A district court preliminarily enjoined a Mississippi social media age-verification law for the second time Wednesday, ruling it's too broad to survive a First Amendment challenge. The U.S. District Court for Southern Mississippi previously enjoined the same law, HB-1126, in July 2024 (see 2407010062).
The New Jersey Supreme Court upheld Daniel’s Law in a decision Tuesday, rejecting a journalist’s First Amendment challenge to the statute that aims to protect certain public officials' personal information.
Objections to the proposed sale of genetic data in the 23andMe bankruptcy case continued piling up in court this week. They came from a range of affected parties, including states and customers of the biotechnology company.
Risk assessments and other preemptive analyses of AI and privacy systems are the best ways of negating harms before they arise, said panelists during an Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) event Monday about California’s proposed AI and privacy regulations.
Enacting a federally imposed 10-year moratorium on enforcing state-level AI laws (see 2506120083) wouldn't necessarily end the debate about the benefits and problems of regulation, panelists indicated during a Cato Institute event Thursday. While they agreed a bevy of state laws would blunt AI innovation and prompt legal challenges, their views varied about how best to protect citizens from potential AI harms, including privacy risks, and still stimulate innovation. In the end, even Congress' moratorium won't end confusion over AI regulation, one panelist said.
While immigrants seem to be the current target of mass-data collection, the federal government's collection of massive amounts of personal information has implications for other populations, including those who speak out against Washington, panelists said during a webinar Wednesday hosted by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the Leadership Conference’s Center for Civil Rights & Technology.
The Michigan Senate Committee on Finance, Insurance and Consumer Protection cleared a comprehensive privacy bill during its meeting Wednesday on a 5-3 vote. A bipartisan group of senators recently introduced SB-359, or the personal data privacy act (see 2506060043). The legislation comes after Michigan failed to pass a similar consumer privacy measure last year (see 2412300043).
Senators raised national security concerns and urged bankrupt 23andMe to obtain specific consent from customers before it sells their personal data during a Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, several groups objected to the company's bankruptcy sale in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Eastern Missouri.
23andMe defended its planned sale in a statement to us Tuesday, decrying a lawsuit and separate objection filed Monday by a bipartisan group of nearly 30 state attorneys general. The AGs opposed the proposed sale of collected genetic information without each customer's consent. Founder Anne Wojcicki and interim CEO Joe Selsavage defended the company's privacy practices during a House Oversight Committee hearing Tuesday.
Studying the fundamentals surrounding AI and privacy before imposing regulation will help create a future where generative AI's benefits can coexist with privacy rights, panelists said Monday during a webinar of the Federalist Society Regulatory Transparency Project.