Privacy Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week, in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching the title or clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Businesses are working toward compliance with Maryland’s comprehensive privacy law, despite its differences with 19 other states' comprehensive privacy laws, two McNees privacy attorneys said in an interview with Privacy Daily on Monday. Devin Chwastyk, who co-chairs the firm’s privacy and data security group, predicted “the phone will start ringing with more vigor” as the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act’s April 1 “enforcement deadline approaches.” In addition, he said MODPA may signal the end of “cookie-cutter” state privacy bills.
A federal court permanently blocked a Louisiana law that would require age verification before a user could access social media platforms Monday, ruling that it violated the First Amendment. The decision Monday was a win for NetChoice, which sued the state over the statute in March claiming free speech violations and privacy risks (see 2503180048).
Some supported a Texas app store age-verification law, while others criticized its constitutionality and regulatory hurdles in amicus briefs filed last week at the U.S. District Court for Western Texas (case 1:25-cv-01660).
The U.S. government, CTIA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agreed in filings at the U.S. Supreme Court that justices should resolve a circuit split over whether the FCC properly handed down fines against AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile for violating the agency's data privacy rules. AT&T, which won its case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, had also urged SCOTUS to resolve the split (see 2512050055). Briefs were filed last week in docket 25-567.
President Donald Trump can’t block state AI regulation through executive order, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Monday. A top tech advisor for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) backed DeSantis’ comments, saying the EO "doesn't actually do anything in terms of affecting” state laws.
Introducing privacy to young children may help empower them to continue to assert their right to it as they grow older, author and academic Lorrie Cranor told Privacy Daily in an interview. A professor of security and privacy technologies at Carnegie Mellon, Cranor recently wrote a children's book, Privacy, Please!
Most proposed changes to the GDPR in the European Commission's digital omnibus package would, if approved, diverge in some respects from U.K. data protection law, Stephenson Harwood data protection attorneys said in a Nov. 27 analysis that assessed how the 10 key proposed GDPR changes compare with U.K. law. However, they are unlikely to affect either side's data transfer adequacy decisions, said Hogan Lovells privacy lawyer Eduardo Ustaran.
President Donald Trump’s AI executive order late Thursday drew backlash from Democrats and Republicans -- as well as applause from tech industry groups and Capitol Hill advocates trying to avoid a patchwork of state AI regulations.
Privacy professionals expected more states to enact comprehensive privacy laws this year, but none of the bills introduced this year crossed the finish line, they said Thursday on a TrustArc webinar. Instead, states passed narrowly tailored privacy legislation or amendments to existing laws. In addition, several court decisions and enforcement actions drilled deep into top privacy issues, the privacy pros said.