support my claim. First, in the data privacy domain, frontrunner states in federated systems promote races to the top but not to the bottom. Second, decentralization provides regulatory backstops that the federal lawmaker can capitalize on. Finally, some of the higher standards adopted in some of the states can, and in certain cases already do, convince major interstate industry players to embed data privacy regulation in their business models. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION: US PRIVACY LAW STILL AT A CROSSROADS ..................................................... 2 II. WHAT PRIVACY CAN LEARN FROM FEDERALISM AND FEDERALISM FROM PRIVACY .......... 8 III. THE SAFEGUARDS OF PRIVACY FEDERALISM IN THE US AND THE EU ............................... 18 1. The Role of State Legislatures in Consumer Privacy in the US ....................... 18 2. The Role of State Attorneys General for Consumer Privacy in the US ......... 28 3. Law Enforcement and the Role of State Courts in the US .................................. 33 4. The Role of National Legislatures and Data Protection Authorities in the EU…….. .............................................................................................................................................. 45 5. The Role of the National Highest Courts -
A Model Regime of Privacy Protection
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works Faculty Scholarship 2006 A Model Regime of Privacy Protection Daniel J. Solove George Washington University Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/faculty_publications Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Daniel J. Solove & Chris Jay Hoofnagle, A Model Regime of Privacy Protection, 2006 U. Ill. L. Rev. 357 (2006). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SOLOVE.DOC 2/2/2006 4:27:56 PM A MODEL REGIME OF PRIVACY PROTECTION Daniel J. Solove* Chris Jay Hoofnagle** A series of major security breaches at companies with sensitive personal information has sparked significant attention to the prob- lems with privacy protection in the United States. Currently, the pri- vacy protections in the United States are riddled with gaps and weak spots. Although most industrialized nations have comprehensive data protection laws, the United States has maintained a sectoral approach where certain industries are covered and others are not. In particular, emerging companies known as “commercial data brokers” have fre- quently slipped through the cracks of U.S. privacy law. In this article, the authors propose a Model Privacy Regime to address the problems in the privacy protection in the United States, with a particular focus on commercial data brokers. Since the United States is unlikely to shift radically from its sectoral approach to a comprehensive data protection regime, the Model Regime aims to patch up the holes in ex- isting privacy regulation and improve and extend it. -
Ultrasound-Based Cross-Device Tracking
Vasilios Mavroudis*, Shuang Hao, Yanick Fratantonio, Federico Maggi, Christopher Kruegel, and Giovanni Vigna On the Privacy and Security of the Ultrasound Ecosystem Abstract: Nowadays users often possess a variety of elec- Keywords: Ultrasounds, Deanonymization, tronic devices for communication and entertainment. In Privacy Violation, Cross-device Linking. particular, smartphones are playing an increasingly central role in users’ lives: Users carry them everywhere they go and often use them to control other devices. This trend pro- vides incentives for the industry to tackle new challenges, 1 Introduction such as cross-device authentication, and to develop new monetization schemes. A new technology based on ultra- Modern users have been increasingly relying on multi- sounds has recently emerged to meet these demands. Ul- ple devices and frequently switch between them in their trasound technology has a number of desirable features: it daily lives: Browsing the Internet from computers, playing is easy to deploy, flexible, and inaudible by humans. This mobile games on tablets, or watching shows on televi- technology is already utilized in a number of different real- sions. A recent survey has shown that a single user carries world applications, such as device pairing, proximity detec- 2.9 electronic devices on average [44]. Among the others, tion, and cross-device tracking. smartphones play a prominent role since users carry them This paper examines the different facets of ultrasound- everywhere they go, and they are often used to control based technology. Initially, we discuss how it is already used other devices. The trend of engaging with multiple digital in the real world, and subsequently examine this emerging platforms brought to the demand for new technologies to technology from the privacy and security perspectives. -
Cross-Device Tracking: Measurement and Disclosures
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies ; 2017 (2):113–128 Justin Brookman, Phoebe Rouge, Aaron Alva, and Christina Yeung Cross-Device Tracking: Measurement and Disclosures Abstract: Internet advertising and analytics technology share common attributes — such as the same lo- companies are increasingly trying to find ways to link cal network and IP address — those services may behavior across the various devices consumers own. This be able to correlate user activity across devices. In cross-device tracking can provide a more complete view visiting 100 sites on two virtual devices, we con- into a consumer’s behavior and can be valuable for a nected to 861 different third party domains on both range of purposes, including ad targeting, research, and devices, including domains operated by dedicated conversion attribution. However, consumers may not be cross-device tracking companies. aware of how and how often their behavior is tracked – 96 out of 100 of the sites we tested allowed con- across different devices. We designed this study to try sumers to submit a username or email address that to assess what information about cross-device tracking could be shared to correlate users across devices. (including data flows and policy disclosures) is observ- – Six companies that collect login information as a able from the perspective of the end user. Our paper first party also collect extensive behavioral data as demonstrates how data that is routinely collected and a third party on other websites. shared online could be used by online third parties to – 16 out of 100 sites shared personally identifying in- track consumers across devices. -
The Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Privacy in the Coming Decade
University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Departmental Papers (ASC) Annenberg School for Communication 2007 The Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Privacy in the Coming Decade Joseph Turow University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Chris Hoofnagle UC Berkeley School of Law, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology Deirdre K. Mlligan Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic and the Clinical Program at the Boalt Hall School of Law Nathaniel Good School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley Jens Grossklags School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation (OVERRIDE) Turow, J., Hoofnagle, C., Mulligan, D., Good, N., and Grossklags, J. (2007-08). The Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Privacy in the Coming Decade, I/S: A Journal Of Law And Policy For The Information Society, 724-749. This article originally appeared as a paper presented under the same title at the Federal Trade Commission Tech- ade Workshop on November 8, 2006. The version published here contains additional information collected during a 2007 survey. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/520 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Privacy in the Coming Decade Abstract The large majority of consumers believe that the term “privacy policy” describes a baseline level of information practices that protect their privacy. In short, “privacy,” like “free” before it, has taken on a normative meaning in the marketplace. When consumers see the term “privacy policy,” they believe that their personal information will be protected in specific ways; in particular, they assume that a website that advertises a privacy policy will not share their personal information. -
Zero-Permission Acoustic Cross-Device Tracking
Zero-Permission Acoustic Cross-Device Tracking Nikolay Matyunin Jakub Szefer Stefan Katzenbeisser Technical University of Darmstadt, CYSEC Yale University Technical University of Darmstadt, CYSEC Darmstadt, Germany New Haven, CT, USA Darmstadt, Germany [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract—Adversaries today can embed tracking identifiers and detect them in a mobile application to show location- into ultrasonic sound and covertly transmit them between de- relevant content. The company Silverpush developed means of vices without users realizing that this is happening. To prevent embedding tracking identifiers into TV streams. Meanwhile, such emerging privacy risks, mobile applications now require a request for an explicit user permission, at run-time, to get researchers [4] demonstrated how the uXDT technology can access to a device’s microphone. In this paper, however, we be used for web-tracking purposes, e.g., for transmitting a show that current defenses are not enough. We introduce a tracking ID from the Tor browser to an application on the novel approach to acoustic cross-device tracking, which does not user’s smartphone in order to de-anonymize the web session. require microphone access, but instead exploits the susceptibility Due to privacy concerns, uXDT technology raised the atten- of MEMS gyroscopes to acoustic vibrations at specific (ultrasonic) frequencies. Currently, no permissions are needed to access the tion of public media [5] and the security community [4], [6]. gyroscope’s data, and the gyroscope can be accessed from apps or In response, the Federal Trade Commission issued warning even from a web browser. -
Recommendations for Businesses and Policymakers Ftc Report March 2012
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BUSINESSES AND POLICYMAKERS FTC REPORT FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION | MARCH 2012 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BUSINESSES AND POLICYMAKERS FTC REPORT MARCH 2012 CONTENTS Executive Summary . i Final FTC Privacy Framework and Implementation Recommendations . vii I . Introduction . 1 II . Background . 2 A. FTC Roundtables and Preliminary Staff Report .......................................2 B. Department of Commerce Privacy Initiatives .........................................3 C. Legislative Proposals and Efforts by Stakeholders ......................................4 1. Do Not Track ..............................................................4 2. Other Privacy Initiatives ......................................................5 III . Main Themes From Commenters . 7 A. Articulation of Privacy Harms ....................................................7 B. Global Interoperability ..........................................................9 C. Legislation to Augment Self-Regulatory Efforts ......................................11 IV . Privacy Framework . 15 A. Scope ......................................................................15 1. Companies Should Comply with the Framework Unless They Handle Only Limited Amounts of Non-Sensitive Data that is Not Shared with Third Parties. .................15 2. The Framework Sets Forth Best Practices and Can Work in Tandem with Existing Privacy and Security Statutes. .................................................16 3. The Framework Applies to Offline As Well As Online Data. .........................17 -
Considerations for Comprehensive State Privacy Proposals
Considerations for Comprehensive State Privacy Proposals March 2020 Privacy is essential to kids’ safety and well-being, in the home, at school, and in our communities.1 Common Sense Media, and its policy arm Common Sense Kids Action (together, “Common Sense”), has been active in advancing kids’ and families’ privacy rights at the state and federal level over the last two decades from student privacy protections to updates to the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), to co-sponsoring the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”). States are considering a variety of different privacy protections to student privacy rules, safeguards for connected toys, and restrictions on facial recognition. As states consider comprehensive privacy protections, Common Sense recommends that state proposals: 1. Include strong and clear definitions of what personal data is covered and how it can be de-identified; 2. Explain how companies collect, use, and share data in terms parents and kids can understand and provide easy mechanisms to access, delete, and move data; 3. Restrict secondary uses of information and mandate data minimization requirements; 4. Limit data disclosures to unknown third parties and business affiliates; 5. Include additional protections to safeguard the personal data of vulnerable children and teens, such as prohibitions on behavioral advertising and third-party disclosure; 6. Ensure any affirmative obligation on families or individuals to opt-out to protect their privacy be easy to effectuate and easily understandable and accessible; 7. Avoid overbroad and unnecessary exceptions for businesses who may be covered, usually only in part, by federal laws like COPPA; 8. Carefully consider what privacy and security requirements, if any, small businesses should be exempt from following; 9. -
Designing for Consent Articles
162 EuCML · Issue 4/2018 Hoofnagle, Designing for Consent Articles Chris Jay Hoofnagle* Designing for Consent While the General Data Protection Regulation leans away Rather than rehash those debates, this paper focuses on from consent as a mechanism to justify the collection and the reality that consent is still a central approach in the use of personal data, consent remains a prime mechanism U. S. context. In fact, consent seems to be increasing in for protecting privacy and limiting marketing in the Uni- importance, as firms need to rely on some form of user ted States (U. S.). This article summarizes the difficulties authorization to embed tracking in highly-private spaces. businesses face in gaining high-quality consent and sets For instance, the rise of voice-assistant appliances (Apple’s out the different consent standards in U. S. statutory law. HomePod, Google Home and Amazon Alexa) means that In an exploratory effort, it then shows how companies consumers are putting internet-connected microphones in have designed consent experiences for particularly priv- their private homes – indeed even in their bedrooms. acy-invasive devices – home voice assistants and “smart” Similar surveillance capacity is now present in many televisions – through testing and documentation of their “smart” televisions. Part 2 of this article introduces the function. The article then explains the quality of consent idea of “quality of consent” in U. S. law. Part 3 then that U. S. law demands in different contexts, and eluci- explains how U. S. statutory law regulates in-home voice dates the limits of consent as a privacy tool in light of assistants and smart televisions with consent of varying the kinds of information-intensive devices that consumers quality. -
Chris Hoofnagle HOW the FAIR CREDIT REPORTING ACT REGULATES BIG DATA
From: Chris Jay Hoofnagle To: Privacyrfc2014 Subject: Comments on PCAST Report Date: Monday, August 04, 2014 9:46:18 PM Attachments: LEGAL-Hoofnagle-How-FCRA-Regulates-Big-Data.pdf ATT00001..htm Dear NTIA, I submit the attached paper that responds to several of the questions raised in your request for comments concerning the PCAST report. My comment focuses on problems in use regulation approaches in privacy law. Generally speaking, use regulations are very difficult to enforce. I can say this from years in experience in being involved in consumer privacy lawsuits concerning data practices. First, companies often do not have access controls and cannot even identify the employees who had access to customer data. Thus, they cannot even tell how data were used. Second, once data is in the possession of a company, it can raise first amendment defenses to use regulations. These defenses would not apply to collection limitation rules. Thus, use regulations would always have to satisfy at least intermediate scrutiny. Third, the PCAST report introduces a new loophole to use regulations: “analysis” is not considered a use. This introduces a new defense, creating a new hurdle for wronged consumers who are trying to protect their privacy rights. It also makes little sense because citizens would be offended by many kinds of analysis that is not implemented as a use. For instance, Edward Snowden alleged that NSA employees were passing around sexually-explicit pictures of individuals that were captured by the agency. Was this a use or an analysis? If it is just an analysis because the data were not used to make an agency decision, does that lessen the privacy invasion? Finally, the attached paper discusses what use regulations have meant for the citizen in the context of credit reporting.