Welcome to the latest edition of the Privacy Insider Newsletter. Each week, we send you the latest and smartest news in the world of data privacy.
Here are the top stories from last week you might have missed:
- Brazil's national privacy law, the LGPD, is suddenly set to take effect after an unexpected vote by the Brazilian Senate. Enacting the law had previously been delayed to 2021. Following the Senate's surprising decision, the law will take effect as soon as the President approves it. Link
Brazil's law is similar to the EU's GDPR. If you need to brush up on the basics of the law, this article is a quick explainer. Link
- The US Customs and Border Protection agency has set up a massive searchable database for devices seized at the border. The database will be maintained for 75 years. They'll pull what they deem relevant to be copied off a device and uploaded to the database. Link
- In other US government privacy news, the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles disclosed that they sell license photos and social security numbers to private investigators. DMVs across the country sell drivers' information to many entities but typically withhold the most sensitive information. Link
- Amazon launched a wearable device that has raised several privacy concerns. The fitness band has two microphones - one to capture audio and listen to emotional cues. The second mic allows Amazon to analyze your voice's nuances to paint a picture of how you sound to others. In another strange twist, the app uses your phone's cameras to render 3D scans of your body to determine body fat percentage. Link
- Former US presidential candidate Andrew Yang has taken a leading role in advocating California's new privacy measure on the November ballot. The measure, which is expected to pass, will re-write parts of the California Consumer Privacy Act. Yang's presence is meant to raise the bill's profile and take advantage of his support among younger voters. Link
- Google employees have admitted some parts of their applications' location privacy settings were confusing and could be misleading. Google has faced long-standing criticism for its privacy settings. Recently unsealed internal emails from a fraud lawsuit show internal experts struggling to understand specific settings' impact. One employee said, "So our messaging around this is enough to confuse a privacy-focused (Google software engineer). That's not good." Indeed. Link