This begins the weekly series I'm going to do to round up some of the more interesting privacy news that's crossing my radar. One of the biggest concerns I hear from fellow attorneys in this space is "how do I keep up with everything that's happening?"

You don't.

But if you curate a good social media following, grab a few newsletters, and read the news, you can keep up with some of it. So here's what crossed my radar this week:

  • MPR: Minneapolis City Council rejects police drone contract with controversial Skydio - This is a local story I've been following and trekked down to city hall to testify against Skydio drones because of Constitutional privacy concerns. Our city council deadlocked 6-6 on this which is concerning. Fresh constitutional issues may emerge for drones and other generalized surveillance technology used without warrants following SCOTUS' recent decision in Chatrie v. United States, which found that geofence searches are subject to the 4th Amendment and, therefore, require a warrant to access any cell phone location data within that area. While SCOTUS hasn't yet opined specifically on drones, future cases are inevitable given the expansion of drone use by law enforcement and looking to cases like Chatrie that build upon traditional 4A jurisprudence in the application of new technologies lets us see where the future may go.
  • 404 Media: ICE to Pay Thomson Reuters $125 Million to Find ‘Voter Fraud’ - This article dropped this morning in the wake of Trump's lie-filled speech about voter fraud earlier this week as Republicans trail badly in polls leading up to the November midterms. As of today, Trump is 0-16 in federal courts trying to force states to give him unredacted voter roll data. Now he's circumventing the courts and buying data from TR exploiting exceptions in our rights of privacy that desperately need to be legislatively closed to continue his attacks on elections.
  • Texas AG: Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton Secures Land­mark Legal Vic­to­ry to Lock Porno­graph­ic Web­site Domain and Pro­tect Minors From Harm­ful Content - I've been following age verification cases closely lately to see where we land and how they're enforced. This is interesting because the Texas' statute doesn't expressly grant the right to seek domain freezing. Key takeaway here: "This writ demonstrates that Texas has the legal authority and the proven tools to reach beyond its borders and hold foreign operators accountable." Texas is looking for ways to get at companies not inside its traditional jurisdictional boundaries and this harms businesses around the world who may be compliant locally if Texas can come after their entire business, not just their Texas-shaped compliance. I expect copyright pirate shenanigans and rebuilding the domains and SEO to occur.
  • Security Week: AI Data Centers Are Being Built Faster Than They Can Be Secured - Not shocking at all to see this happening given the pace we're rolling out data centers, AI models, and tools built on top of AI models while rushing into the new hyperscaler gold rush. There's a lot of money to be made in this space and a narrow window in time where government regulations and enforcement are at a standstill.
  • Defector: James Dolan Sues Wired Magazine For Writing A Story About His Shitty Ways - Wired has been on James Dolan's case for awhile, writing stories over the last few years about his use of facial recognition systems to track people at Madison Square Garden and other venues he owns, even going so far as to use facial recognition to evict a Girl Scout mom from their seats at the Rockettes mid-show because she worked for a law firm that filed a suit against MSG. A couple of weeks ago, Wired published an article alleging that MSG was using facial recognition to track VIPs and LGBTQ+ celebrities. Dolan filed a defamation suit this week. Per social media, Wired has now responded by dropping the paywall on all MSG articles. Streisand Effect happening. This story is a reminder that privacy issues go beyond the courthouse, fines, data breaches, etc. and have genuine public reputational harms as well for businesses.

If you need any help navigating these or any other privacy, security, or AI laws, reach out to us at Brandi@BennettTechLaw.com for help.