Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On March 19, 2024, Utah’s Governor Spencer J. Cox signed Senate Bill (SB) 98 (the “Bill”), Online Data Security and Privacy Amendments, into law. The Bill amends the Protection of Personal Information Act (§13-44-101 et seq) and the Utah Technology Governance Act in the Utah Government Operations Code (§63A-16-1101 et seq). The Utah Technology Governance Act had previously established the Utah Cyber Center, a state initiative to coordinate efforts between local, state and federal resources by sharing threat intelligence and best practices.

On March 1, 2024, the Virginia legislature passed S.B. 361 (the “Bill”), which amends the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act to introduce new protections for children’s privacy. If signed by the Virginia Governor, the new children’s privacy protections will go into effect on January 1, 2025.

After potential warning signs spanning several years, on March 14, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission brought an enforcement action against two entities selling virus protection software to consumers via online and telemarketing sales. According to the FTC’s complaint, for several years the entities, Restoro Cyprus Limited and Reimage Cyprus Limited, received excessive chargebacks on purchases, numerous consumer complaints made directly to the entities, and various indirect consumer complaints made to vendors, telecoms service providers and others. 

On March 8, 2024, the Centre for Information Policy Leadership at Hunton Andrews Kurth (“CIPL”) filed its response to the Federal Trade Commission’s notice of proposed rulemaking (“NPRM”), which addresses amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“COPPA Rule”).

Bloomberg Law reported that the Federal Communications Commission adopted rules creating a voluntary cybersecurity labeling program for wireless consumer Internet of Things products, as well as a further notice of proposed rulemaking that seeks comments addressing additional disclosure requirements for program participants with respect to national security.

Last week, Utah Governor Spencer J. Cox signed three privacy-related bills into law. The bills are focused on, respectively, protection of motor vehicle consumer data, regulations on social media companies with respect to minors, and access to protected health information by third parties. The Utah legislature appears to be focused on data-related legislation this session, as Governor Cox signed two other bills related to AI into law last week as well.

On March 18, 2024, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) published new data protection fining guidance on how the ICO determines penalties and calculates fines. The guidance was subject to a consultation process in 2023, and covers a variety of topics and considerations relevant to penalties and fines, including:

On March 8, 2024, the California Privacy Protection Agency (“CPPA”) Board discussed and voted 3-2 in favor of further edits to revised draft regulations regarding risk assessments and automated decisionmaking technology (“ADMT”), which were released in February 2024, but did not initiate the formal rulemaking process for these regulations, which is anticipated to begin in July 2024.

On March 7, 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) issued its judgment in the case of Endemol Shine (Case C‑740/22). In this case, the CJEU was called upon to assess whether oral disclosure of information could be considered as processing of personal data under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and to clarify the relationship between personal data protection and public access to documents.

On March 13, 2024, the Federal Communications Commission’s updates to the FCC data breach notification rules (the “Rules”) went into effect. They were adopted in December 2023 pursuant to an FCC Report and Order (the “Order”).