October 9, 2019
On September 4, 2019 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that Google and its subsidiary YouTube agreed to “pay a record $170 Million to settle allegations by the Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General that the YouTube video-sharing service illegally collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent” (the “Google-YouTube Settlement”). Specifically, the FTC and the State of New York (NYS) jointly alleged that YouTube violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rule by collecting personal information from minors under the age of 13 by persistent identifiers, commonly known as cookies, to deliver targeted behavioral advertising to children on a variety of “child-directed” YouTube channels.
October 4, 2019
CCPA may have been just the beginning of California’s privacy framework. On September 25, 2019, Californians for Consumer Privacy, the group behind the California ballot initiative that resulted in California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), filed a new initiative intended for California’s November 2020 general election ballot, which they have labeled as the “California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act” or CPREA. This time the group is expanding its efforts to implement additional privacy and data protection standards for California citizens, including minors, to create a formal governmental privacy enforcement agency, and to address the use of personal information in political campaigns.
September 18, 2019
Litigation readiness is an essential step for parties who wish to be prepared for the electronic discovery process. While significant for the production phase of discovery, litigation readiness has proven indispensable for helping clients preserve relevant electronically stored information (ESI). This is particularly the case under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), which generally safeguards parties from sanctions who have implemented and followed litigation readiness measures.
July 11, 2019
Slack is a popular cloud-based team collaboration and messaging platform used by a wide variety of organizations. Similar to other messaging platforms that have grown in popularity, Slack is unknown to many counsel and courts. Nevertheless, content from Slack is increasingly being sought by parties in discovery. A lack of knowledge about Slack or similar technology can lead to complications with preservation, collection, and production. This is apparent from two recent court cases that addressed failures to produce relevant messages from Slack.
June 20, 2019
Cross-border data protection laws are increasingly affecting domestic U.S. discovery proceedings. Globalization has placed discoverable information beyond the boundaries of the U.S. and has often forced litigants to satisfy those laws in order to produce or obtain such information. To meet the challenges of foreign data protection laws, organizations will need to be prepared. As spotlighted in a recent article published by LegalTech News, this includes more effective information governance programs and litigation readiness measures, along with better advocacy on the issues in court.