Cybersecurity & Privacy

  • March 18, 2024

    Apple Co-Founder's Scam Suit Against YouTube Gets New Life

    A California appeals court has revived Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's lawsuit accusing YouTube and its parent company, Google, of contributing to a cryptocurrency scam that fraudulently used his image, finding that the tech giants' provision of verification badges to corrupted channels could put them outside the scope of a federal tech liability shield law.

  • March 18, 2024

    Atty For Ex-Overstock CEO Admits Dominion Discovery Leaks

    A lawyer representing former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne against a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems admitted to a D.C. federal judge on Monday that she shared Dominion's discovery documents with law enforcement as Dominion's attorneys decried the leak as a flagrant violation of a court protective order.

  • March 18, 2024

    Meta Wants Emergency Stop Of FTC Privacy Tweaks

    Meta is seeking an immediate injunction to halt the Federal Trade Commission's changes to its 2020 settlement with the company, asking the D.C. Circuit to hear its appeal before the social media giant must respond to a show cause order on why the deal shouldn't be modified.

  • March 18, 2024

    Texas Hospital Loses Bid To Dismiss Patients' Hack Suit

    A Texas federal judge handed a win to the plaintiffs suing a hospital system in the aftermath of a hack that saw hundreds of patients' data pilfered, dismissing some of the claims in the proposed class action but allowing the suit to move forward after a hearing Monday.

  • March 18, 2024

    SEC's Grewal Defends 'Shadow Trading' Case Ahead Of Trial

    The enforcement director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday defended the agency's stance in a novel "shadow trading" case one week before it's set to go to trial, saying that while it's the first case of its kind, the underlying allegations aren't new.

  • March 18, 2024

    GOP Rep. Calls For Crackdown On EV Threats From China

    Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., a member of the House select committee on China's Communist Party and a U.S. Senate candidate, has asked the Commerce Department to investigate the imports of electronic vehicles and their components and the possible security threats to the United States from electronics from China.

  • March 18, 2024

    Vidal Tells PTAB To Try Defining 'Biometric Signal' Again

    The head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has thrown out decisions from the Patent Trial and Trademark Board that found Assa Abloy was unable to show two biometric patents were unpatentable, saying the PTAB used a definition of a critical term that wasn't proposed by Assa Abloy or the patent owner.

  • March 18, 2024

    Amazon Again Tries To Sink NBA 2K Facial Scan Claims

    Amazon is insisting it did not run afoul of Illinois' biometric privacy law, saying an amended complaint in a proposed class action in Washington federal court has failed to show the e-commerce company's cloud service collected or disclosed facial scans of teens playing the hit game NBA 2K.

  • March 18, 2024

    Voyager Investors Suing Mark Cuban Seek Class Cert.

    Investors suing billionaire Mark Cuban over his role in promoting now-bankrupt Voyager Digital Ltd. have pushed for class certification and urged the court to rule that Voyager was selling unregistered securities.

  • March 18, 2024

    Apple Beats Most Claims In AirTag Stalking Suit, For Now

    A California federal judge has dismissed the majority of a proposed class action accusing Apple of not doing enough to safeguard its AirTag tracking device from being abused by stalkers, saying that apart from a few negligence and product liability claims under Golden State law, the rest need to be reworked.

  • March 18, 2024

    New York Magazine Urges Judge To Toss Reader Privacy Suit

    New York Magazine says it has too few Michigan-based subscribers for them to maintain a class action under a Michigan consumer privacy law, urging a judge to toss claims that it wrongfully disclosed readers' data to third parties.

  • March 18, 2024

    High Court Doubts Feds Coerced Social Media Cos.

    A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court appeared unconvinced Monday that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by working with social media platforms to combat the spread of misinformation, often chiding Louisiana's solicitor general for presenting confusing and overly expansive arguments.

  • March 18, 2024

    Conn. Judge Won't Halt Ex-Yale Student's Case After 'Doxxing'

    A Connecticut federal judge determined Monday that acquitted former Yale University student Saifullah Khan's decision to reveal his onetime sexual assault accuser's name on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, isn't fatal to a defamation lawsuit against the woman despite an anonymity order.

  • March 18, 2024

    Mass. Law Firm Can't Escape Ex-Client's Data Breach Case

    A small Massachusetts law firm will have to face an ex-client's proposed class action claiming it was negligent and failed to protect her and others' personal information from hackers who breached the firm's computers and stole data, a Boston federal judge has ruled.

  • March 18, 2024

    Google Defeats BIPA Suit Over IBM Face Dataset, For Now

    Google has defeated a proposed class action by Illinois residents who accused the company of violating the state's biometric privacy laws with facial data collected by IBM, after a California federal judge said their claims don't establish that Google's alleged violations took place in the Prairie State.

  • March 16, 2024

    Up Next At High Court: Gov't Jawboning & Retaliatory Arrests

    The U.S. Supreme Court has a packed oral arguments calendar this week that includes disputes over the Biden administration's work with social media companies to combat misinformation, the appropriate evidence standard for bringing retaliatory arrest claims and whether the federal government can object to a consent decree entered into by three states.

  • March 15, 2024

    Man Accused Of Cyberstalking NJ Judge Seeks Release

    A man representing himself after being indicted on allegations of cyberstalking a New Jersey judge urged a California federal judge on Friday to release him from custody pending trial, complaining he was initially charged with making threats against numerous officials, but the single cyberstalking count he now faces isn't cause to hold him.

  • March 15, 2024

    Google Wants Facebook Pact Kept Out Of Ad Tech Discovery

    Google urged a Texas federal judge on Friday to reject state-level enforcers' bid to lift a stay on discovery for documents related to a bidding agreement between Google and Facebook in the suit accusing the search giant of monopolizing key digital ad technology, saying the plaintiffs' antitrust claims based on the agreement have already been dismissed.

  • March 15, 2024

    FTC Inks $26M Deal With Two Cypriot Tech Scheme Cos.

    The Federal Trade Commission said it has reached a $26 million settlement in D.C. federal court with two Cyprus-based companies that it accuses of defrauding elderly consumers out of tens of millions of dollars in a tech support scam.

  • March 15, 2024

    Meta Can't Block FTC Plans To Stop Kids' Data Monetization

    Meta filed its second appeal Friday after suffering another D.C. federal court loss against proposed Federal Trade Commission tweaks to a $5 billion data privacy settlement meant to block its monetization of children's data.

  • March 15, 2024

    Roblox's Casino Games Are 'Preying On Children,' Suit Says

    Online game platform Roblox Corp. has been hit with another proposed class action suit in California federal court accusing it and other companies of "preying on children nationwide" through an "illegal gambling ecosystem" that specifically targets minors.

  • March 15, 2024

    Indian National Admits $6M Elder Tech Support Scam

    An Indian citizen pled guilty in New York federal court Friday to participating in a conspiracy to defraud elderly victims of more than $6 million through a telephone technical support scheme that infected their computers with malware.

  • March 15, 2024

    TikTok Wants 'Bad Copycat' Suit Over Editing App Tossed

    TikTok and ByteDance urged an Illinois federal judge to end a proposed class action alleging they secretly collect and profit from data gathered from users of its CapCut video-editing tool, arguing the plaintiffs voluntarily downloaded the app and granted it permission to access certain types of data. 

  • March 15, 2024

    Didi Can't Shake Investor Class Over Regulatory Disclosures

    A New York federal judge has ruled that Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc. cannot escape a class action suit claiming it misled investors about the risks of a disciplinary crackdown from the Chinese government over alleged data security violations, saying the risk disclosures Didi provided investors were insufficient.

  • March 15, 2024

    Cybersecurity Co. Co-Founder Must Face SEC Fraud Claims

    A New York federal judge determined that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has sufficiently alleged that the co-founder of a now-bankrupt cybersecurity company raked in over $6.2 million in ill-gotten gains by participating in a fraudulent securities scheme that defrauded investors of over $100 million.

Expert Analysis

  • What 2 Years Of Ukraine-Russia Conflict Can Teach Cos.

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    A few key legal lessons for the global business community since Russia's invasion of Ukraine could help protect global commerce in times of future conflict, including how to respond to disparate trade restrictions and sanctions, navigate war-related contract disputes, and protect against heightened cybersecurity risks, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • Cos. Seeking Cyber Coverage Can Look To Key Policy Terms

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    As cyberattacks increasingly threaten business operations, including one last month that partially paralyzed UnitedHealth's services, expanded interpretations of several key policy terms may allow affected companies to recover under cyber business interruption policies or other coverage, even if their business hasn't completely shut down, say attorneys at Kasowitz.

  • How AI May Be Used In Fintech Fraud — And Fraud Detection

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    Recent enforcement actions in the fintech and finance industries show that the government is increasingly pursuing fraud enabled by artificial intelligence — at the same time it’s using AI innovations to enforce regulations and investigate fraud, say attorneys at ArentFox Schiff.

  • Takeaways From Groundbreaking Data Transfer Order

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    A recent first-of-its-kind executive order and related proposed rulemaking lay the groundwork for important outbound U.S. data protections, but they may have unintended consequences related to the types of data and the subjects within their scope, say attorneys at Kirkland.

  • What Recent Study Shows About AI's Promise For Legal Tasks

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    Amid both skepticism and excitement about the promise of generative artificial intelligence in legal contexts, the first randomized controlled trial studying its impact on basic lawyering tasks shows mixed but promising results, and underscores the need for attorneys to proactively engage with AI, says Daniel Schwarcz at University of Minnesota Law School.

  • Innodata Suit Highlights 'AI Washing' Liability Risk For Cos.

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    A class action against software company Innodata over so-called AI washing, one of the first of its kind, underscores the litigation and enforcement risks that can arise from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's novel theory about misleading artificial intelligence capabilities, say attorneys at Bracewell.

  • For Now, Generative AI Is Risky For Class Action Counsel

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    Although a recent survey showed most in-house counsel think that their outside counsel should be using generative artificial intelligence "in some way" in class action work, the technology is more a target for class actions than it is a tool to be used in practice at present, says Matthew Allen at Carlton Fields.

  • Steps To Reduce CIPA Litigation Risks For Companies

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    As class action claims brought under the California Invasion of Privacy Act continue to advance new theories under an old law to target companies for commonplace website and app activities, there are steps that organizations can take to reduce exposure and strengthen their defenses against such lawsuits, say attorneys at Hintze Law.

  • Banks Should Continue To Prep For CFPB Data Rule Rollout

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    Consumer Financial Protection Bureau-supervised banks should not expect industry pressure to delay the rollout of proposed Section 1033 open banking rules, which regulate how consumer financial information flows between financial institutions, and prepare their required data access portals and compliance procedures now, say attorneys at Troutman Pepper.

  • Tips For Orgs Facing AI Data Privacy Compliance Challenges

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    Regulators around the world are actively seeking to enforce data privacy and consumer protection laws against companies providing artificial intelligence-related services, raising complex compliance questions in areas like transparency, data minimization, lawfulness of processing, data subject rights and higher risk activities, say attorneys at Hogan Lovells.

  • BIPA's Statutory Exemptions Post-Healthcare Ruling

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    The Illinois Supreme Court's November opinion in Mosby v. Ingalls Memorial Hospital, which held that the Biometric Information Privacy Act's healthcare exemption also applies when information is collected from healthcare workers, is a major win for healthcare defendants that resolves an important question of statutory interpretation, say attorneys at Quinn Emanuel.

  • Enforcement Risk Amid Increased Consumer Data Use

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    While no state has introduced a private right of action for noncompliance with a comprehensive consumer privacy law — except for the California Consumer Privacy Act's data breach provision — organizations and retailers face risk from enforcement actions by state attorneys general and privacy regulators, say attorneys at Dentons.

  • Business Litigators Have A Source Of Untapped Fulfillment

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    As increasing numbers of attorneys struggle with stress and mental health issues, business litigators can find protection against burnout by remembering their important role in society — because fulfillment in one’s work isn’t just reserved for public interest lawyers, say Bennett Rawicki and Peter Bigelow at Hilgers Graben.

  • Opinion

    The Problems In Calif. Draft Behavioral Ad Privacy Regs

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    The California Privacy Protection Agency has an opportunity with its automated decision-making technology and profiling rulemaking to harmonize California's regulation of data-driven advertising, but this will be a failure unless several things are changed in its proposed treatment of behavioral advertising, say Alan Friel and Kyle Fath at Squire Patton.

  • Series

    Skiing Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    A lifetime of skiing has helped me develop important professional skills, and taught me that embracing challenges with a spirit of adventure can allow lawyers to push boundaries, expand their capabilities and ultimately excel in their careers, says Andrea Przybysz at Tucker Ellis.

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