Ethan Forrest writes:
In two cases last week, two courts entered widely divergent rulings on the central question of the specific definition of “personally identifiable information,” or “PII,” under the Video Privacy Protection Act (“VPPA”). The VPPA defines PII as information that “identifies a person as having [obtained a video]” from a video tape service provider (“VTSP”).
In Yershov v. Gannett, the First Circuit took a broad view of that definition, deciding that even information such as unique device IDs in connection with GPS coordinates can be PII. In Perry v. CNN, issued just a few days before Yershov, a federal district court in Georgia took a far more limited view under Eleventh Circuit precedent, holding that MAC addresses are not PII because they are tied to devices, not specific individuals.
Read more on Covington & Burling Inside Privacy.