In an opinion that deepens an existing circuit court split, the Eleventh Circuit recently held that the future risk of identity theft is not sufficient to establish Article III standing.…

On February 10, 2021, Phil Yannella, Chair of Ballard’s Privacy & Data Security Group, will join Ankura for a webinar, “2020 Cyber Year in Review”, which will recap cybersecurity events for 2020. Panel members will also offer their predictions for what cybersecurity issues will dominate headlines in 2021. You can register for the event here.…

On January 12, 2021, the federal District Court for the Central District of California dismissed a data breach law suit—including a claim filed under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”)—against Marriott International, Inc.  The holding, which dismissed the claims for lack of standing, will likely play a role in a number of CCPA cases that have motions to dismiss pending. The case stems from a cybersecurity breach announced by Marriott on March 31, 2020, in…

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (the “AO”) recently disclosed that it has initiated an investigation into an apparent compromise in security of the Judiciary’s Case Management/Electronic Case Files System (“CM/ECF”) as a result of vulnerabilities associated with SolarWinds Orion products.  The AO noted that it is currently working with the Department of Homeland Security on an audit of security vulnerabilities that may pose a confidentiality risk for non-public documents stored on CM/ECF.  In…

On December 18, 2020, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) issued guidance specific to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) and the COVID-19 public health emergency. The guidance addresses permitted HIPAA disclosures of Protected Health Information (“PHI”) by covered entities and business associates via health information exchanges (“HIEs”) for certain public health purposes.…

On January 6, 2021, a bipartisan group of New York state lawmakers released a copy of Assembly Bill 27 (AB 27), the  New York Biometric Privacy Act.  If New York passes AB 27, it will join Illinois, Texas, and Washington as states that have adopted laws that strictly regulate the notice, collection, and handling of biometric information.  Significantly, however, it would join Illinois as only the second state to provide a private right of…

On December 14, 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced in a press release that it is issuing orders under the FTC’s authority in Section 6(b) of the FTC Act to the following nine social media and video streaming companies: Amazon.com, Inc., ByteDance Ltd. (which operates the short video service TikTok), Discord Inc., Facebook, Inc., Reddit, Inc., Snap Inc., Twitter, Inc., WhatsApp Inc., and You Tube LLC. The FTC made publicly available samples of the…