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On September 18, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted technology trade association NetChoice, LLC’s request for a Preliminary Injunction in NetChoice LLC v. Bonta, a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (CAADCA), which the California Legislature passed last year. In granting the Preliminary Injunction, the court found that the law’s restrictions on commercial speech likely violate the First Amendment. 

Drawing inspiration from the UK Age-Appropriate Design Code, the CAADCA regulates covered businesses and their practices with respect to the collection, storage, and processing of personal data collected from children under the age of 18. CAADCA requires that the most restrictive default privacy settings be implemented for younger users and that any community standards, terms of service, and privacy settings be freely accessible and enforced. Following the September 18 ruling, the future of the CAADCA is uncertain. At the very least, the CAADCA is unlikely to be enforced on its intended effective date of July 1, 2024, as the injunction remains in place throughout the course of litigation.…

Continue Reading Pumping the Brakes: Federal Judge Grants Preliminary Injunction Blocking California Children’s Digital Privacy Law From Taking Effect

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

Over the past year, there has been a growing number of lawsuits, including class actions, filed against website operators in various states (including California, Florida, Illinois, and Pennsylvania) for violations of state wiretapping laws or the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (“VPPA”).…

Continue Reading Heads Up!  Increasing Litigation Related to Website Technology & Data Sharing

With March’s arrival and spring around the corner, now it is the perfect time to start getting in shape for the changing privacy law landscape in the United States.  As we have written in the past year, three states will be implementing new or updates to privacy laws in their respective jurisdictions:

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Continue Reading March into Planning for 2023’s U.S. Privacy Laws

With the recent shift to a remote or hybrid workplace and advancements in technology, there are increased privacy concerns for employee information as well as employer liability for data breaches. There are important legal concerns for employers to understand about employee privacy issues. In addition, companies must have a plan to safeguard company and employee data and minimize the risk of a data breach.

Join Taft Law on July 28 at 12:00 pm ET for a discussion of the practical…
Continue Reading Webinar – Face the Facts: Getting Smart About Employee Privacy and Data Security

Last month we discussed California’s Proposition 24, called the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”), and that California voters approved the CPRA on November 3, 2020.  The CPRA amends the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), which the final regulations of the CCPA were only recently approved by Attorney General Xavier Becerra in August, 2020. The CPRA makes a few substantial changes to the CCPA, such as additional rights to consumers, additional obligations on businesses that apply to the CPRA, an increased focus on “sharing” information for behavioral advertising, and the creation of a new governing entity to enforce the CPRA. The CPRA is set to become effective on January 1, 2023.  Until then, the CCPA will remain in full force and effect. …
Continue Reading Meet the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA): California Voters Approve Additional Consumer Rights and Business Obligations

In the midst of an unprecedented presidential campaign, you might have missed that California’s Proposition 24, also called the California Privacy Act (CPRA), was poised to amend the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) a mere three months after Attorney General Xavier Becerra approved the final regulations for the CCPA.

On November 3, California voters approved the CPRA by a count of 56% (YES) to 44% (No). In July, we discussed the CPRA’s proposed changes to the CCPA, such as…
Continue Reading California Voters Approve California Consumer Privacy Act; Amendments to CCPA

In a surprising turn of events, the Brazilian Senate has revised executive order MP 959/2020 to remove the delayed effective date of Brazil’s General Personal Data Protection Law (“Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados” or “LGPD”). As we previously discussed in Taft’s Privacy & Data Security Insights blog, Brazil had originally delayed the implementation of LGPD to have an effective date of January 2021. However, during a remote session on August 26, 2020, the Brazilian Senate rejected the proposed delay…
Continue Reading Brazil’s Plot Twist: Data Protection Law Is Here Despite Previous Postponement

Since we originally posted this content to Taft Privacy & Data Security Insights, the governor of California has since signed AB1281, extending the exemptions for employee personal information and that of business contacts until January 2022.  This deadline may be extended again, should voters choose the CPRA, as discussed below.

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An important development on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) front occurred as many of us enjoyed the last days of summer and readied for the Labor…
Continue Reading A little relief? CCPA exemptions for employee and business contact information likely to be extended to 2022 (or beyond)

Thank you, reader, for taking time out of your day to read this blog post. I trust before clicking on this link you first sought out our website’s Privacy Policy and reviewed it in full, took mental notes while silently nodding throughout, and finished with an audible “I agree” before moving on to review this content. Correct?

Very likely you did not, but take solace in knowing you are in good company. Only 22% of Americans report “often” or “always” reading online privacy policies, and that’s solely for websites which require browsers to affirmatively agree to a privacy policy (i.e., flashing a pop-up with some form of “check the box” affirmation). This does not engender much confidence that Americans are actively seeking out and consenting to the privacy policies embedded within the myriad of websites they visit on a daily basis. And who can blame them – a 2008 study estimated it would take 244 hours each year to read every privacy policy in full for all the websites an average web browser visited annually. So put down your summer beach novel and start reading privacy policies – you’re already 10 weeks behind.

All kidding aside, this is a real problem for the United States’ federal data privacy legal framework, which is guided in part upon the Federal Trade Commission’s Fair Information Practice Principles. Notably, those include (i) consumer notice and awareness (“Consumers should be given notice of an entity’s information practices before any personal information is collected from them”), and (ii) consumer choice and consent (“In order to be effective, any choice regime should provide a simple and easily-accessible way for consumers to exercise their choice”). If the vast majority of websites utilize privacy policies which consumers are willfully ignoring or otherwise failing to recognize the existence of, much less comprehending their contents, how can one reasonably claim consumers are “on notice and aware” of privacy policies and exercising real “choice and consent” to the management of their personal data?
Continue Reading You Read the Privacy Policy, Right? Sure You Did. A New Federal Bill Seeks to Address the Transparency Gap.