Legal & Compliance

Peter Greene and Ben Kozinn of Lowenstein Sandler LLP welcomed the resolution of the City of Los Angeles Vs. The Weather Channel case. The settlement is more robust disclosure by the app provider with respect to its use of geolocation data.

On July 9th, 2020, a House Committee on Consumer Protection and Commerce called for federal privacy legislation to be enacted. Representative McMorris Rogers supported a Committee Staff Discussion Draft from December 2019 and called for bi-partisan support on the issue.

On July 16th, 2020, the European Commission launched an antitrust inquiry into the Internet of Things (IoT). The focus of the inquiry is on consumer products and services that “are connected to a network and can be controlled at a distance, for example via a voice assistant or mobile device”.

Organizations that rely on alternative data should ensure that their diligence process includes questions regarding the EU data transfer mechanisms used by the data brokers, and their sources, and obtain contractual assurances that the transfer was legal under all applicable laws.

The new iOS 14 will allow consumers to limit how much location information they have to share and provides users with more options to restrict what information they have to share on apps.