Washington Privacy Act’s Fight for a Private Right of Action
Washington was one of the first states to follow in CCPA’s footsteps to pass a comprehensive consumer privacy law. However, as other states have been gaining steam with their copy-cat consumer privacy legislation, Washington’s Privacy Act has been stranded in legislative limbo, primarily due to the lawmakers’ clashes over a private right of action. In 2019, the dispute over a private right act of action provision was the reason behind the initial failure of the Washing Privacy Act.
Digital Age Identity Management Challenges
In the past few decades, identity has been an increasingly evolving concept. In the physical world, identity systems are government issued credentials, such as state ID, passport, and social security number. These tangible documents allow the identity holder a great amount of control over revealing his or her identity. In the virtual world, however, identity systems are not held by the identity holder, but by companies and corporations. As a result, digital identity has reached a height of centralization and interconnectedness, where digital giants are the identity holders of the individuals.
New Jersey Amends Its Data Breach Notification Law
On May 10, 2019, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed into law P.L.2019, c.95., amending the previous data breach notification requirements of the Consumer Fraud Act and expanding the types of personal data that will trigger a required notification to customers in the event of a breach. Under P.L.2019, c.95 “personal information” that triggers consumer breach notification obligations now includes “username, email address or any other account holder identifying information, in combination with any password or security questions and answer” that would permit access to an online account 1.
2019 Privacy Watchlist: the Year Ahead
Standing in Private Right of Action Cases Standing in data privacy cases has been a hot button issue in courts for over a decade. Throughout this time consumers and data subjects continued to have a difficult time proving concrete injuries. One of the latest cases to be tossed out of court for lack of standing was last year’s Rivera v. Google.1 In Rivera, plaintiffs sued Google for violation of the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act (BIPA).
New Jersey Joins the Data Privacy Frontier
In the wake of world-wide disturbance over Facebook disclosures following the U.S. election, the new GDPR data protection and collection requirements that took effect this year, and concerns about household appliances that can be used for surveillance, privacy has been at the forefront of social and legal landscape. As technology trends are examined and understood more, public call for more transparency and more stringent data protections increases. Long the pioneer in privacy regulation, this summer California passed AB 375, also known as the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018.
The Importance of Data Collection for Businesses and Their Customers
As data driven businesses continue to grow, so does the amount of data collected by these businesses. Companies that thrive on technologies driven by data collection, analyze that data and improve their technology with the help of A/B testing. A/B testing is a revolutionalry experimentation platform that is used by nearly every technology company today. A/B testing helps find the best version of a platform or product for a particular individual.