Socially Aware

October 13, 2015 - Data Security, Privacy
California Passes Four Bills Protecting Privacy Rights
By: Julie O'Neill
Last week was a big one for California’s privacy regime. In a landmark move, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law four bills further protecting Californians’ privacy rights: Three strengthen the state’s data breach notification statute and impose restrictions on operators of automated license plate
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October 07, 2015 - Privacy
ECJ Safe Harbor Opinion Has Implications for All Data Transfers Out of Europe
Yesterday the European Court of Justice (ECJ) followed the core of the Opinion of the Advocate General (AG) in Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner (Case No. C-362/14). In sum, the ECJ held that: 1. Member State Data Protection Authorities (DPA) must be allowed to:
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September 30, 2015 - Cyberbullying, Privacy, Ethics, Litigation
Status Updates: Court nixes VPPA claim; lawyer suspended over blog posts; Facebook ‘unfriending’ cited in bullying decision
By: Aaron P. Rubin
Tale of the tape. The Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which requires video service providers to destroy personally identifiable information after a specified time, doesn’t provide a private right of action for plaintiffs whose information was retained beyond that period. So held the U.S.
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July 17, 2015 - Privacy, Employment Law, Compliance
Employer Access to Employee Social Media: Applicant Screening, “Friend” Requests and Workplace Investigations
By: Melissa M. Crespo
A recent survey of hiring managers and human resource professionals reports that more than 43 percent of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates. This interest in social networking does not end when the candidate is hired: To the contrary, companies are seeking
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July 15, 2015 - Bankruptcy, Privacy
“Never Say Never”: Lessons From RadioShack’s Sale of Customer Information
When a bankrupt company’s most valuable assets include consumer information, a tension arises between bankruptcy policy aimed at maximizing asset value, on the one hand, and privacy laws designed to protect consumers’ personal information, on the other. Such tension played out recently in the
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July 07, 2015 - Internet of Things, Marketing, Privacy, Cloud Computing, Wearable Computers
Toward a Grand Unifying Theory of Today’s Tech Trends
As a technology law blogger and co-editor of Socially Aware , I monitor emerging developments in information technology. What’s hot in IT today? Any shortlist would have to include social media, mobile, wearable technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and big data.
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June 19, 2015 - Online Promotions, Marketing, Privacy
Digital Advertising Alliance Focuses on Mobile Ads
By: Julie O'Neill
As more users spend more time on their mobile devices, advertising dollars are following. And the compliance regime that governs interest-based advertising (IBA) (formerly referred to as online behavioral advertising or OBA) is expanding as well. (IBA is the collection of information about users’
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May 28, 2015 - First Amendment, Status Updates, Privacy
Status Updates: A Right To Be Forgotten Update; Errand Apps for Everyone?; Your Entire Google Search History
By: Aaron P. Rubin
Lest we forget. Established a year ago this month by a European Court of Justice decision , the right to be forgotten requires search engines like Google to comply with an individual’s request to remove “inadequate, irrelevant,” or “excessive” links that appear in search
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May 21, 2015 - FTC, Privacy
The FTC Weighs in on In-Store Tracking. Or Does It?
By: Julie O'Neill
In law school, everybody learns the adage that hard cases make bad law. When it comes to the Federal Trade Commission, a better aphorism might be, “easy cases make new law.” The FTC’s recent settlement with Nomi Technologies Inc. is, as the FTC’s press
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April 28, 2015 - First Amendment, Privacy, Defamation, Litigation
Court Protects Anonymity of Yelp Users
By: J. Alexander Lawrence
Virginia’s highest court recently held that Yelp could not be forced to turn over the identities of anonymous online reviewers that a Virginia carpet-cleaning owner claimed tarnished his business. In the summer of 2012, Joseph Hadeed, owner of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, sued seven anonymous Yelp
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