Stetson Miller reports: The Supreme Court is set to hear a case on Monday that could determine if law enforcement’s use of geofence warrants violates the Fourth Amendment. The case was filed by a man named Okello Chatrie, who was convicted in a 2019 Virginia bank robbery after law enforcement obtained his digital location information...

Suzanne Smiley reports: The governor of Virginia on Monday signed a law banning the sale of citizens’ precise geolocation data, a sign of growing momentum for such laws at the state level. The legislation bars the sale of geolocation within a 1,750 foot radius, a buffer large enough to keep data brokers from pinpointing where...

Jude Joffe-Block of NPR reports: As Justice Department officials are working to acquire sensitive voter registration data from states and have recently disclosed a plan to share it with the Department of Homeland Security, a key privacy officer in DOJ’s division tasked with enforcing civil and voting rights laws has resigned. Kilian Kagle was the chief...

Joseph J. Lazzarotti of JacksonLewis writes: In May 2023, Florida enacted a significant change to its health data laws. Senate Bill 264 amended the Florida Electronic Health Records Exchange Act restricting where certain patient data can be stored and accessed. Codified at Section 408.051(3) of the Florida Electronic Health Records Exchange Act, the change mandates that:...

Suzanne Smalley reports: U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Thursday a new law will require tech companies to remove intimate images shared without consent within two days or face large fines and potentially have their services blocked. Victims should only need to report such images once, a press release from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology...

Martin Anderson reports: Even after hospitals strip out names and zip codes, modern AI can sometime still work out who patients are. Great news for insurance companies; not so much for healthcare recipients. New research from New York University finds that US patients’ medical notes, stripped of names and other HIPAA identifiers, can expose patients to re-identification....

As seen on Codamail (formerly known as Cotse.net), an email privacy service by Packetderm. The Scale of the Problem The EFF and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse have identified over 750 unique data broker groups operating across U.S. state registries alone. The California Data Broker Registry lists over 500 registered companies. The global data broker market was valued at...

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a settlement yesterday with Disney:  California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced a settlement with the Walt Disney Company (Disney), resolving allegations that the company violated the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) by failing to fully effectuate consumers’ requests to opt-out of the sale or sharing of their data across all devices and streaming services...

Cindy Cohn of EFF has announced a book that every privacy advocate and fan of EFF is going to want to read. Her post on LinkedIn: I’ve been writing a professional memoir called Privacy’s Defender about my work defending privacy online with EFF for the past 30 years. Welp, it’s finally ready for publication by...

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law recently posted the following announcement on LinkedIn: We are thrilled to announce the publication of the open access anthology “Conceptions of Data Protection and Privacy Legal and Philosophical Perspectives”, edited by Elisa Orrù and Ralf Poscher and published by Hart Publishing. The volume is...

Connor Jones reports: The Irish government is planning to bolster its police’s ability to intercept communications, including encrypted messages, and provide a legal basis for spyware use. The Communications (Interception and Lawful Access) Bill is being framed as a replacement for the current legislation that governs digital communication interception. The Department of Justice, Home Affairs,...

Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney report: The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether dragnet warrants that law enforcement uses to scoop up smartphone users’ location data are unconstitutional. So-called geofence warrants have become popular techniques for the FBI and local police in recent years due to the ubiquity of mobile devices, but critics say...

Joe Mullin of EFF writes: Government invasion of a reporter’s home, and seizure of journalistic materials, is exactly the kind of abuse of power the First Amendment is designed to prevent. It represents the most extreme form of press intimidation. Yet, that’s what happened on Wednesday morning to Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, when the FBI...