An interesting privacy lawsuit has been filed, in what seems to be perfect timing for our section -- between Kate Andresen's CLE at our April meeting, "Is Privacy a Realistic Goal in the Digital Age of the Internet and Social Networking Sites?" and Michael Fleming's CLE for our upcoming Annual Meeting, "Privacy Regulation by Proxy: How Customers Can Ensnare Their Vendors in Data Security Laws."
A Dallas woman has sued Blockbuster over its participation in Facebook's Beacon marketing program. According to the complaint, the woman rented videos from Blockbuster, who passed along her rental info to Facebook, who then distributed the rental info on the Internet through its Beacon system. The plaintiff alleges that this was a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2710 (summary).
This is a fascinating glimpse into the types of privacy issues that may arise when companies jump into the "next big thing" -- here, social networking -- without fully considering potential adverse effects. This case will be closely watched by other players in this area (e.g., MySpace), as well as their partner companies.
Speaking of privacy, Damien, the NJ Supreme Court yesterday ruled in an evidence suppression case that, under the NJ Constitution, an Internet user has the right to privacy in the subscriber information maintained by the individual's Internet service provider.
Said the court, "[C]itizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the subscriber information they provide to Internet service providers . . . Accordingly, the motion to suppress . . . was properly granted because the police used a deficient municipal subpoena. Law enforcement officials can obtain subscriber information by serving a grand jury subpoena on an Internet service provider without notice to the subscriber. The state (law enforcement) may seek to reacquire the information with a proper grand jury subpoena because records of the information existed independently of the faulty process used by police, and the conduct of the police did not affect the information."
See: http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/opinions/supreme/A-105-06%20State%20v%20Shirley%20Reid.pdf
Posted by: Sean Harrington | April 22, 2008 at 12:53 PM