The Nexus of 2024

Author: jon

  • Privacy News: September 1

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    Today’s experiment: more top-level topics, less analysis.  Thoughts? Surveillance-industrial complex Tech tool offers police ‘mass surveillance on a budget’ Garance Burke and Jason Dearen on Associated Press (apnews.com) Local law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina have been using Fog Reveal, an obscure cellphone tracking tool, at times without search warrants,…

  • ADPPA’s data minimization and duty of loyalty: a deep dive

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    One of ADPPA’s strong points is its focus on data minimization.  This principle has been a bedrock of privacy law as one of the Fair Information Practices since the 1970s, and is also included in Europe’s GDPR and California’s CPRA. ADPPA complements data minimization with a “duty of loyalty”, a powerful and relatively-recent innovation in…

  • Let’s talk about the elephant: how well does ADPPA protect against post-Roe threats?

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    Last updated December 16.  See update log at the bottom. As Danielle Keats Citron discusses in The End of Roe Means We Need a New Civil Right to Privacy, the Supreme Court’s recent decision allowing states to criminalize abortion highlights the stakes of online privacy.  In response, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-introduced the My Body My…

  • Privacy News: August 29

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    Getting the week off to a good start! Sephora to pay $1.2m to settle California privacy law claims Jessica Lyons Hardcastle, The Register (theregister.com) Sephora failed to disclose to consumers that it was selling their personal information, and failed to process user requests to opt out of sale via user-enabled global privacy controls in violation…

  • ADPPA’s algorithmic impact assessments are too weak to protect civil rights — but it’s not too late to strengthen them

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    A covered entity or a service provider may not collect, process, or transfer covered data in a manner that discriminates or otherwise makes unavailable the equal enjoyment of goods or services on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex or disability. – American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADDPA) Section 207(a) Civil rights…

  • Privacy News: August 22

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    A range of stories to start the week off … Birthing Predictions of Premature Death J. Khadijah Abdurahman on Logic Magazine (logicmag.io) Logic Magazine’s incoming editor takes a powerful in-depth look at how family policing (aka “child welfare”) became data-driven – and the horrific implications. Every aspect of interacting with the various institutions that monitored…

  • Privacy News: August 19

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    Trying something different today and including short descriptions with the links. If you’ve got thoughts on this format – or anything else – please send feedback to newsletter-feedback {at} thenexus {dot} today   Also, a new section on student privacy! Student privacy A Tool That Monitors How Long Kids Are in the Bathroom Is Now…

  • Queer experience, privacy legislation, and other privacy News: August 18

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    As always, a lot going on! Hiding OUT: A Case for Queer Experiences Informing Data Privacy Laws Antoine Prince Albert III on Public Knowledge (publicknowledge.org) In a long, thought-provoking, and very timely piece, this article suggests The best way for any federal or state legislature to assure all consumers’ privacy is protected online is to…

  • Privacy News: August 15

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    Today’s top story is from right here in King County – home to Seattle, Microsoft, Amazon, and The Nexus of Privacy! How King County’s efforts to help at-risk students created a record that could jeopardize their privacy Daniel Gilbert on Seattle Times (seattletimes.com) King County’s Check Yourself questionnaire collecting students’ age, grade, race, language, gender…

  • FTC Rulemaking and more: Privacy News, August 12

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    FTC Explores Rules Cracking Down on Commercial Surveillance and Lax Data Security Practices the Premerger Notification Office Staff on Federal Trade Commission (ftc.gov) The FTC’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) starts a 60-day comment period, after which the FTC can then issue “trade regulation rules.”  As Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter explained during yesterday’s press conference,…

  • One out of six ain’t good: Five ways the American Data Privacy and Protection Act falls short

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    FIND OUT MORE: Prof. Daniel Solove moderated an excellent webinar on ADPPA Wednesday, August 10. Here’s our live-tweeting – or, if you prefer, in a single threadreaderapp page.   A lot of the discussion of the proposed American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) has focused on comparing it to California’s privacy law, generally viewed…

  • Privacy News August 9: StopShotspotter Week of Action and more

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    Tell ShotSpotter: Stop selling surveillance MPower Change on New Mode (act.newmode.net) Yesterday, the Stop Shotspotter coalition kicked off a National Week of Action against ShotSpotter, an audio surveillance company that is deployed in Black, Brown, and poor neighborhoods around the country and targets them for more policing. ShotSpotter technology regularly sends police, falsely expecting to…

  • The opportunity and the elephant: Federal Privacy Legislation Update, August 8

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    Even before June’s Supreme Court decision ending Roe, Congress was under a lot of pressure to act on privacy – a recent poll says 80% of Americans want them to act, thanks to a steady stream of reporting on data abuse by government agencies, ed tech companies exploiting kids personal data, sleazy surveillance-industrial companies like…

  • Privacy News: August 3

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    ‘This Is a Massive Loophole:’ Activists Slam ICE for Using LexisNexis Data to Target Undocumented Immigrants Mack DeGuerin on Gizmodo (gizmodo.com) A public hearing in Cook County Illinois explored the way ICE buys data from data brokers like LexisNexis that would normally be protected under local laws and uses it to  target undocumented immigrants. “This…

  • Privacy News: August 1

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    It’s been a while since the last Privacy News, and there’s a lot going on! Privacy After Roe These Companies Know You’re Pregnant—And They’re Not Keeping It Secret Shoshana Wodinsky and Kyle Barr, The A.V. Club on Gizmodo (gizmodo.com) Gizmodo identified 32 different brokers across the U.S. selling access to the unique mobile IDs from…

  • Is there an elephant in the Zoom room? CPPA says no to ADPPA preempting California law

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    It’s important to be crystal clear about who preemption serves, and who it harms: preemption privileges the needs of corporations over the needs of people. – Maya Morales, WA People’s Privacy, at the CPPA board meeting At yesterday’s special board meeting, the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) board voted unanimously to oppose the current version…

  • Comments at the CPPA Special Board Meeting on federal privacy legislation, including ADPPA

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    The California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) had a public special board meeting today to discuss the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA), a federal consumer privacy bill that would override California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA).  Pass the popcorn!   Here were my comments, more or less – I edited a bit on the fly,…

  • ADPPA Advances. But what about the elephant? Federal Privacy Legislation Update, July 26

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    As expected, the House Energy & Commerce Committee advanced the bipartisan, bicameral American Data Protection and Privacy Act (ADPPA) on a 53-2 vote. It’s the first time this century a consumer privacy protection bill has ever made it out of committee in Congress, so congrats to all involved!   ADPPA’s next step is a vote…

  • Privacy News: July 22

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    Privacy after Roe Democrats widen scrutiny of tech over abortion data privacy Marcy Gordon, Associated Press (apnews.com) In the aftermath of the Supreme Court, Congressional Democrats are pushing tech companies on their privacy policies. Six House Dems sent letters to Amazon, Oracle, Near Intelligence Holdings and Mobilewalla asks asking how the companies handle location data…

  • Privacy News: July 20

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    New Records Detail DHS Purchase and Use of Vast Quantities of Cell Phone Location Data | News & Commentary Shreya Tewari on American Civil Liberties Union (aclu.org) Thousands  previously unreleased records illustrate how CBP, ICE and other parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) get around the Fourth Amendment’s probhition of unreasonable government searches…