social network patents

Facebook, Patents, and Privacy: Social Media Innovations to Mine Personal Data

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Social Media Patents & Privacy Data

[©2016. Published in GPSOLO, Vol. 37, No. 5, September/October 2020, by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association or the copyright holder]

* Updated November 25 to include references to CPRA/ Prop24.

The episode “Nosedive” of the television series Black Mirror envisions a society built on social credit scores. In this dystopia, all social media networks have converged into one platform—think Facebook, TikTok, Yelp, and Equifax combined.

This umbrella social platform allows users to rate each other on a five-point scale after each social interaction. Those with a high score gain access to job opportunities, favorable zip codes, and even high-status relationships. Those with a low score have the social ladder kicked out from under them, leading to a downward cycle of estrangement—and in the case of Black Mirror’s protagonist, jail time.

While the society in “Nosedive” seems far-fetched, is the technology behind it plausible?

Facebook Patents That Impact Privacy

According to Facebook’s patents, the answer is a resounding “yes.”

In a series of filings spanning almost a decade, Facebook has obtained several patents that allow social media platforms to track, identify, and classify individuals in new and innovative ways. Below are just few.

Tracking individuals via dust. U.S. Patent No. 9485423B2, “associating cameras with users and objects in a social networking system” (filed September 16, 2010, patented June 25, 2013), allows social media networks to identify an individual’s friends and relationships by correlating users across the same camera. To do so, an algorithm analyzes the metadata of a photo to find a camera’s “signature.”

Continue Reading Facebook, Patents, and Privacy: Social Media Innovations to Mine Personal Data
PCI Expert Summer Virtual Event on November 5, 2020. Hosted by RSI.

Metaverse Law to Speak at PCI Expert Summit

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Metaverse Law will be speaking at the PCI Expert Summit hosted by RSI Security.

This year, the annual PCI Expert Summit event is an online/virtual all-day conference on Thursday, November 5, 2020, from 9:00am to 5:00pm PST. The agenda includes panels with PCI experts in addition to breakout sessions on specialized topics, such as incident and data breach response. Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits are available.

Register at https://www.rsisecurity.com/pciexpertsummit/.

Offset angled photo of Proposition 24 from the 2020 California Voter's Guide

What Businesses Need to Know if Voters Pass Proposition 24 (California Privacy Rights Act of 2020, “CPRA”)

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Hot on the heels of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), California residents this November will vote on Proposition 24. A majority yes vote on Prop 24 would pass the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA). The CPRA proposes several amendments to the CCPA, such as granting new rights to consumers, imposing greater penalties on businesses for certain violations, and creating a new state enforcement agency, the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA).

1. Right to Restrict Use of Sensitive Data

Under the newly added Section 1798.121, consumers now have the right to direct businesses to limit the use of “sensitive personal information.”

As defined in CPRA, sensitive personal information appears to combine the conventional definition of “personally identifiable information” from state breach notification laws with the definition of “special category data” under the GDPR. Accordingly, sensitive personal information is data that may include a Social Security Number, driver’s license number, account log-in/debit/credit card information in combination with password or PIN. It may also include a consumer’s precise geolocation, the contents of their e-mails or texts to others, and racial, religious, biometric, or health data.

If directed to do so, businesses must limit the use of sensitive personal information to only those purposes that are necessary to provide a consumer’s requested services or goods.

To facilitate consumer exercise of this right, businesses may be required to add another link, “Limit the Use of my Sensitive Personal Information,” to their websites, in addition to any existing “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link.

2. Right to Opt-Out of Cross-Context Behavioral Advertising

The CPRA requires a right of opt-out for “cross-context behavioral advertising” regardless of whether it constitutes a “sale” of personal information or not.

Continue Reading What Businesses Need to Know if Voters Pass Proposition 24 (California Privacy Rights Act of 2020, “CPRA”)
Blue EU flag fluttering in the wind

Schrems II: No Privacy Shield for EU-US Data Transfers, but Don’t Put Your Eggs into Standard Contractual Clauses Either

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Image Credit: Capri23auto from Pixabay

On July 16th, 2020, privacy professionals scrambled after the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) handed down its decision in Schrems II. The ruling invalidated the US-EU Privacy Shield agreement, which authorized transfers of data from the EU to the US for Privacy Shield-certified companies. Though the ruling on Privacy Shield was unexpected given that it was not directly at issue, such a decision is not without precedent or historical pattern. Privacy Shield itself was a replacement for the Safe Harbor framework that was invalidated in 2015 in Schrems I.

Now that the Privacy Shield framework has been invalidated, both data controllers and data processors are likely concerned about the next steps to take to ensure that any data transfers integral to its operations can continue. Although the U.S. Department of Commerce has indicated that it will continue processing Privacy Shield certifications, affected companies such as U.S. data importers and EU data exporters should quickly explore and adopt other transfer legitimizing mechanisms with their service providers and vendors in order to prevent any gaps in compliance.

Continue Reading Schrems II: No Privacy Shield for EU-US Data Transfers, but Don’t Put Your Eggs into Standard Contractual Clauses Either
china data privacy law

China’s 2020 Cryptography Law in the Context of China’s Burgeoning Data Privacy and Security Regime

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[Originally published as a Feature Article: China’s 2020 Cryptography Law in the Context of China’s Burgeoning Data Privacy and Security Regime, by Carolyn K. Luong, in Orange County Lawyer Magazine, April 2020, Vol. 62 No.4, page 31.]

By Carolyn Luong

U.S.-China relations have been a trending topic throughout the past year due to several conflicts involving the alleged encroachment upon free speech principles and perceived threats to U.S. national security. The NBA and Activision-Blizzard, both U.S.-based organizations, fielded criticisms in October of 2019 for supposed political censorship motivated by the fear of losing Chinese customers. Furthermore, as the U.S. races to build out its 5G infrastructure, the U.S. government has explicitly restricted U.S. corporations from conducting business with Chinese technology manufacturer Huawei upon apprehension that Huawei equipment may contain backdoors to enable surveillance by the Chinese government.[1]

Dr. Christopher Ford, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation remarked in September that, “Firms such as Huawei, Tencent, ZTE, Alibaba, and Baidu have no meaningful ability to tell the Chinese Communist Party ‘no’ if officials decide to ask for their assistance—e.g., in the form of access to foreign technologies, access to foreign networks, useful information about foreign commercial counterparties . . . .”[2] These Chinese firms in response firmly deny any allegations of contemplated or actual instances of required cooperation with the Chinese government to compromise user information or equipment.

Continue Reading China’s 2020 Cryptography Law in the Context of China’s Burgeoning Data Privacy and Security Regime
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