Greetings from Portsmouth, New Hampshire!

First off, as we go to press this afternoon with U.S. Privacy Digest, our website is experiencing technical difficulties. Our IT staff is working to fix the issue, but if you do click a link that goes to our website and it doesn't work, this is the reason. We hope to have this resolved as quickly as possible. Our apologies for any inconvenience.

Okay, with that housekeeping message aside, here in the Seacoast of New Hampshire, we’re bracing for extreme heat wave temps that are expected to exceed 100 degrees this weekend. Sure, we’re in the middle of July, so we always expect hot weather, but, if these predictions are accurate, we might break some records.

Speaking of breaking records, within an hour of publishing last week’s U.S. Privacy Digest, The Wall Street Journal reported the Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2, along party lines, to fine Facebook a record-breaking $5 billion for privacy violations related to the Cambridge Analytica revelations. The FTC has yet to release anything official (at least at the time of publishing this newsletter) while the Department of Justice reviews the settlement. The “Friday afternoon news dump” didn’t surprise us; I just wished the report came out just a bit earlier!

If you haven’t yet caught up on the FTC-Facebook news – if not, where have you been?! – the IAPP’s Angelique Carson wrote up an excellent Privacy Advisor article featuring a wide-ranging and well-reasoned swath of reactions to the fine. This really gets to the heart of the piece and what the fine may mean more broadly: “While there's merit in debating whether the fine is meaningful,” she wrote, “a looming and larger question might be what the implications are for companies more broadly and how this might impact discussions in both boardrooms on operational risk, as well as at Congressional hearings on how to regulate privacy federally.”

Has news of this fine caught the attention of your company’s executive leadership? Will this help you get more budget for your department? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

Finally, we’ve updated our state privacy law comparison chart in our Resource Center to reflect recent changes in state level privacy law. Be sure to check it out.