In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) made public on January 20, 2016, sixty civil liberties organizations, including the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called on the FCC to use its authority to issue new privacy rules for broadband providers. The letter cites the FCC’s reclassification of broadband as a Title II […]
Privacy & Cyber Regulatory Enforcement
FTC PrivacyCon Event Examines Cutting-Edge Research and Current Policies Regarding Privacy and Data Security
The Federal Trade Commission held its PrivacyCon event, featuring nineteen presentations showcasing original research regarding important consumer privacy and security issues by leading academics from universities and think tanks from around the world. A full video recording of the webcast is available here. The conference took place in Washington on Jan. 14, 2016, and included […]
Big Data: FTC Issues Report Cautioning that Use of Big Data may Violate Federal Consumer Protection Laws or Raise Ethical Considerations
On January 6, the FTC issued a report on the commercial use of big data, Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion? Understanding the Issues, summarizing the results of a September 2014 workshop and numerous public comments, including a paper and workshop comments by Alston & Bird Senior Counsel Peter Swire. The report addresses […]
Germany’s Christmas Present: Data-Protection Class Actions
Following the European Court of Justice’s Schrems decision invalidating the Safe Harbor mechanism, much attention has focused on how the Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) of EU member states would interpret and enforce Schrems. While close attention to DPA activity is important—and will become even more so upon the passage of the EU General Data Protection […]
Senior Counsel Peter Swire to Debate European Privacy Activist Max Schrems
Peter Swire, Alston & Bird Senior Counsel and Huang Professor of Law and Ethics at the Georgia Institute of Technology Scheller College of Business, will debate privacy activist Max Schrems on January 26, 2015 in Brussels, Belgium. The event, sponsored by the Brussels Privacy Hub at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, will take place at the […]