Judge Koh of the District Court for the Northern District of California recently granted LinkedIn’s motion to dismiss with leave to amend in Low v. LinkedIn.  Covington represents LinkedIn in this case, in which Plaintiff alleges that he suffered injury by virtue of LinkedIn’s purported transmittal of a unique UserID to certain third parties as…

Government officials must seek a warrant to compel the disclosure of cell phone location data, a federal district court ruled, holding that a federal law allowing the government to obtain some information without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment.
In a one-page order upholding a magistrate judge’s decision, U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes,…

The group that develops technical standards and guidelines for the World Wide Web released a set of draft standards on Monday that are intended to allow consumers to limit and control how they are tracked online. The standards, developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (known as the “W3C”), would allow consumers to set a…

In a speech this week at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Internet Policy Daniel Weitzner announced that the Administration will soon roll out a “privacy bill of rights,” which he described as a “broad, high-level statement of principles” that could be enforced by the FTC.  Weitzner emphasized…

This past week, officials from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative’s 21 member nations met in Honolulu to discuss a range of policy issues affecting the Asia-Pacific region.  One development coming out of the meeting was the adoption by APEC of the Honolulu Declaration, which includes an endorsement of a self-regulatory, cross-border privacy program to promote…

Online advertiser ScanScout has entered into a consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission in connection with claims it made that consumers could opt out of receiving targeted ads by changing their computer’s web browser settings to block cookies.  According to the FTC, these claims were deceptive with respect to the use of so-called “…

Earlier this week, the industry self-regulatory program set up by online advertisers to deal with reported privacy problems released decisions in its first six compliance cases.  The Online Internet-Based Advertising Accountability Program, which was established in August, determines whether reported businesses are complying with the self-regulatory principles for online behavioral advertising.  The Better Business Bureau…