In a significant decision for website operators, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court clarified that tracking users’ web activity does not constitute illegal wiretapping under the state’s Wiretap Act. The court found that...more
Pretrial detention imposes severe burdens on a defendant's ability to prepare for trial. One such burden is that the prosecution may receive, without a warrant, recordings of the defendant's electronic communications,...more
Readers of this blog are familiar with the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”), and the systematic transformation of CIPA wiretapping cases since their inception. Applying CIPA, a Washington State federal court...more
Recently, companies have found themselves defending allegations that the use of third-party pixel tracking technology on their websites violates state consumer privacy laws. Fortunately, these claims do not always survive the...more
Perhaps at no time in modern history have employers seemingly had less of a grip on their workforce. The amorphous, pre-COVID, practices of “flex time” and work-from-home have been stretched and snapped back to a point of...more
Pretrial detention imposes several unreasonable burdens on a defendant's ability to prepare for trial. One such burden is that the prosecution often gains access—without a warrant—to the defendant's telephone calls because...more
The proliferation of class action lawsuit and arbitration claim filings under the Federal Wiretap Act and various state wiretap statutes has recently grown beyond California, as other states are now beginning to see more...more
2022 has seen a new wave of class action lawsuits targeting companies that use technology to track consumers’ interfaces on their websites. These lawsuits generally allege that the use of technologies such as session replay...more
Takeaway: State wiretap acts have been around for a long time, and they can provide greater protection to victims of intercepted communications than the Federal Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2510. These statutes generally...more
While the consumer class action landscape has been dominated as of late with the usual suspects (Telephone Consumer Protection Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act, etc.) and the new twists on old standbys (current flavor of the...more
A growing number of employers monitor and review their employees’ electronic communications, including telephone calls, emails and internet use, while at work or working away from the office. They cite a number of legitimate...more
It’s hard to imagine a world in which the U.S. Postal Service is permitted to peer inside our personal mail, or gather and track the address and other data we place on our mail, and then use and sell what it learns about us....more
A motion to dismiss has been filed in a California case filed by a New York woman who claims that the National Basketball Association’s Golden State Warriors violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (the “Wiretap...more
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016), lower courts have begun to address whether alleged violations of statutes intended to protect privacy suffice, in the absence of...more
Last week, the Sixth Circuit expanded potential liability for violations of the Federal Wiretap Act for manufacturers of devices that can be used for wiretapping, like monitoring software, in reversing the dismissal of a...more