The modest fine of $56,000 that California Privacy Protection Agency’s (CalPrivacy) assessed against a company recently for failing to register as a data broker (see 2512030029) “may be the last penalty we see of this size,” said Dentons privacy attorney Dalton Cline, who sees several factors increasing monetary burdens on violators in the future.
Roblox's new safety features are the result of pressure from the states and may not actually reduce the harms to children that occur on the gaming platform, argued the Kentucky attorney general Wednesday in an op-ed for the New York Post.
The Department of Homeland Security has unlawfully made changes to a system containing the personal information of citizens and non-citizens that allows government agencies to check immigration status and enable voter roll purges, a coalition of advocacy groups said this week.
DOJ's filing of six lawsuits against states on Tuesday “escalate an unprecedented effort to collect sensitive voter information" from them in what is potentially a violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, Tim Harper, senior policy analyst of elections and democracy at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) told us. In a statement to Privacy Daily, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha (D) condemned the suits as the "weaponization" of the DOJ, which also sued California in September for refusing to give up its voter rolls (see 2512020022).
A federal court’s Nov. 24 decision to drop a case by the Texas attorney general challenging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the validity of the HIPAA Privacy Rule means the federal statute will remain as we know it, said Quarles & Brady lawyers in a Monday blog post.
The California attorney general’s $1.4 million settlement with mobile games company Jam City demonstrates that enforcers are focused on making opt-outs easy for consumers and that companies’ handling of teenagers’ data is important, said privacy lawyers in interviews and recent blog posts. It also shows that mobile apps -- not just websites -- are in regulators’ crosshairs, they said.
Days after the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced a lawsuit against the city of San Jose for using Flock Safety’s automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to conduct location searches without obtaining a warrant (see 2511190008), the organization released research on how the technology is used for surveillance.
A Nov. 6 joint settlement between three states and software company Illuminate Education over a data breach that exposed students' information highlights regulators' focus on protecting minors’ data, said privacy pros and an attorney in interviews. In addition, the incident and settlement show that no matter what sector a breach occurs in, the principles of information security are similar, the attorney said.
Election year 2026 could drive more headline-grabbing state privacy enforcement, said Womble Bond privacy attorney Tyler Bridegan in an interview with Privacy Daily. In general, state privacy enforcement seems to be at the "very beginning of the bell curve,” said Bridegan, who was recently director of privacy and tech enforcement for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R). Also, Bridegan praised Ryan Baasch, another alumnus of the Texas AG's office, who's expected to be nominated as an FTC commissioner by President Donald Trump.
The California Privacy Protection Agency (CalPrivacy) made clear in its Tractor Supply Co. investigation earlier this year that it “will litigate the scope and enforceability of its administrative subpoenas if needed,” ZwillGen’s Yiannis Vandris and two others from the law firm blogged Tuesday. However, legal questions persist about how far back the agency can look for violations, they said.