The recently announced multistate settlement between credit reporting company Equifax Inc. and the Attorneys General of 48 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia (the AGs) demonstrates the increasingly active role of state regulators in policing the privacy and security practices of businesses that handle consumers’ personal information. The multistate settlement is part of a comprehensive agreement between Equifax, the AGs, and other state and federal regulators, under which Equifax will pay at…

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce (the “Chamber”) recently hosted a data privacy summit, “#DataDoneRight”, which brought together a group of industry professionals, government stakeholders, and privacy thought leaders to talk about data privacy. The Chamber, which has proposed federal privacy legislation, engaged a wide variety of speakers, covering multiple viewpoints, to demonstrate the need for a comprehensive and fair federal privacy law: Alastair Mactaggart, the primary architect of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA),…

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week gathered a diverse, bipartisan group of policymakers, regulators, industry representatives and thought leaders to discuss all things data privacy at #DataDoneRight, its 2019 privacy summit. Topics included the California Consumer Privacy Act, the possibility of federal privacy legislation and working with privacy regulators, and the summit featured a fireside chat with Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr. In addition to talking about privacy issues at the state level, AG…

As states’ “top cops,” one of the primary responsibilities of state attorneys general (AGs) is consumer protection, and more and more AGs are focusing on how to protect consumer data privacy. Discussions at the recent Conference of Western Attorneys General (“CWAG”) Annual Meeting in Santa Barbara reflect this focus and demonstrate that state enforcers are looking at new authority, and new ways to expand their existing authority, to ensure that their citizens’ data privacy is…

May was a busy month for state privacy law updates and amendments. In addition to amendments made by Texas to its breach notification law, both Oregon and Nevada expanded their privacy-related laws this month, while Illinois’s CCPA-like law failed to pass after a variety of amendments related to whether the law would allow for a private right of action. In Oregon, the legislature expanded its data breach notification statute (ORS §§ 646A.600 et seq.).…

On May 21, 2019, representatives of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Office of DC Attorney General (AG) Karl Racine visited Reed Smith to discuss data privacy trends to watch at the federal and state level. In an IAPP KnowledgeNet presentation moderated by Reed Smith partner Divonne Smoyer, Maneesha Mithal (associate director of the FTC’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, Bureau of Consumer Protection) and Ben Wiseman (director of AG Racine’s Office of…

Check out this month’s edition of The Privacy Advisor, a publication of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), for Aaron Lancaster and Divonne Smoyer’s and Q&A with Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan. As attorney general, he has taken an active role in advocating for consumers’ rights with respect to privacy and data security by engaging with the community on issues of concern and weighing in on state legislation governing data brokers, among other initiatives.…