William Dotinga reports: Google asked a federal judge Wednesday for permission to take questions about federal wiretapping laws to the 9th Circuit before a Gmail class action advances any further. […] [Judge Lucy] Koh [had] declined to dismiss the majority of the sprawling class action, finding that Gmail’s interceptions fall outside the narrow “ordinary course of business”…
Category: Business
Wal-Mart Prevails in Credit Card Class Battle Over Practice of Collecting Addresses and Phone Numbers
Julian Perlman writes: In a victory for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., a federal district court judge has refused to certify a Rule 23(b)(3) class in a lawsuit for violation of California’s Song-Beverly Credit Card Act (Cal. Civ. Code § 1747 et seq., available here. Plaintiff Joel Leebove brought suit on behalf of himself and others similarly situated…
Lavabit Files Opening Brief in Landmark Privacy Case
Kevin Poulsen reports: Secure e-mail provider Lavabit just filed the opening brief in its appeal of a court order demanding it turn over the private SSL keys that protected all web traffic to the site. The government proposed to examine and copy Lavabit’s most sensitive, closely guarded records–its private keys–despite the fact that those keys…
Google Wins Dismissal of Suit Over Web Browser Cookies
Phil Milford reports that Google won dismissal of In re Google Cookie Placement Consumer Privacy Litigation, 12-md-02358, U.S. District Court, District of Delaware: “Google did not intercept contents as provided for by the Wiretap Act,” U.S. District Judge Sue L. Robinson in Wilmington, Delaware, said in her opinion. The users also didn’t “demonstrate that Google intercepted any…