Will Anthony Weiner's "Weiner" Tweets Derail His Candidacy For Mayor of New York City?

New York City is the greatest city in the world.  I lived in the City (NYC'ers call it the City) before and after 9/11.  It is the city that is full of come back stories.  As Frank Sinatra sang in New York New York, "if I can make it there I can make it anywhere".  Almost two years ago, former Congressman Anthony Weiner resigned from Congress because of inappropriate Tweets he sent that contained photos of his private parts.  However, he has recently announced his candidacy for Mayor of New York City.

In 2011, Weiner first claimed that his Twitter account was hacked after he was asked about some troubling Tweets being sent from his account.  However, when he declined to ask that the proper authorities investigate the matter I knew he was not being completely honest about the situation.  When I appeared on MSNBC to discuss the crisis I didn't want to accuse a member of Congress of lying so I only alluded to the troubling nature of the alleged claims by Weiner.

Until Weiner's social media usage became news, his political star was extremely bright.  Since leaving Congress, he has worked to rehabilitate his personal life and career.  While he may have learned some hard (no pun intended) lessons about social media, it appears that his staff needs some education on how to properly post video online to ensure it doesn't become a news story.

In general, politicians seem to be able to rebound from sex scandals and handsome profitably.  Time will tell if Weiner is added to the list.  Regardless of the outcome of the election, it will be interesting to see how Weiner handles all of the questions related to his past social media endeavors.    

To learn more about these issues you may contact me at www.shearlaw.com.

Copyright 2013 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC.  All rights reserved.

FTC Complaint Filed Against Snapchat

Consumer privacy advocate EPIC has recently filed an FTC complaint against Snapchat because it believes the service is misleading consumers regarding its ability to delete the content being sent across its platform.  According to multiple published reports, Snapchat may not be permanently deleting the content being sent through its service despite its claims.  

Snapchat's promise that content would "self-destruct" after it is viewed may remind some people of Mission Impossible's self-destruct messaging system.  Self destruct messages are ideal for some content that is sent online.  Due to the constant barrage of media coverage regarding sexting scandals, an app that actually deletes content once it is viewed may be very profitable for a company.

Unless Snapchat is able to quickly fix its alleged inability to permanently delete the content it claims it is able to delete it may have significant legal liability.  It may only be a matter of time before a user is damaged because content it thought was deleted was not.

To learn more about these issues you may contact me at www.shearlaw.com.

Copyright 2013 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC.  All rights reserved.

The Application Privacy, Protection and Security Act of 2013

Congress has recently introduced the Application Privacy, Protection and Security Act of 2013 (HR1913).  This legislation would require mobile application developers to disclose what data they collect and how they utilize, share, and archive the data they capture.

In January, 2013, the California Attorney General's office issued a privacy report on the mobile apps ecosystem.  Subsequently, on February 1, 2013, an FTC report recommended ways for mobile app developers to improve privacy disclosures.  At that time, the FTC stated that app developers should:

• Have a privacy policy and make sure it is easily accessible through the app stores;
• Provide just-in-time disclosures and obtain affirmative express consent before collecting and sharing sensitive information (to the extent the platforms have not already provided such disclosures and obtained such consent);
• Improve coordination and communication with ad networks and other third parties that provide services for apps, such as analytics companies, so the app developers can better understand the software they are using and, in turn, provide accurate disclosures to consumers.

HR 1913 appears it will make some of the FTC's recommendations mandatory.  Its unfortunate that the actions of some members of the app ecosystem may lead to further regulation of the entire industry.

To learn more about these issues you may contact me at www.shearlaw.com.

Copyright 2013 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC.  All rights reserved.

New Mexico Bans NCAA Student-Athlete Social Media Monitoring Firms

New Mexico recently joined Delaware, California, New Jersey, Michigan, Arkansas, and Utah in protecting their schools, school employees, students, and taxpayers from the potential costs and legal liability issues associated with social media monitoring students.  Under New Mexico SB 422, it is unlawful "to demand access in any manner to a student's, applicant's or potential applicant's account or profile on a social networking web site."

The enactment of SB 422 will greatly benefit schools, school employees, students, and taxpayers because collectively post-secondary schools in New Mexico may save millions of dollars in potential compliance costs and tens or hundreds of  millions of dollars in potential costs associated with social media related lawsuits.  SB 422 along with similar laws around the country appear to negatively affect the following companies that offer social media monitoring services:  UDiligence, Varsity Monitor, Fieldhouse Media, and Jump Forward.

It appears that the only way for the above mentioned social media monitoring services to properly function is if a student either downloads an application onto his personal account(s), provides a username(s) and/or password(s) to his personal account(s), or if a student authenticates his social media account(s).  These services may claim that all they need to properly work is a student's name or alias to search for a public social media account.  However, performing an Internet search and guessing that an account belongs to a particular student just because it is on the Internet may put you in the same position as one of the people portrayed in this hilarious State Farm Commercial.  According to CNN, as of last August, Facebook may have at least 83 million fake accounts and according to PRWeek, Twitter may have as many as 20 million fake accounts.

Any company that approaches schools to sell social media monitoring services to track students' personal digital accounts is selling a legal liability time bomb.  If a school is monitoring the personal social media content of their students and misses an indication that there may be a crime committed it may cost the school more than $100 million dollars.  For proof, just review the Penn State emails regarding the Jerry Sandusky matter.  Does a school want to be on the hook for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in legal liability because it was utilizing a social media monitoring service to track their students personal digital accounts?      

To learn more about these issues you may contact me at www.shearlaw.com.

Copyright 2013 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC All rights reserved.

California's Right to Know Act

California recently introduced "AB-1291 Privacy: Right to Know Act of 2013: disclosure of a customer’s personal information."  If enacted, the bill would update California's 2003 "Shine the Light" law (Civil Code Section 1798.80-1798.84) to account for the new data mining technologies and information sharing practices that have proliferated over the past ten years.  According to the bill's sponsor Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal, "AB 1291 expands the definition of personal information to include sensitive data, such as location, buying habits, and sexual orientation. By modernizing the requirements, consumers have a right to know not just how their basic information may have been used for junk mail, but also how it's collected and shared with data brokers, advertisers, and others."

The 2003 "Shine the Light" law enabled California residents to find out how businesses utilize their personal information.  In general, the law requires most companies (except federal financial institutions and those with less than 20 employees) that do business with California residents to either disclose how personal information is being shared for direct marketing purposes or allow customers to opt out of information sharing.  The law provides Californians the right once a calendar year to obtain free of charge the type of personal data that a business has disclosed to third parties for direct marketing activities and the names and contact information of all third parties that received the personal data.

Since 2003, data mining and behavioral advertising has proliferated beyond what many may have envisioned when the "Shine the Light" law was enacted.  To reign in some of these practices, a coalition of privacy organizations are advocating updating the law to account for new technologies.  According the Wall Street Journal, there has been significant industry backlash against updating the 2003 law. 

The Right To Know Act's general principles appear to follow the European Union's philosophy that its citizens have a right to require companies doing business with them to provide them with the type of information that is being collected about them.  Europe's privacy laws generally provide its citizens more control than the U.S. over how personal data may be utilized.  This was demonstrated when six EU data protection authorities  recently initiated coordinated enforcement measures against Google for failing to fix alleged flaws in its 2012 privacy policy update.  Google's privacy policy change along with Austrian law student Max Schrems experience with Facebook may have sparked the decision to introduce the Right to Know Act. 

Earlier this year, NBC News reported that Equifax has a database that contains almost 200 million employment and salary records that covers more than a third of all U.S. adults.  Some of these records may include week by week pay stub information.  While it may be troubling that Equifax has acquired this detailed information, at least under the Fair Credit Reporting Act consumers are able to obtain a report once a year about the data that is being collected about them.

Personal privacy may be further damaged by the new new partnership between Facebook and data brokers Acxiom, Epsilon, and Datalogic that is designed to better monetize the content of their users. The FTC is so concerned about some of the practices of data brokers that late last year it announced that it is studying how the industry collects and utilizes consumer data.  In what might be an effort to ward off potential future regulation, Axciom recently announced it was planning a service to allow consumers to obtain their personal files.     

Should advertisers be able to analyze your personal emails and/or your personal files in the cloud and utilize the information to behavioral advertise and/or combine this information with other digital and/or real world data across multiple platforms to create personal user profiles that may be accessed not only by marketers but also by insurance companies, banks, law enforcement, etc...?  What if due to the types of ads that are processed on a particular email account a company is able to make an inference about one's sexual orientation, race, religion, etc.. and this inference is utilized for discriminatory purposes? 

The intentions of the law are noble; however, due to the way the bill is currently drafted it may lead to some unintended compliance costs for businesses.  Therefore, I believe the California state legislature should work to find common ground between supporters and opponents of the bill that would increase transparency for consumers without creating an economic hardship on the business community.  

To learn more about these issues you may contact me at www.shearlaw.com.

Copyright 2013 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC All rights reserved.