Privacy & Cybersecurity

Facebook does it. Google does it. It's everywhere in the mobile ad ecosystem. And your smartphone does it more often than you know, according to a study released on Monday by Carnegie Mellon.

The Federal Communications Commission’s (“FCC”) net neutrality proceeding culminated this month with the release of an Order reclassifying broadband Internet access service as a common carrier Telecommunications Service subject to regulation under Title II of the Communications Act.

On Friday, the FTC published updates to the COPPA FAQs, the Commission’s compliance guide for businesses and consumers, to address the applicability of COPPA and the Amended COPPA Rule to educational institutions and businesses that provide online services, including mobile apps, to educational institutions.

If you've been following the our sister blog, Employment Matters, then you will understand the headline. If you have not, you should click over there and check out the tournament action on a Friday afternoon while you are ... streaming some other things.

On March 18, 2015 – just three months after denial of a motion to dismiss consumer claims arising from Target’s 2013 data breach – Target and the consumer class filed papers seeking approval of a settlement. The proposed settlement agreement creates a $10 million cash fund to be paid out to class members claiming actual damages arising from the settlement.

Taking another “step” toward developing comprehensive privacy legislation, the White House has released a discussion draft of the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2015. 

While we're not in the habit of driving traffic to other blogs, it is always a pleasure to point to one of our Mintz family of blogs doing some great work -- the Employment Law Matters blog is hosting  a 2015 Employment Law Issues Tournament to go along with your college basketball brackets.

The draft Data Protection Regulation doesn’t offer many carrots to business – and a recent announcement by the Council of the European Union takes away one of the biggest carrots, the “One-Stop Shop” mechanism.

The third presentation in our popular Wednesday Webinar series is coming up on Wednesday, March 25th. Our presenters, Jonathan Cain and Paul Pelletier,  will offer practical advice about responding to data theft and disclosure by employees and former employees.

State legislatures are not waiting for Congressional action on a national data breach notification standard.

Welcome to March (and in the Northeast, the arrival of meteorological spring is welcome indeed......)
We start this month with a question:  Have you looked at your cyber resilience?

Our 2015 monthly Privacy Issues Wednesday webinar series continued this month with Jennifer Rubin and Gauri Punjabi's Privacy in the Workplace presentation.

These days most employers manage a vast amount of electronic information about their employees, including the employees’ personal identifying information. But, what obligations do employers have to unionized employees with respect to managing that information and bargaining with them in the event of a breach of their private information?

In a recently-released Form 8-K filing announcing fourth quarter and year-end financial results, Target Corporation reported that expenses incurred in 2014 relating to its 2013 data breach totaled over $191 million.

Google made good on the rumors and the company’s subsequent promise last December to create a family-friendly version of its popular YouTube service with its launch on Monday of the YouTube Kids app.

It's another Privacy Monday!
Privacy in the Workplace Webinar

President Obama's February 13 Executive Order, "Promoting Private Sector Cybersecurity Information Sharing" (the "EO"), turns out to be light on new measures to improve cybersecurity, but focused heavily on adjustments to prior Executive Orders implementing the rules for handling classified information. 

The Mintz Levin Privacy & Data Security Team invites you to register and join us at two upcoming events:

Eager to retain its spot among the principal laboratories for domestic privacy legislation, California’s legislature is set to debate Senate Bill 178, legislation restricting state law enforcement agencies from requesting data without a warrant.

The New York State Department of Financial Services (the “Department”) recently released a “Report on Cyber Security in the Insurance Sector” (the “Report”). The Report was released on February 8, 2015,  just four days after Anthem first reported the breach of its database estimated to contain as many as 80 million customer records.