Schrems goes for Elon this time

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Here’s the gist: Written by longtime privacy journalist Angelique Carson, director of content strategy at TerraTrue, you can come here for insights on the hottest topics in privacy. Told through some of our peers’ social posts, this quick read aims to arm you with the knowledge you need to walk into any happy hour or team meeting and sound like the absolute baller you are. No current topic gets by you!

Schrems v. Elon begins

Max Schrems, the man you love 2 love or love 2 hate, depending on your job requirements, has launched a complaint with the Dutch data protection authority alleging X unlawfully used political and religious beliefs to target users with ads in violation of the GDPR.?

Schrems alleges that X served him an ad from the European Commission promoting online content regulation in the name of thwarting child sex abuse. The complaint says the ad explicitly targeted users from the Netherlands, excluding 44 targeting segments based on right-leaning political parties. In addition, nyob accuses the European Union of using X to target users based on political or religious beliefs. The European Commission said it’s conducting a thorough review. In October, the Commission advised its social media managers to "refrain from advertising at this stage on X.”

The site formerly known as X hasn’t yet commented on the Schrems complaint. It's highly possible Elon asks Schrems to a boxing match, though. ?

Section 702 springs ahead … to April?

Congress has approved a short-term extension of the government’s warrantless surveillance powers, The Hill reports. A defense policy bill headed to the president includes a measure that would extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act until mid-April. As a refresher, 702 allows U.S. law enforcement agencies to sweep up digital communications without a warrant within the U.S. as long as the surveillance is directed at catching foreigners.

Critics say that a whole lot of innocent Americans’ communications get surveilled as a result, and that violates their civil rights.?

Section 702 was set to expire on December 31, in just a couple weeks, and privacy advocates have been pushing for a revision to any new agreement that would require a warrant when it comes to information on Americans. But the bill that passed on a House vote of 310 to 118 obviously does not include that provision, so for now 702 is funded as is until April 2024.

Colorado attorney general to publish list of accepted opt-out mechanisms

This story felt like a snoozer to me, but the PrivacyNerd?? besties have been all lit up about it on the text thread this morning, so we should talk about it.

This week, on Dec. 13 to be exact, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office closed the comment period for its short-list of universal opt-out mechanisms it’ll recognize under California’s privacy law. Colorado came into effect on July 2023, as you’ll recall, but it’s not until July 1, 2024, that organizations captured under the CPA have to allow consumers to opt out of granting sites the use their personal data or the sale of their personal data for targeted advertising. The Colorado Attorney General’s Office has until January 1, 2024, to release the list of recognized UOOMs that controllers will have to recognize to facilitate requests.?Check out David Strauss's blog on this for more.

What has the PrivacyNerds?? all excited is how this works in the wild. The individual UOOM specifications require a certain amount of bespoke work at the hands of a browser that will implement them, or a plug-in that the user installs to send the opt-out signal for them. And that means it’s not plug-and-play, which is kind of the idea of a universal mechanism.?

For now, we await guidance from the Colorado attorney general.?

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Happy holidays, and I'll check back in with you in January!

XO,

Angelique