California is the gold standard for state privacy laws, having recently enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA). Virginia and Colorado also have enacted comprehensive privacy laws, which will take effect in 2023. Recently, the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) released its state privacy legislation tracker.
Massachusetts
Litigation Over Massachusetts’ “Right to Repair” Law Continues
As we previously wrote, in November 2021, Ballot Question 1 in Massachusetts was passed, which requires car manufacturers that sell cars equipped with telematics systems (i.e., a method of monitoring a vehicle by combining a GPS system with on-board diagnostics to record – and map – exactly where a car is and how fast…
Smart Health Cards, Vaccine Passports, and Privacy
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee recently announced that they are considering implementing vaccine passport programs in their respective states. Baker stated that he is working with other states to use a QR code system that allows users to scan to verify vaccination status. In Rhode Island, the Department of Health…
Eversource Energy Notifies Customers of Data Breach
Eversource Energy, which is the largest energy supplier in New England with 4.3 million customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, is notifying customers that their personal information was compromised on an unsecured cloud server.
The personal information that was compromised includes names, addresses, telephone numbers, Social Security numbers, services addresses, and account numbers. The…
Vehicle Inspections in Multiple States Disrupted by Malware
Applus Technologies, Inc., a vendor of multiple state Departments of Motor Vehicles that assists states with vehicle inspections, recently announced that its systems have been affected by malware, disrupting motor vehicle inspections in Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Texas, and Utah. As a result of the outage, vehicle inspections have not been able…
Consumer Reports Releases Model State Privacy Act – More States Introduce Consumer Privacy Legislation
This week, Consumer Reports published a Model State Privacy Act. The Consumer advocacy organization proposed model legislation “to ensure that companies are required to honor consumers’ privacy.” The model legislation is similar to the California Consumer Privacy Act, but seeks to protect consumer privacy rights “by default.” Some additional provisions of the model law…
DOJ Warns of Business Email Compromise Scheme Targeted at PPP Loan Recipients
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts is warning small businesses that received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) of a dramatic increase in reports of business email-compromise schemes related to the program. Scammers are using information about PPP recipients posted by the Small Business Administration (SBA) to impersonate PPP lenders requesting…
Update on the Massachusetts Right to Repair Lawsuit
As I wrote about previously on our blog, the Massachusetts Right to Repair amendment passed in November is up against a lawsuit from auto manufacturers. Now, the Massachusetts’ Attorney General’s office has responded stating that the state law does not conflict with any federal statute and that voters already rejected all of the lawsuits allegations.…
Massachusetts Ballot Question 1 Still on the Forefront as Automakers Sue to Block its Implementation
A group of automakers through the Alliance for Automotive Innovation is suing Massachusetts in federal court to block the new ‘Right to Repair’ law that passed on November 3rd. This law was known as “Question 1” to Massachusetts residents hitting the polls earlier this month. As we discussed in our prior blog post, the…
Election Results: New Data Privacy and Security Laws
Although the Presidential race is unconfirmed at the time of this writing, there are several data privacy and security laws to put on your radar following the election this week.
Here is a brief list of laws that passed that we are aware of so far. We will provide more information as news breaks, but…