Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter Zatko, revealed his prior employer lagged a decade behind cybersecurity standards. This statement was one among several shocking disclosures he shared with members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing Sept. 13. Zatko, who worked at Twitter from November 2020 through January 2022, was called to testify to the committee after he filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission... Read More

Prospects for a landmark vote in the U.S. House on the proposed American Data Privacy and Protection Act boil down to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who decides when or if the comprehensive privacy bill's number will be considered on the House floor. Pelosi did not take a side upon the ADPPA becoming available for a floor vote just ahead of U.S. Congress' summer recess, leaving many wondering where the chips would fall when federal lawmakers returned to work Sept. 6. Following weeks of u... Read More

What forces have kept the United States from passing comprehensive data privacy legislation over the years? Is it “Americans’ conceptions of privacy itself” that have doomed omnibus laws? Writing in Axios this week, journalist Margaret Harding McGill focused on our culture of individualism and deep-rooted conceptions of privacy as a right rooted primarily in sovereignty over physical space. Is it instead the potential high cost of new compliance obligations? Or the fact that privacy is a “slow b... Read More

If businesses thought August would bring a lull from the breakneck pace of privacy policymaking — including a draft federal privacy law, five new state privacy laws and a dizzying array of global privacy regulations from the EU to China to Japan — the U.S. Federal Trade Commission had other plans. Announcing an ambitious Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FTC has put in motion a process that privacy advocates have dreamt about for years, promulgating trade regulations in privacy and data... Read More

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said it would follow the letter of the law when it announced its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concerning commercial surveillance and lax data security in August, which meant a robust stakeholder consultation to come. That process began in earnest with an exchange of perspectives from relevant parties at the FTC's virtual public forum Sept. 8. The official comment deadline for the ANPRM and the 95 questions it poses will not close until Oct. 21, but the... Read More

If businesses thought August would bring a lull from the breakneck pace of privacy policymaking — including a draft federal privacy law, five new state privacy laws and a dizzying array of global privacy regulations from the EU to China to Japan — the U.S. Federal Trade Commission had other plans. Announcing an ambitious Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FTC has put in motion a process that privacy advocates have dreamt about for years, promulgating trade regulations in privacy and data... Read More

A report from researchers at the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology claims U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has used private data brokers to access hundreds of millions of Americans’ personal information, The Verge reports. Through public records and collected data, the report says ICE has built a surveillance system with limited oversight. Georgetown Law Policy Associate Nina Wang said ICE has “built up a sweeping surveillance infrastructure that’s capable of tracking almos... Read More