Author: Iabel Brown

Internet Governance TikTok Sues The United States Government: The video-sharing app filed suit against the U.S. Government following the Trump Administration’s executive order under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to “ban the company’s American operations” for its alleged connection to the Chinese government; in the suit, TikTok alleges, among other things, that it has been denied its Due Process rights under the Fifth Amendment “to argue it isn’t a national security threat.”

Privacy Facebook Criticizes New Apple iOS System For Enhanced Privacy: In a recent blog post, Facebook warned that a new feature of Apple’s upcoming software update that “requires app developers to notify users if their app collects a unique device code” soFacebook advertisers can send targeted ads to consumers on non-Facebook webpages essentially makes users manually opt in to being tracked by Facebook and potentially damages a key revenue stream for the social media monolith. Clearview AI Used By Numerous Police Agencies: A recent interview with the CEO of the controversial facial recognition technology company revealed that more than 2,400 police agencies throughout the country, including agencies in New York, Miami, and Philadelphia, have entered into license agreements with Clearview AI for access to information used to identify protestors and other persons of interest.

Information Security and Cyberthreats Former Uber Security Chief Charged For Covering Up Hack: The Department of Justice indicted Joe Sullivan for covering up the 2016 hack that exposed the private information of over 50 million ride-sharing users by paying the hackers $100,000 and having them sign a nondisclosure agreement; Sullivan is charged with obstruction of justice for failing to follow California’s laws requiring public disclosure of the hack.

Free Expression and Censorship Facebook Removes Group Following Thai Government Order: Facebook took down the “Royalist Marketplace,” a group of over a million members dedicated largely to discussing the Thai government and monarchy, at the request of the country’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society; Facebook later issued a statement protesting the action as having a “chilling effect” on the Thai peoples’ ability to express themselves. Facebook Failed To Censor Kenosha Guard Group Prior To Shooting: The social media platform failed to censor posts “inciting violence” by the “self-proclaimed militia group the Kenosha Guard” prior to the deadly shooting in Kenosha, WI, despite at least two reports that the group was violating community standards by issuing a “call to arms;” the group was not removed by Facebook until more than nine hours after the shooting for violating the platform’s “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy.”

Practice Note Ride-Sharing Continues In California After Court-Ordered Reprieve: Shortly before Uber and Lyft threatened to shut down across the state, a California state judge issued an emergency stay of an order that would have required Lyft, Uber, and other ride-sharing companies to classify their drivers as employees.

On the Lighter Side Network Outages Cause “Zoom Day” For U.S. Schoolchildren: A widespread outage of Zoom’s service early in the week disrupted schooldays and meetings across North America and Europe, giving students an unexpected “snow day” for the COVID era.

Joel R. Reidenberg Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP Tom Norton Executive Director, Fordham CLIP Isabel Brown Caroline Vermillion Editorial Fellows, Fordham CLIP

Internet Governance

Uber And Lyft Must Classify Drivers As Employees: The Superior Court of the State of California issued a preliminary injunction requiring that the ride-hailing services classify drivers as employees in accordance with the state’s AB5 law; in response, Uber’s CEO has stated that the service will likely “shut down temporarily” in California if the ruling is not overturned on appeal.

TikTok Sues Trump Administration Over Ban: The lawsuit in the the Southern District of California challenges the President’s recent executive order, which forbids “any transaction” between U.S. citizens and TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance–including sending the software updates the app needs to function on U.S. smartphones–on the basis of executive overreach and lack of due process.

Privacy

Privacy Shield Faces Renegotiation Hurdles: After the Court of Justice of the European Union struck down the transatlantic framework last month, the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce announced they have entered talks to renegotiate terms to attempt to meet the EU’s higher privacy standards.

UK Appeals Court Curtails Facial Recognition Use: A high court found that the South Wales police violated UK human rights laws in their use of a facial recognition system called AFR Locate to identify suspects on watchlists, reasoning that individual officers had “too much discretion” in matching people, that it was unclear both “who can be placed on the watchlist” and what criteria determined where the technology could be used, and that the police did not “sufficiently investigate if the software in use exhibited race or gender bias.”

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Reddit Communities “Vandalized” With Pro-Trump Content: In what is believed to be a coordinated attack, the moderator accounts of numerous popular subreddit pages including r/food, r/Japan, r/nfl, r/podcasts, and r/space were infiltrated by hackers who changed the subreddits’ designs to appear “in support of President Donald Trump.”  

Intellectual Property

Apple Alleges Trademark Infringement Against Small Company: The tech giant has taken legal action to prevent food-preparation company Prepear from using a pear-shaped logo, which Apple alleges infringes upon its own apple-shaped logo; Prepear has created a petition, now with over 20,000 signatures, asking Apple to drop the case lest costly legal fees run the small company out of business.

Free Expression and Censorship

Facebook To Label Politically-Connected Publications: In light of the approaching presidential election, the social media platform will now require publications affiliated with political parties to “disclose their affiliation when they buy political ads.” 

Practice Note

New Jersey Supreme Court Joins Phone-Decryption Split: The state’s highest court ruled that law enforcement could compel an individual to unlock his cell phone without running afoul of the Fifth Amendment, theorizing that because the phone in question was registered in the defendant’s name, he presumably knew the passcodes, and he therefore was not being forced to provide any information the government did not already know. 

On the Lighter Side

World’s Last Blockbuster Becomes Airbnb Destination: Airbnb is offering $4 nightly stays for the next month at the sole remaining Blockbuster video rental shop in Bend, OR, where the owners have set up a 1990s-themed “living room” for guests, complete with a VHS player and full access to the store’s movie library. 

Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law
Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP

Tom Norton
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Isabel Brown
Caroline Vermillion
Editorial Fellows, Fordham CLIP

Internet Governance Tech CEOs Questioned Over Anticompetitive Activity: Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Sundar Pichai were quizzed for over six hours by the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee in response to growing Congressional concerns about the potentially exploitative strategies behind their companies’ outsized success during the pandemic, such as Amazon misusing third-party sellers’ goods for its private label and Facebook allowing the spread of dangerous COVID misinformation across its site.

Privacy Instagram Bug Causes Unintentional Camera Access: A new iOS 14 privacy feature that shows when an application is using a device’s camera or microphone has exposed an alleged “bug” on Instagram that engages the camera whenever the app is open, such as when a user is “scrolling through the photo feed.” Facial Recognition Algorithms Defeated By Mask Wearers: The National Institute for Standards and Technology confirmed in a new study that wearing a face mask over the nose and mouth raises error rates in even relatively accurate face-to-ID-photo facial recognition systems from 5 to 50 percent, depending on the algorithm used.

Information Security and Cyberthreats Drizzly Confirms Data Breach: The leading alcohol-delivery service recently notified customers that 2.5 million users’ information was obtained by hackers, including email addresses, dates of birth, passwords, and “in some cases, delivery addresses;” while the company assured customers that no financial data was obtained by the hackers, “a listing on a dark web marketplace” has Drizzly customers’ credit card numbers listed for sale at $14.

Intellectual Property Tesla Sues Rivian For Trade Secret Theft: The electric carmaker challenged its rival in California state court over confidential hiring, management, and manufacturing documents former Tesla employees may have illegally shared with Rivian after being hired away by them.

Free Expression and Censorship Trump’s Mass Text Messages Blocked By Wireless Carriers: After Trump’s reelection campaign sent 1 million text messages in a peer-to-peer format, anti-spam monitors used by Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile were triggered to block the texts as spam; while the campaign insists that it is in compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act guidelines, “the messages didn’t include clear opt-out language” and may have lacked user consent.

Practice Note

New York Ordered To Pay Unemployment To Rideshare Drivers: Echoing similar recent decisions from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts courts, a New York federal judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering the New York Department of Labor to immediately begin approving unemployment claims for the state’s many rideshare drivers.  

On the Lighter Side Viewers Judge Tech CEOs’ Testimonies, And Their Rooms: While CEOs Cook, Bezos, Pichai, and Zuckerburg testified virtually before Congress regarding potential antitrust violations, viewers took the liberty of evaluating the CEOs’ various office spaces, ranking Pichai the highest, and Cook the lowest.

Joel R. Reidenberg Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP Tom Norton Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Isabel Brown Caroline Vermillion Editorial Fellows

Internet Governance

France’s Parliament Passes Age-Verification Requirement For Adult Sites: In an effort to limit access to pornography by children under the age of eighteen, the French parliament passed new legislation requiring stronger age-verification measures by adult websites; while the sites can decide for themselves how to verify age, the most common measure is expected to be the provision of credit card information. 

Apple’s Irish Tax Bill Remains Unsettled: An EU intermediate appellate court overturned a decision ordering Apple to pay $14.9 billion in back taxes to Ireland on the ground that the European Commission “did not succeed in showing to the requisite legal standard” that Apple received an unfair advantage by not paying; nonetheless, roughly $15 billion will remain in Apple’s escrow account until any final appeal concludes. 

Privacy

EU High Court Invalidates U.S.-EU Privacy Shield: The Court of Justice of the European Union struck down the  data-sharing agreement, stating that it does not adequately protect EU citizens’ data from surveillance by U.S. authorities.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Twitter Accounts Targeted And Hacked By Bitcoin Scam: The Twitter accounts of Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Kanye West, and other high-profile individuals and businesses were hacked in what is believed to be a “coordinated social engineering attack on Twitter employees”; through the compromised accounts, the hackers directed users to transfer Bitcoin with the false promise of sending back double the amount in return, and ultimately made out with an estimated $100,000.

Intellectual Property

Facebook To Launch Officially Licensed Music Videos: To compete with YouTube, the social network negotiated with music publishers so that it could automatically post artists’ videos to their Facebook pages. 

Free Expression and Censorship

Instagram And Facebook Ban All Content Promoting Conversion Therapy: In response to a petition for the removal of content advertising conversion therapy services, Instagram and Facebook will no longer permit posts that “advertise or promote the practice.” 

Practice Note

Supreme Court To Hear Facebook Robocall Case: The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in a case alleging that Facebook violated the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending unwanted texts to a user; the case will clarify what forms of automated communication will be considered “automated, unsolicited, and unwanted” messages barred under the TCPA. 

On the Lighter Side

Google Launches AI Hieroglyphics Translator: Google released the AI-powered “Fabricius” program on its Arts and Culture app, which enables users to upload images of the ancient Egyptian symbols to match them with a database of known hieroglyphics based on existing historical records and definitions and to “translate their own words and emojis into shareable hieroglyphs.” 

Joel R. Reidenberg Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP Tom Norton Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Isabel Brown Caroline Vermillion Editorial Fellows

Internet Governance

UK Regulator Recommends Forming New Tech-Focused Agency: Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority proposed that the national government create a specialized antitrust unit to manage tech companies’ control over smaller industries that depend on them for web traffic and user data, enforce transparency, and increase overall public trust. 

Privacy

TikTok And 32 Other Apps Use Clipboard To Access Private Information: Despite TikTok’s pledge to curb the practice in March, the company continues to access information that is stored on the user’s clipboard (where devices store cut or copied data), including “passwords, cryptocurrency wallet addresses, account-reset links, and personal messages.”

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Twitter Using Technology To Detect Bots: To help eliminate “bad actors” on the site, Twitter challenges and suspends millions of accounts every month by using technology to monitor users’ behaviors and detect patterns indicative of fake accounts.

UC San Francisco Reveals Details Of Ransomware Negotiation: Following a ransomware attack on its IT infrastructure by the Netwalker hacking group, details of a ransom negotiation orchestrated through the hackers’ dark-web chat platform were made public in a rare glimpse into the mechanics of resolving a large-scale cyberattack.

Intellectual Property

U.S. Supreme Court Allows Trademark For “Booking.com”: In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the travel site’s name is eligible for federal trademark protection, reasoning that “because [the name] is not generic to consumers, it is not generic” and is therefore entitled to protection to prevent copycat sites from misleading potential customers. 

Google Will Absorb The Cost Of News Paywalls: In an effort to provide greater access to “high-quality” news, Google will pay publishers to license their content, covering the cost of subscription paywalls often used by news sites to monetize content; Google has already signed publishers in Australia, Germany, and Brazil. 

Free Expression and Censorship

Facebook Ad Boycott Gathers Steam: Honda and Unilever joined over 100 companies halting  advertising on Facebook this week as part of the “Stop Hate for Profit” civil rights campaign, which is designed to pressure the social media company to take more concrete steps to end hate speech and misinformation on its platform. 

On the Lighter Side

More Than 1,000 Phrases Incorrectly Trigger Voice-Activated Digital Assistants: New research finds that Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant devices can be incorrectly triggered by over a thousand words and word-sequences, including “Montana,” “election,” and “hey Jerry.”

Internet Governance

DOJ Proposes Communications Decency Act Reform: A proposal to reform CDA Section 230, which currently immunizes online services from liability for user-created content, recommends that Congress amend the law to deny immunity to sites that “purposely facilitate criminal activity,” require sites to log and keep reports of reported bad activity for law enforcement in order to “maintain their existing level of rights,” and curtail the sites’ content moderation powers. 

Google Expands Policies To Prevent Discriminatory Targeted Advertising: Though Google previously barred targeting advertisements based on “race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation,” the company has announced it will further fight unlawful discrimination “by barring housing, employment and credit ads” from targeting users based on “their postal code, gender, age, parental status, or marital status.” 

Information Security and Cyberthreats Former eBay Executives Charged With Cyberstalking Critics: Six former eBay executives were charged with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses after harassing a Massachusetts couple who edit a blog that critiqued the company; the executives mailed, among other things, “a bloody pig Halloween mask”  to the couple’s home, sent threatening Twitter messages, and allegedly surveilled the couple “in their home and community.”   Zoom Applies End-To-End Encryption To All Communications: The videoconferencing service announced that all user communications would be encrypted end-to-end by default; the decision reverses Zoom’s prior policy  that offered only paid users such privacy protections.

Privacy

Microsoft Pitched Facial Recognition To Federal Law Enforcement: Emails obtained by the ACLU reveal that in 2017, Microsoft’s Cognitive Services Group pitched facial-recognition and other AI products to the DEA, months before the company called for “public regulation and corporate responsibility” in that field; last week, the company pledged to not sell the technology to police departments. 

Intellectual Property Google Countersues Sonos For Speaker Patent Infringement: In January 2020, Sonos sued Google for patent infringement, alleging that Google stole Sonos’s technology for “multiroom network speaker systems”; Google now countersues Sonos for infringement of Google’s “mesh networking, echo cancellation, DRM, content notifications, and personalized speech” patents.

Free Expression and Censorship Fox News Removes Manipulated Protest Images From Site: After the Seattle Times discovered that Fox inserted “altered and misleading” pictures  in its online coverage of Seattle’s civil rights marches, the news conglomerate replaced the images and posted an editor’s note explaining the retraction.

On the Lighter Side Facebook To Launch New Feature To Block Political Ads: Facebook and Instagram will soon allow users to block all “political, electoral, and social issue” advertisements; this feature will be launched throughout the United States in the next few weeks and will be available globally by Fall of 2020.

Joel R. Reidenberg Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP Tom Norton Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Isabel Brown Caroline Vermillion Editorial Fellows

Internet Governance

Senator Cruz Accuses Twitter Of Violating Iran Sanctions: In a May 29 letter to the Department of Justice and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Senator Cruz called for a criminal investigation into the social media company for not blocking Iranian leaders’ accounts, which Cruz claimed violated the Iran sanctions rooted in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). 

Privacy

Google Faces $5 Billion Class Action Lawsuit For Tracking Users In “Private” Mode: A class action lawsuit filed against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleges that the company violates “wiretapping and privacy laws” by  tracking information such as “consumer browsing history and other web activity data” despite users browsing in “incognito” or “private” mode. 

California Reveals Privacy Law Enforcement Strategy: California Attorney General Xavier Becerra released the proposed regulations for the California Consumer Privacy Act, though their definitions of key terms such as “sale of data,” “third-party cookies,” and the entities subject to the law—uncertainties which tech giants could exploit to avoid liability—raise early doubts about enforcement effectiveness. 

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Zoom To Provide End-To-End Encryption For Paying Users Only: Zoom announced that it will provide full encryption privacy services only to paying users who can be verified, as well as non-profit organizations “that require the added security”; the move comes as part of an effort to keep “illegal and abusive content” off the platform.

Intellectual Property

Major Publishers Sue Internet Archive For Permitting Free Access To Millions Of Books: Numerous publishers from the Association of American Publishers filed suit in New York federal court against the Internet Archive and five others for copyright infringement, alleging that the scanning, reproducing, and distributing “digital bootleg [works] online” as part of the Internet Archive’s Open Library amounts to “mass infringement;” plaintiffs seek both an injunction and $150,000 in statutory damages per infringement. 

Free Expression and Censorship

Lawsuit Filed Against President Trump For Recent Social Media Executive Order: On June 2, the Center for Democracy and Technology filed a lawsuit against President Trump, alleging that his executive order restricting social media platforms’ ability to censor misinformation and curb online violence was purely “retaliatory” and in violation of the First Amendment.

Practice Note

California Limits Fees For Public Record Requests: After a local police department charged $3,000 in “redaction fees” for body camera footage from a UC Berkeley protest, the California Supreme Court narrowed the circumstances in which government agencies can charge fees for public record requests to exclude the cost of any privacy redactions made in the process of fulfilling those requests.  

On the Lighter Side

Researchers Analyze Why We Stretch Our Words Online: A pair of applied mathematicians from the University of Vermont published a study of 100 billion Tweets concluding that users tend to extend two- and double-letter words, such as “aw” and “finally,” to convey a broad range of emotions and attract attention in a limited space; the findings will be “critical” in training AI chatbots to better parse human-written text. 

Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law
Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP

Tom Norton
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Isabel Brown
Caroline Vermillion
Editorial Fellows