Issue 28: The two privacy stories that have me rUffLeD this week

Oh hey! Welcome to The Privacy Beat Newsletter!

Angelique Carson here. If we haven’t met yet, hey! Here’s the gist: Come here for insights on the hottest topics in privacy according to our peers’ tweets so you can walk into any happy hour or team meeting and sound like the absolute baller you are. No current topic gets by you!

Don’t move or talk in your car, ok?

In Washington State, a federal judge upheld an earlier dismissal of five class-action lawsuits alleging car manufacturers unlawfully collected and recorded drivers’ text messages.

WHAT?!

Yes, it’s true. As The Verge reports, the lawsuits said Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors, and Ford intercepted and recorded text messages and call logs when drivers were connected to their vehicles’ “infotainment” systems. The judge said the Washington Privacy Act (not the WPA that tried and failed three times, this one is from 1974 and is technically part of the state’s Constitution) requires plaintiffs to allege an injury, and the plaintiffs’ allegation that violating the WPA itself is an injury to a person “is insufficient to meet the statutory requirement.” 

I get that. Philosophically, and as an English major, I find it thrilling that a ruling can turn on a single word like “injury.” But as someone who’s in a different rental car every few months for the 12-hour slog from D.C. to Maine, I dislike this immensely. I can’t think of many freedoms I appreciate more than my right to move and speak freely. On the drive, to take a break from binging true-crime podcasts, I call several people, including: My mom, my mentor, my best friend, my second-best friend (she’s almost as good as best friend), etc. I say some shit, you know? I don’t need Honda’s paws on it, even if it is anonymized.

The idea that car companies are using my locations and conversations to sell to data brokers – as The MarkUp reported earlier this year – feels a lot more like captivity than freedom. As long as I’m in that metal box, wherever I go, whatever I say is fair game for collecting and sharing? The Washington judge says: Technically, yes. 

I’m often snarky about Congress’s inability to pass a federal privacy law, but this is one of those stories that reminds me of what I’m really exposed to without one. Sorry to be grumpy.

Meanwhile, California’s privacy agency recently announced it’s looking into the privacy risks related to connected cars.

‘You have to ask nicely’ (for my baby’s DNA)

A group of moms is suing New Jersey for storing their newborn babies’ blood for 23 years. Sounds random, but it’s actually an interesting case. You know how newborn babies get their heels pricked to test for diseases and dangerous conditions? I guess it’s a thing that happened to all of us. I am without child, so I’ve never seen it happen.

Anyway, last year, New Jersey’s Office of the Public Defender discovered state police had accessed an infant’s blood sample to charge his father with a 1996 crime, as opposed to getting the DNA from the father himself. That was possible because New Jersey’s law mandating blood collection at birth doesn’t have rules limiting retention or deletion. 

The plaintiffs say the state should tell parents about its DNA retention policy, and parents should be allowed to opt in or out of certain uses of their newborns’ data. Like one parent said in WIRED’s story on this, “If there was something the state told me they could do with my child’s blood samples that would benefit the greater good, I would likely opt into that. But I want the chance to opt in.”

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development reports that all 50 states, plus DC and Puerto Rico, require newborn screens for at least 29 health conditions. Only Maine and California require parental consent.

Hot take of the week

Join me for this next week?

I’m hosting a chat with Chris Handman, Snap’s first GC and currently my boss here at TerraTrue, and Hannah Poteat, formerly of Twilio and now at LTK, about how to keep up with all of this privacy stuff. There’s too much to do, not enough help to do it, and changes coming at us all the time. How can we simplify things? What strategies can we use to prioritize our long lists of to-dos and keep some semblance of sanity. It should be a great vibe, these two are excellent on this topic. Join us? You can register here.

What are you up to Nov. 14? We're talking with LTK's Hannah Poteat and TerraTrue's Chris Handman about getting strategic about what to prioritize — bc privacy's pace is CRAZY, and you gotta focus your attention on what matters to your org. Join us? 😎https://t.co/GSyFxfD7Tx pic.twitter.com/MNoDMc28pN

— TerraTrue (@TerraTrueHQ) November 9, 2023

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xoxo,

Angelique