Lindsey Tonsager, Jenna Zhang, and Irene Kim of Covington and Burling summarize some recent bills signed into law. From their article: Companion Chatbots. Adam’s Law (SB 1119) requires operators of a “companion chatbot” to determine the age of users consistent with the Digital Age Assurance Act and imposes a series of obligations before making a...

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Suzanne Smalley reports: Privacy Commissioner of Canada Philippe Dufresne has launched a probe of IDScan.net in the wake of reports that a bad actor penetrated company databases to steal personal data and scans of 153 million people’s drivers’ licenses. IDScan.net’s technology is widely used by industry — particularly in the retail and hospitality sectors —...

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Brian O’Donovan reports: Tech giant Google has been fined €403m by the Data Protection Commission (DPC) over the processing of location data. Under data protection rules, such information must be processed in a lawful, fair and transparent manner. The DPC said that its investigation into Google found failures in this regard meaning that people could...

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Derek Kravitz reports: Nearly every time you buy something online or sign up for a loyalty program, you leave behind personal information that can be collected, shared, and sold among companies including advertisers, retailers, and data brokers. This kind of information is sometimes used to charge consumers more for a range of products and services,...

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Anthony Kimery reports: A relatively small U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contract has revealed unusually specific details about a little-known Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) program that centrally manages the agency’s nationwide location tracking operations. ICE awarded Ensurity Mobile Corp. a $135,000 sole-source purchase order last week for specialized devices for HSI’s Technical Operations unit....

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From Google Support: Introducing Home MCP: enabling your agent to interact with your home Calling all smart home tinkerers and enthusiasts, Today we are opening early access to Model Context Protocol (MCP) for Google Home, enabling AI Agents to safely interact with your Google Home. With Google Home MCP, any agent that supports calling MCP...

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Ashley Belanger reports: On Tuesday, two survivors of child sex abuse accused the Justice Department of failing to notify dozens of victims found in Jeffrey Epstein’s massive collection of child sex images. In a proposed class action, survivors explained that Epstein apparently started collecting child sex images in the 1990s, many of which the DOJ...

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Henry F. Fradella The Conversation, George Grispos, and Jihun Joun report: A husband in Taiwan suspected his wife of having an affair. In September 2023, he found a used toothbrush at their holiday home, and garage video showed an unfamiliar man driving his wife there. Three months later, he opened their robot vacuum’s app to...

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Yogev Toby reports: Meet the Instagram follower that may never stop looking at your feed: the Boston Police Department. The department this summer started using new artificial intelligence software that combs through social media looking for possible threats and information helpful to investigations, a city report revealed this week. The software, dubbed LifeRaft, offers tools...

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Samantha Rupe reports: The Center for Reproductive Rights has filed a lawsuit challenging Oklahoma abortion laws on behalf of two women who were denied abortion care after receiving fatal fetal diagnoses. Magon Hoffman and Sheena Hamlin said they were forced to leave Oklahoma to obtain care after learning their pregnancies would not result in surviving...

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Meghan O’Connor and Candice Andalia of Quarles write: California is drawing a hard line: artificial intelligence may schedule a therapy appointment, but it may not conduct one. Licensed professionals who allow AI to make independent therapeutic decisions, interact directly with patients, or detect emotions and mental states may face fines of up to $10,000 per...

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Jon Brodkin reports: The Boston city government abandoned Flock Safety’s license-plate reader cameras after the company shared data nationwide in violation of a contract provision, according to city officials. “We have actually abandoned Flock,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in her monthly “Ask the Mayor” segment on GBH News last week. Wu made the comment...

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Odia Kagan of FoxRothschild writes: If a user sets a privacy preference, an operating system or app cannot change that setting without the user’s explicit consent, says new bill, AB 2561, that passed the California legislature. A “Privacy setting” means any user-configurable option within an application’s privacy, or similarly labeled, menu that governs the application’s...

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Dan Cooper, Jadzia Pierce, Kristof Van Quathem, Atli Stannard, Anna Sophia Oberschelp de Meneses, Diego Bonomo, John Bowers, Sam Jungyun Choi, and Laura Schukraft of Covington and Burling write: In recent months, children’s online safety and privacy have moved to the top of the EU’s digital agenda. The European Commission is expected to outline its...

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Rindala Alajaji and Dave Maass write: Here’s a riddle: Why did a Goshen Police Department officer search 6,474 automated license plate reader (ALPR) networks, representing data from 82,413 cameras, on May 7, 2025? If your answer is “I don’t know,” it turns out you’re 100% correct. The officer left the letters “idk” in the search...

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September 14, 2026 Marks Largest Known Seizure of AI-Generated Celebrity Deepfake Websites To Date Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., today announced the Office’s seizure of 12 domain names of illegal websites used for unlawfully disseminating, publishing, and selling non-consensual celebrity “deepfake” videos. Individuals under investigation allegedly used artificial-intelligence (“AI”) image and video creation...

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Joseph J. Lazzarotti of JacksonLewis writes: On September 2, 2026, Delaware’s Governor signed House Bill (HB) 380 and HB 381. HB 380 amends the Delaware Personal Data Privacy Act (DPDPA), which was enacted in 2023 and became effective January 1, 2025. HB 381 separately amends Delaware’s computer security breach notification law. In short, what changes...

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AFP reports: Calls are growing louder in Europe for action against “pervert” smart glasses after secretly filmed footage of girls and women appeared online — with a petition in Britain demanding a ban on their sale. Anyone wearing smart glasses can take photos, film videos, listen to music, make phone calls, translate text or interact...

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Jason Parham reports: We’ve all been there. You meet someone new on a dating app, start to envision a life together, only to wonder: Is the person actually who they say they are? It’s an experience that has led many singles, sometimes out of concern or just genuine curiosity, to prescreen dates by tracing their...

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I’ve occasionally shared memories of that terrible day in September. And there is not a day that has gone by since then I don’t remember the 343 firefighters who lost their lives that day. To this day, I cannot think about their heroism or how firefighters Stephen Siller and Gary Box of Squad 1 ran...

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