The new Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) exemption for calls made to cellular numbers to collect debts owed to or guaranteed by the United States applies retroactively to calls made before the exemption's effective...more
4/18/2016
/ ATDS ,
Bipartisan Budget ,
Cell Phones ,
Debt Collection ,
Exemptions ,
FCC ,
Federal Loans ,
Federal Student Loans ,
Popular ,
Retroactive Application ,
TCPA
The Florida Third District Court of Appeal (DCA), sitting en banc, reversed itself this week and held that the five-year statute of limitations did not bar a second foreclosure suit filed on a subsequent payment default so...more
A recent letter from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler describes the regulations being considered by the FCC for implementing new Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) exemptions for calls made...more
3/16/2016
/ Auto-Dialed Calls ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Debt Collection ,
Exemptions ,
FCC ,
IRS ,
NPRM ,
Popular ,
Prior Express Consent ,
Robocalling ,
TCPA
The European Commission (EC) has released details of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, a new framework under which personal data may be transferred from the European Union (EU) to the United States. The Privacy Shield replaces the...more
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has announced its first data security enforcement action. Since the 1990s, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has primarily taken on the role as the de facto federal regulator...more
Nearly three in five Californians were victims of a data breach in 2015, according to a report released by state Attorney General Kamala D. Harris. The report adopts minimum standards of ''reasonable security'' for personal...more
The Judicial Redress Act (Act), signed into law on February 24, 2016, by President Obama, extends the privacy protections offered to U.S. citizens under the Privacy Act of 1974 to citizens of ''covered countries'' overseas....more
A creditor that received a consumer's cell phone number through an intermediary had the consumer's ''prior express consent'' under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) to receive calls from a debt collector, the U.S....more
2/29/2016
/ Auto-Dialed Calls ,
Cell Phones ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Debt Collection ,
FCC ,
Health Care Providers ,
Popular ,
Prior Express Consent ,
Putative Class Actions ,
Summary Judgment ,
TCPA
President Obama's Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP), a comprehensive plan to address the nation's cybersecurity challenges through increased funding, a more robust cybersecurity workforce, and education initiatives,...more
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have released Interim Guidance Documents (Guidance Documents) to implement the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA). The Act...more
In an unpublished opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently affirmed summary judgment for the defendant in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) case, refusing to entertain the plaintiff’s...more
The European Commission (EC) and the U.S. Department of Commerce have reached an agreement to create a framework for transfers of personal data from the European Union to the United States. The framework, named the EU-U.S....more
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that an unaccepted Rule 68 settlement offer does not moot a class action even when the offer would provide the named plaintiff with complete individual relief. The decision in Campbell-Ewald...more
A new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report, "Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion? Understanding the Issues," warns that certain uses of big data consisting of consumer information may implicate various federal...more
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that an unaccepted Rule 68 settlement offer does not moot a class action even when the offer would provide the named plaintiff with complete individual relief. The decision in Campbell-Ewald...more
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently approved a $100 million settlement with LifeLock, Inc. to resolve allegations that it violated a 2010 federal court order by failing to take steps required to protect its users’...more
The FTC has announced enforcement actions against two app developers that allegedly violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by using persistent identifiers to serve advertising to children. The...more
The Association of Corporate Counsel Foundation (ACC) released a State of Cybersecurity report on December 9, 2015. Ballard Spahr was the only law firm that served on the advisory board for the study and helped to formulate...more
The Association of Corporate Counsel Foundation (ACC) released a State of Cybersecurity report underwritten by Ballard Spahr on December 9, 2015. The report provides valuable insights on cybersecurity issues from more than...more
In the case of ACA International v. Federal Communications Commission and United States of America, Ballard Spahr LLP represented the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) in filing a joint amici brief with the American...more
In a memorandum opinion, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California recently held that the defendant’s manual use of a desktop telephone was not subject to liability under the new Federal Communications...more
Prior to the amendment, these calls would have been prohibited absent the recipient’s prior express consent if placed to a cellular telephone and if they were made by an automatic telephone dialing system or included an...more
Three bills that will update California’s data breach notification requirements have been signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown. The bills impose specific requirements on providing breach notification to consumers, add a...more
10/20/2015
/ Automatic License Plate Readers ,
Breach Notification Rule ,
Compliance ,
Cyber Attacks ,
Cyber Crimes ,
Data Breach ,
Encryption ,
Hackers ,
New Legislation ,
Personal Data ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Posting Requirements ,
Privacy Laws ,
Surveillance
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has held that the EU Commission's decision establishing the Safe Harbor data transfer framework is invalid because the Commission failed to determine that the protection...more
10/8/2015
/ Binding Corporate Rules ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Protection Authority ,
Edward Snowden ,
EU Data Protection Laws ,
European Commission ,
European Court of Justice (ECJ) ,
Facebook ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
International Data Transfers ,
Ireland ,
National Security ,
National Security Agency (NSA) ,
Personal Data ,
Privacy Laws ,
Right to Privacy ,
Safe Harbors ,
Schrems I & Schrems II ,
US-EU Safe Harbor Framework
A federal judge in Pennsylvania has allowed a data breach class action against Coca-Cola and several bottling companies to proceed, finding that the plaintiff has Article III standing even though he had left Coca-Cola’s...more
10/7/2015
/ Article III ,
Civil Conspiracy ,
Clapper v. Amnesty International ,
Class Action ,
Coca Cola ,
Data Breach ,
Fraudulent Charges ,
Identity Theft ,
Injury-in-Fact ,
Misrepresentation ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Standing