Georgetown Law
Technology Review

On November 22, the five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) voted unanimously in favor of an order that would limit the ability of telecommunications firms to purchase equipment from Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturers Huawei and ZTE. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai introduced the two-part proposal in an effort to “protect U.S. communications networks from […]

On November 1, 2019, Google announced its acquisition of FitBit, Inc. for $2.1 billion. The transaction, expected to close in 2020, makes Google a formidable competitor in a booming smartwatch market where industry-wide revenue is set to double by 2023. The deal supplements Google’s recent acquisitions in wearable tech, including a $40 million purchase of […]

On June 28, 2018, former Governor of California Jerry Brown signed into law the most comprehensive consumer privacy law in the United States. Some refer to the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) as a mini-GDPR, the European Union’s consumer privacy regulation. The regulatory schemes in both the CCPA and GDPR do not neatly overlap. However, […]

Protecting and managing consumer data has undoubtedly proven to be a difficult task for Facebook in recent years. In 2018, the Cambridge Analytica scandal saw the personal data of up to eighty-seven million Facebook users misappropriated for political purposes. An internal investigation led Facebook to suspend sixty-nine thousand applications that improperly collected personal information from […]

According to a recently released report from the DEF CON 27 Voting Machine Hacking Village, there are a number of vulnerabilities in voting machines currently in use throughout the United States. The report’s findings came from an exhibition at DEF CON, where security professionals were invited to break into machines provided by the operators of […]

On September 27th, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) announced the publication of the 2019 Executive Summary for its annual Technology Survey. ILTA, a lawyers association, provides information regarding product and support services to member firms. The Executive Summary reflects the responses of over 537 firms—representing more than 116,000 attorneys—and attempts to predict future challenges […]

On October 14–16, thought leaders from across the country attended the fifth annual Privacy + Security Forum. Professor Daniel Solove of George Washington University Law School and Professor Paul Schwartz of UC Berkeley School of Law organized the forum. Their goal was to craft presentations and sessions to help businesses implement solutions to privacy and […]

While American social media companies have dominated the industry for the last two decades, new competition from China is challenging the status quo. During a Senate hearing on April 10, 2018, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, acknowledged the presence of influential Chinese Internet companies. TikTok is one of them. TikTok is a […]

In the face of calls for a federal consumer privacy law, California took another step toward filling this gap at the state level. The California Attorney General (AG), Xavier Becerra, released new draft regulations clarifying and expanding the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) the day before the governor approved seven amendments to the law. The […]

On September 26, 2019, thirty-nine technology and law-enforcement organizations sent an open letter to Congress. The letter championed facial recognition technologies as a law enforcement tool to more efficiently promote public safety. As a reaction to an increase in public fervor against the use of facial recognition technologies nationwide, the letter proposed guidance, training, and […]