Hunton Andrews Kurth writes: On July 30, 2024, in a 91-3 vote, the U.S. Senate passed two bills aimed at protecting youth online: the Kids Online Safety Act (“KOSA”) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA 2.0”). KOSA would create new obligations for companies to mitigate potential harms to children (known as…
UN Draft Cybercrime Treaty Dangerously Expands State Surveillance Powers Without Robust Privacy, Data Protection Safeguards
Katitza Rodriguez of EFF writes: This is the third post in a series highlighting flaws in the proposed UN Cybercrime Convention. Check out Part I, our detailed analysis on the criminalization of security research activities, and Part II, an analysis of the human rights safeguards. As we near the final negotiating session for the proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty, countries are…
FTC Investigation Leads to Lawsuit Against TikTok and ByteDance for Flagrantly Violating Children’s Privacy Law
On behalf of the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice sued video-sharing platform TikTok, its parent company ByteDance, as well as its affiliated companies, with flagrantly violating a children’s privacy law—the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act—and also alleged they infringed an existing FTC 2019 consent order against TikTok for violating COPPA. The complaint alleges defendants failed to comply…
Attorney General Ken Paxton Secures $1.4 Billion Settlement with Meta Over Its Unauthorized Capture of Personal Biometric Data In Largest Settlement Ever Obtained From An Action Brought By A Single State
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued the following press release today: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta (formerly known as Facebook) to stop the company’s practice of capturing and using the personal biometric data of millions of Texans without the authorization required by law. This settlement is the…