Jessica M. Karmasek writes: A federal appeals court this week upheld the dismissal of a proposed class action lawsuit over the distribution of personal information from a state’s motor vehicle records. Plaintiffs Norma Wiles, Thomas Wiles, Theresa Gibson and Wanta Evitt, all Kentucky residents, filed the proposed class action against defendants Ascom Transport System Inc.,…
Category: Business
The perils of ambiguous statements: Microsoft denies that it backed away from supporting CISPA
The other day, Declan McCullagh of CNET reported that Microsoft had backed away from its support of CISPA. I reported that here but questioned how much it had really backed away given a very nonspecific statement it made. Yesterday, Brendan Sasso reported that Microsoft denied it had backed away from supporting CISPA: “Microsoft’s position remains…
“Engineer Doe” of Google StreetView payload data privacy breach unmasked
Steve Lohr and David Streitfeld of the New York Times put a name to “Engineer Doe” in the FCC investigation of the Google Street View investigation. “Doe” was the engineer who we now know wrote code to intentionally scoop up payload data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks. According to the less-redacted version of the FCC’s report…
FTC Refers Children’s Privacy Case Back To CARU
Lindsey Tonsager writes: The FTC has decided not to pursue an enforcement action against Clearwater Aquarium for alleged violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection (“COPPA”) Rule. In February 2012, the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (“CARU”) referred the Clearwater Aquarium’s website to the FTC for review under COPPA after the Aquarium reportedly did not respond to…