In a joint press conference on March 25, 2022, U.S. President Joseph Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced an agreement “in principle” on a framework, called the Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework (“Privacy Shield 2.0”), to replace the U.S.-EU Privacy Shield. The EU General Data Protection Regulation

The FTC indicated that it will use its rulemaking authority under the FTC Act’s Section 18 to create a new rule that will likely seek to rein in broad data collection and use.

In October 2021, FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter made two speeches in which she expressed a desire to move beyond the FTC’s “notice-and-consent” framework to address broader surveillance practices that underlie the digital advertising economy, specifically by applying “bright-line purpose and use restrictions that minimize the data that can be collected and how it can be deployed.”

The UK Supreme Court handed down its much-anticipated decision in the Lloyd v Google LLC [2021] UKSC 50 case on 10 November 2021 restricting claimants’ ability to bring data privacy class actions in the UK under the (now repealed) Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA 1998). This decision will be persuasive (though not binding) with respect to similar class actions brought under the (in-force) UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018 (collectively, the UK GDPR). This decision will not directly impact litigation brought under the EU General Data Protection Regulation in EU member states.

Unwanted robocalls reportedly totaled 26.3 billion calls in 2018, sparking more and more consumer complaints to the FCC and FTC and increased legislative and regulatory activity to combat the practice. Some automated calls are beneficial, such as school closing announcements, bank fraud warnings, and medical notifications, and some caller ID spoofing is justified, such as certain law enforcement or investigatory purposes and domestic violence shelter use.  However, consumers have been inundated with spam calls – often with spoofed local area codes – that display fictitious caller ID information or circumvent caller ID technology in an effort to increase the likelihood consumers will answer or otherwise defraud consumers. To combat the rash of unwanted calls, Congress and federal regulators advanced several measures in 2019 and states have tightened their own telecommunications privacy laws in the past year.  For example, within the last week, the Arkansas governor signed into law S.B. 514, which boosts criminal penalties for illegal call spoofing and creates an oversight process for telecommunications providers.

The smart grid is an advanced metering infrastructure made up of “smart meters” capable of recording detailed and near-real time data on consumer electricity usage.  That data would then be sent to utilities through a wireless communications network.  In recent years, utilities have increased the pace of smart meter deployment—smart meters are expected to be on 65 million homes by 2015.  A smart grid could deliver electricity more efficiently and would enable consumers to track and adjust their energy usage in real time through a home display.  But these new capabilities also implicate new privacy concerns.