Venkat Balasubramani writes about the appellate opinion in Tice v. Amazon, No. 20-55432 (9th Cir. Feb. 19, 2021): Lawsuits over voice-activated assistants (and other smart home devices) are interesting. Plaintiffs have been creative about who asserts the claims to navigate around the issue that often sinks class actions: arbitration. This has resulted in claims brought by…
Category: U.S.
Entire California School Board Resigns After Chewing Out Parents on Accidental Zoom Broadcast
Alyse Stanley reports: It’s hard to believe that almost a year into the pandemic pushing everything virtual, there are people still struggling to get the hang of Zoom. And yet here we are. All members of a northern California school board have resigned after being caught deriding parents in a profanity-laden Zoom meeting they didn’t realize was being…
Maryland Joins New York with a BIPA-like Biometric Privacy Bill
Joseph Lazzarotti writes: On January 13, House Delegate Sara Love Introduced the “Biometric Identifiers and Biometric Information Privacy Act” (the “Act”) substantially modeled after the Biometric Information Privacy Act in Illinois, 740 ILCS 14 et seq. (the “BIPA”). Enacted in 2008, the Illinois BIPA only recently triggered an avalanche of class actions in Illinois, spurring other legislative…
Reporters Committee attorneys represent journalist seeking to unseal surveillance orders
Grayson Clary reports: Forbes and one of its reporters are petitioning federal courts in California, Pennsylvania and Washington to release the orders. To the extent most members of the public have heard of the All Writs Act, it’s likely thanks to the statute’s role in the high-profile clash between Apple and the FBI over access…