Tag: California

US court unsuccessfully demanded extensive information about user of the messenger app Signal

16. November 2021

On October 27th, 2021 Signal published a search warrant for user data issued by a court in Santa Clara, California. The court ordered Signal to provide a variety of information, including a user’s name, address, correspondence, contacts, groups, and call records from the years 2019 and 2020. Signal was only able to provide two sets of data: the timestamp of when the account was created and the date of the last connection to the Signal server, as Signal does not store any other information about its users.

The warrant also included a confidentiality order that was extended four times. Signal stated:

Though the judge approved four consecutive non-disclosure orders, the court never acknowledged receipt of our motion to partially unseal, nor scheduled a hearing, and would not return counsel’s phone calls seeking to schedule a hearing.

A similar case was made public by Signal in 2016, when a court in Virginia requested the release of user data and ordered that the request not be made public. Signal fought the non-publication order in court and eventually won.

Signal is a messenger app that is highly regarded among privacy experts like Edward Snowden. That’s because Signal has used end-to-end encryption by default from the start, doesn’t ask its users for personal information or store personal data on its servers and is open source. The messenger is therefore considered particularly secure and trustworthy. Moreover, no security vulnerabilities have become known so far, which is definitely the case with numerous competing products.

Since 2018, Signal is beeing operated by the non-profit organization Signal Technology Foundation and the Signal Messenger LLC. At that time, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, among others, joined the company and invested $50 million. Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike is also still on board.

The EU commission is planning a legislative package to fight the spread of child abuse on the Internet. The law will also include automated searches of the content of private and encrypted communications, for example via messenger apps. This would undermine the core functions of Signal in Europe. Critics call this form of preventive mass surveillance a threat to privacy, IT security, freedom of expression and democracy.

California Voters approve new Privacy Legislation CPRA

20. November 2020

On November 3rd 2020, Californian citizens were able to vote on the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (“CPRA”) in a state ballot (we reported). As polls leading up to the vote already suggested, California voters approved the new Privacy legislation, also known as “Prop 24”. The CPRA was passed with 56.2% of Yes Votes to 43.8% of No Votes. Most provisions of the CPRA will enter into force on 1 January 2021 and will become applicable to businesses on 1 January 2023. It will, at large, only apply to information collected from 1 January 2022.

The CPRA will complement and expand privacy rights of California citizens considerably. Among others, the amendments will include:

  • Broadening the term “sale” of personal information to “sale or share” of private information,
  • Adding new requirements to qualify as a “service provider” and defining the term “contractor” anew,
  • Defining the term “consent”,
  • Introducing the category of “Sensitive Information”, including a consumer’s Right to limit the use of “Sensitive Information”,
  • Introducing the concept of “Profiling” and granting consumers the Right to Opt-out of the use of the personal information for Automated Decision-Making,
  • Granting consumers the Right to correct inaccurate information,
  • Granting consumers the Right to Data Portability, and
  • Establishing the California Privacy Protection Agency (CalPPA) with a broad scope of responsibilities and enforcement powers.

Ensuring compliance with the CPRA will require proper preparation. Affected businesses will have to review existing processes or implement new processes in order to guarantee the newly added consumer rights, meet the contractual requirements with service providers/contractors, and show compliance with the new legislation as a whole.

In an interview after the passage of the CPRA, the initiator of the CCPA and the CPRA Alastair Mactaggard commented that

Privacy legislation is here to stay.

He hopes that California Privacy legislation will be a model for other states or even the U.S. Congress to follow, in order to offer consumers in other parts of the country the same Privacy rights as there are in California now.

The CCPA is not enough: Californians will vote on the CPRA

28. October 2020

On 3 November 2020, the day of the US Presidential Election, Californian citizens will also be able to vote on the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (“CPRA”) in a state ballot. The CPRA shall expand Califonian consumers’ privacy rights given by the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) which only came into effect on 2 January 2020.

The NGO “Californians for Consumer Privacy”, led by privacy activist Alastair Mactaggart, initiated the upcoming state ballot on the CPRA. Mactaggart’s NGO already qualified for a state ballot on the adoption of the CCPA by collecting over 629,000 signatures of California citizens in 2018. However, the NGO dropped the proposal in 2018 after California state legislators persuaded the intitiators that they will pass the CCPA through the legislative process. But because several significant amendments to the original proposal were passed during the legislative process, the NGO created the new CPRA initiative in 2020. This time, the group submitted more than 900,000 signatures. The CPRA is supposed to expand on the provisions of the CCPA. In case the CPRA is approved by California voters on November 3rd, it could not be easily amended and would require further direct voter action. Most provisions of the CPRA would become effective on 1 January 2023 and would only apply to information collected from 1 January 2022.

Some of the key provisions of the newly proposed CPRA seem to draw inspiration from the provisions of the European General Data Protection Regulations (“GDPR”) and include the establishment of an enforcement agency (the “California Privacy Protections Agency”), explicitly protecting “Sensitive Personal Information” of consumers and granting the right to rectify inaccurate personal information. The CPRA would furthermore require businesses to abide to information obligations comparable to those required by Art. 12-14 GDPR.

As the day of the state ballot is fast approaching, recent polls suggest that the CPRA will likely pass and complement the already existing CCPA, forming the US’ strictest privacy rules to date.

USA: Multi-Billion Dollar Class Action lawsuit against Google

4. June 2020

Google users in the USA accuse Google of tracking their surfing behaviour even though they use the incognito mode. The complaint was filed with the federal court in San Jose, California on Tuesday, June 2nd 2020.

Background of the lawsuit is the accusation of three Google users that “Google tracks and collects users’ browsing history and other information about web activity, regardless of what measures they take to protect it”. In other words, users accuse Google of tracking their behaviour through Google Analytics, plug-ins or apps, evaluating it and using it for advertising – despite using the incognito mode.

The complaint is based on a violation of US wiretapping laws and California Privacy laws. Each plaintiff is claiming $5,000.00 in damages. Since the three plaintiffs allegedly represent thousands more plaintiffs the volume of the lawsuit could run into billions.

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda denies the allegations, citing that by opening an incognito tab on Chrome, it is indicated that websites may continue to collect information about surfing behavior. The incognito mode is about the browser and the device used not storing this data. He announced that Google would take action against the accusations.

Aetna to pay fine for HIV privacy breach

31. January 2019

Healthcare insurer Aetna will have to pay a 935,000$ fine after letters had been sent to nearly 12.000 patients in 2017, disclosing highly sensitive information on the windows of the envelopes.

The information revealed that the recipients were taking HIV-related medications.

In addition, the insurance company will have to complete privacy risk assessments annualy for three years.

The patients have received compensation through a private class action settlement.