On May 11, 2023, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed the Tennessee Information Protection Act (the “TIPA”) into law. Tennessee is now the eighth state to enact a comprehensive privacy law, joining California, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Utah, and Virginia. The TIPA is set to go into effect on July 1, 2025.
Continue Reading State Number Eight: Tennessee Becomes Eighth State to Enact Privacy Law
On May 3, 2023, Utah’s Online Pornography Viewing Age Requirements Act (the “Act”) went into effect. The Act states that website operators must require internet users to prove they are eighteen years of age or older through a “digitized identification card” or third-party age-verification service when accessing websites containing “pornography or other materials harmful to minors.” In other words, to access adult websites in Utah, users must either upload their driver’s license (or other state-issued identification) or subject themselves to third-party age verification through tools such as biometric scanning. Simply clicking “I am 18 or older” is no longer sufficient with this legislation; an individual must now give personally identifiable information, including in some cases, a biometric face scan.
Continue Reading Porn, Privacy & Protecting Kids: States Seek to Balance Individual Rights and Business Interests in New Online Age Verification Laws
As we previously covered in February, there has been an increase in lawsuits, including class actions, filed against website operators in various states (including California, Florida, Indiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania) for violations of state wiretapping laws or the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (VPPA). Since then, there have been some updates to such pending litigation. For purposes of this post, the pending litigation can be broken out into three categories: (1) Chat window wiretapping claims; (2) Session replay technology claims; and (3) claims under the VPPA.
Continue Reading UPDATE: Litigation Related to Website Technology & Data Sharing
In our previous post, “A Primer on Artificial Intelligence and the Law in 2023,” we briefly discussed how the federal government is preparing for legislation and regulation regarding Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) through provisions of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020 (the “Act”). While no comprehensive federal statute regulating AI has been signed into law, regulatory agencies must contend with the emerging technology under existing laws.
Continue Reading Artificial Intelligence: U.S. Federal Considerations
This month, Indiana passed its own privacy bill, Senate Bill 5 (“SB 5”) for consumer data protection. SB 5 is now awaiting signature from Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb. Once signed into law, Indiana will be the seventh state in the nation to enact a comprehensive privacy law. With a later effective date of January 1, 2026, SB 5 maintains the status-quo and largely follows the six other states with privacy laws (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Utah, and Virginia). Following is a high level overview of the key provisions of SB 5.
Continue Reading Up Next, the Crossroads of America: Indiana Positioned as 7th State to Join Privacy Party
Recently, the California Office of Administrative Law approved the California Privacy Protection Agency’s (CPPA) long-awaited final regulations (“Regulations”). While there are many rules businesses need to ensure they comply with, this article focuses on the CPPA’s enforcement action and the role the Agency will play in interacting with companies moving forward.
Continue Reading CPPA Final Regulations Are Here
As expected, another state has joined the privacy party. This month, Iowa positioned itself to become the sixth state in the nation to pass legislation establishing consumer data privacy protections. Iowa Senate File 262 (the “SF 262”) unanimously passed in the Iowa House and Senate and is now awaiting signature by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. When signed into law, SF 262 will become effective on January 1, 2025. The new SF 262 mirrors many of the protections and rights provided in the data privacy laws of the five other states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and Virginia). Below are the key highlights that businesses should know about the bill.
Continue Reading Six down, 44 to go? Iowa Joins Privacy Party by Passing New Privacy Law
Since China’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) took effect in 2021, companies doing business in mainland China have questioned what is required of them when transferring personal information in and out of the country. Taft pondered this very question in our earlier blog post, ‘Data Transfers and Beyond: China Moves Closer to Finalizing Draft Provisions Permitting the Transfer of Personal Data Abroad.’ Last month, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) provided its long-awaited answer, by issuing its final version of the measures of the standard contact for cross-border transfer of personal information (Final Measures), along with a standard contractual clauses equivalent (PIPL SCCs). Similar to the EU SCCs or UK international data transfer agreement (IDTA), the PIPL SCCs allow companies to freely import and export data from China. Here is what companies should know about this new Chinese transfer mechanism:
Continue Reading The Wait is Over: Cyberspace Administration of China Releases Model Contract for Data Transfers
For companies doing business with the Department of Defense (DoD), the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) has been a source of confusion for nearly five years. Originally, November 30, 2020, was the deadline for DoD to implement a standard methodology for assessing DoD contractor compliance with security requirements in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-171. Concurrently, the DoD would roll out CMMC as a certification process designed to measure a company’s maturity and institutionalization of cybersecurity practices and processes. This certification, in turn, would be required for performance of DoD contracts.
Continue Reading CMMC – Where Do We Stand in 2023?
A few months ago we wrote about the proposed draft rules for the Colorado Privacy Act (CPA) (“draft rules”). Since then, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office has published two updated versions of the draft rules. The third and latest version of the proposed draft CPA rules was published on January 27, 2023 and the comment period for this version ended on February 3, 2023. Below is a brief high-level overview of some of the key changes made in the past two revisions of the draft rules.
Continue Reading Colorado Privacy Act Update: Colorado AG Issues Updated Draft Rules