Invasion of Privacy

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Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California recently dismissed a putative class action lawsuit in which plaintiffs claimed they faced an imminent threat of future of harm in the form of identity theft and fraud because their personal information, specifically their driver’s license numbers, may have been compromised…

Last fall, the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) launched its Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative (“CCFI”) as part of its effort to “combat new and emerging cyber threats to the security of sensitive information and critical systems.” Led by the Civil Fraud Section of DOJ’s Commercial Litigation Branch, the CCFI leverages…

As reported last week, a state-sponsored hacker may have breached multiple U.S. government networks through a widely-used software product offered by SolarWinds. The compromised product, known as Orion, helps organizations manage their networks, servers, and networked devices. The hacker concealed malware inside a software update that, when installed, allowed the hacker to perform reconnaissance, elevate user privileges, move laterally into other environments and compromise the organization’s data.…

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), more commonly known as “Drones,” are soaring in popularity – the Federal Aviation Administration saw more than 300,000 drones registered in just the first 30 days since they introduced a registration system on December 21, 2015. Drones have the potential to be a truly transformative technology; they are already disrupting business models in economic sectors as diverse as shipping and photography, and their proliferation as consumer devices has barely begun to be realized. However, the quick adoption of this new technology raises serious issues of for privacy, civil rights and civil liberties.…

In April, Microsoft tried to quash a search warrant from law enforcement agents in the United States (U.S.) that asked the technology company to produce the contents of one of its customer’s emails stored on a server located in Dublin, Ireland. The magistrate court denied Microsoft’s challenge, and Microsoft appealed. On July 31st, the software giant presented its case in the Southern District of New York where it was dealt another loss.…

Last month, a federal district court in the Northern District of California issued an order that may affect the policies of any company that records telephone conversations with consumers.

The trouble began when plaintiff John Lofton began receiving calls from Collecto, Verizon’s third-party collections agency, on his cell phone.  The calls were made in error – Lofton did not owe Verizon any money because he wasn’t even a Verizon customer – but Lofton decided to take action when he discovered that Collecto had been recording its conversations with him without prior notice.  Lofton brought a class action against Verizon under California’s Invasion of Privacy Act, theorizing that Verizon was vicariously responsible for Collecto’s actions because Collecto was Verizon’s third-party vendor and because Verizon’s call-monitoring disclosure policy did not require the disclosure of recordings in certain situations. Verizon filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that the recordings did not invade Lofton’s privacy and therefore did not run afoul of the statute. …

A California District Court has dismissed with prejudice a class action lawsuit filed against LinkedIn on behalf of its registered users, finding the allegations too speculative to sustain a lawsuit. An earlier Complaint filed by one of the representative Plaintiffs was dismissed by the Court without prejudice, allowing the Plaintiff to amend the Complaint and bring the lawsuit again. In this recent decision, the Court dismissed all of the claims asserted in the Amended Complaint with prejudice, and without leave to amend either because the claims were legally defective or because the Plaintiff failed to cure deficiencies raised in LinkedIn’s motion to dismiss the original Complaint or raised in the Court’s order dismissing the original Complaint.…