Georgetown Law
Technology Review

President Joe Biden has a decision to make. In addition to decisions surrounding climate change, vaccine distribution, and police reform, Biden must determine whether or not to introduce new taxes that target Big Tech companies like Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, and Amazon. He can’t take too long, though. European Union and Organization for Economic Co-operation and […]

Are Terms of Service a Loophole in GDPR Consent? On the first day of GDPR enforcement, Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems filed a series of lawsuits against Facebook accusing it of coercing users into sharing personal data. In the latest case against the technology behemoth, Schrems v. Facebook Ireland Limited, 4, the Vienna Higher Regional […]

On January 4th, a group of more than two hundred Google employees announced that they had joined forces to form the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU). While arguably unprecedented in Silicon Valley, AWU’s formation was far from spontaneous, representing the culmination of a steady drumbeat of Google employee-led activism in recent years. In 2017, employees unearthed […]

During the November 2020 general election, California Proposition 24, also known as the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), was approved by a majority of the state’s voters. The CPRA was spearheaded by concerned consumers who felt that the existing privacy legislation, the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), did not go far enough in protecting consumer […]

Commencement On October 30, 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a final rule which modernizes the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), a law prohibiting harassment and abuse, false or misleading representations, and unfair practices by debt collectors. While collection agencies are currently allowed to contact consumers by mail and by phone, the […]

When the New York Post published an article highlighting controversial corruption claims against president-elect Joe Biden three weeks before the presidential election, social media giants were swift, albeit inconsistent, in limiting the article’s dissemination. Twitter took the most aggressive action by blocking all links to the NY Post article within hours of its publication, reasoning […]

On October 28, 2020, the Ninth Circuit denied the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) request for rehearing en banc, rendering final its decision to vacate a worldwide injunction imposed by the District Court in FTC v. Qualcomm. Even though the court vacated the injunction, the case was an important step in antitrust enforcement. The FTC and […]

The App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU), a union that represents private hire couriers and drivers in the UK, filed a complaint against Uber in the District Court of Amsterdam on October 26, 2020. The complaint challenges Uber’s alleged practice of using an algorithm to make firing decisions without human consultation. The algorithm identifies fraudulent […]

The Indictment On October 15, 2020, a federal grand jury brought charges against six Russian intelligence officials in the Western District of Pennsylvania for conducting several prominent cyberattacks. The defendants, Yuriy Andrienko, Sergey Detistov, Pavel Frolov, Anatoliy Kovalev, Artem Ochichenko, and Petr Pliskin, allegedly serve as officers in the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (“GRU”), one […]

In its first major antitrust case against a tech giant since United States v. Microsoft in 2001, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed suit against Google on October 20, 2020. The DOJ, along with eleven state attorneys general, accused the online goliath of maintaining a monopoly by stifling competition in its search and search […]