Name: Forced Arbitration Thwarts Legal Challenge to AT&T’s Disclosure of Customer Location Data
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Forced Arbitration Thwarts Legal Challenge to AT&T’s Disclosure of Customer Location Data

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Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItLocation data generated from our cell phones paint an incredibly of our movements and private lives. Despite the sensitive nature of this data and a federal law prohibiting cellphone carriers from disclosing it, repeated unauthorized disclosures over the last several years show that carriers will sell this sensitive information to almost .With cellphone carriers brazenly violating their customers’ privacy and the Federal Communication Commission , it fell to consumers to protect themselves. That’s why in June 2019 EFF filed a lawsuit representing customers challenging AT&amp;T’s unlawful disclosure of their location data. Our co-counsel are lawyers . The case, , alleged that AT&amp;T had violated a federal privacy law protecting cellphone customers’ location data, among other protections.That legal challenge, however, quickly ran into an all-too-familiar roadblock: the arbitration agreements AT&amp;T forces on its customers to sign every time they buy a cellphone or new service from the company. AT&amp;T claimed that this clause prevented the Scott case from proceeding.The court ended up earlier this year. The way it did so demonstrates why Congress needs to change federal law so that the public can meaningfully protect themselves from companies’ abusive practices.In response to the lawsuit, AT&amp;T first the plaintiffs to arbitration, arguing that because they had signed arbitration agreements—buried deep within an ocean of contract terms—they had no right to sue.But under California law, AT&amp;T cannot enforce contracts, like those at issue here, which prevent people from seeking court orders, called “public injunctions,” to prevent future harm to the public. California law also recognizes that these one-sided “contracts of adhesion” can sometimes be so unfair that they cannot be enforced. that both of these principles voided AT&amp;T’s contracts, emphasizing that our clients sought to prevent AT&amp;T from disclosing all customers’ location data without their notice and consent to protect the broader public’s privacy and to prevent AT&amp;T from publicly misrepresenting its practices moving forward.AT&amp;T responded by the public injunction claims, asserting that because the company stopped disclosing customer location data to certain third parties identified in media reports, plaintiffs had no legal basis–known as standing–to seek a public injunction. AT&amp;T’s strategy was clear: rather than admit that it had done anything wrong in the past, the company argued that because it had stopped disclosing customer location data, there was no future public harm that the court needed to prohibit via a public injunction. Because no public injunction was necessary, AT&amp;T argued, California’s rule against the arbitration agreements did not apply and the plaintiffs remained subject to them.We did not trust AT&amp;T’s representations that it stopped disclosing customer location data, particularly because the company had previously promised to stop disclosing the same data, to later show that the disclosures were ongoing. Additionally, AT&amp;T was not clear about whether it had other programs or services that disclosed the same location data without customers’ knowledge and consent.The plaintiffs spent months about AT&amp;T’s location data sharing practices in the face of AT&amp;T’s . What we found was : AT&amp;T customer location data, including to enable commercial by third-party services, without customers’ notice and consent. We asked the court to let the case proceed, arguing that this information undercut AT&amp;T’s claims that it had stopped its harmful practices.The court sided with AT&amp;T. It ruled that the evidence did not establish that there was an ongoing risk that AT&amp;T would disclose customer location data in the future and thus plaintiffs lacked standing to seek a public injunction. Next, the court upheld the legality of AT&amp;T’s one-sided contracts and ruled that plaintiffs could be forced into arbitration.We disagree with the court’s ruling in multiple respects. The court largely ignored evidence in the record showing that AT&amp;T continues to disclose customer location data, putting all of its customers’ privacy at risk. It also mischaracterized plaintiffs’ allegations, allowing the court to avoid having to wrestle with AT&amp;T’s ongoing privacy failures. Finally, the court failed to protect consumers subject to AT&amp;T’s one-sided arbitration agreements—these contracts are fundamentally unfair and their continued enforcement is unjust.Importantly, the court did not rule on the merits: it did not decide whether AT&amp;T’s disclosure of customer location data was lawful. Instead, it sidestepped that question by deciding that the plaintiffs’ case didn’t belong in federal court.The court’s decision to enforce AT&amp;T’s arbitration agreement is problematic because it prevents consumers from vindicating their rights under a longstanding federal privacy law written to protect them. Unlike other areas of consumer privacy , Congress has already prohibited phone services like AT&amp;T from disclosing customer location data without notice and consent.The legislative problem this case highlights is different: rather than writing a new law, Congress needs to amend an existing one—the Federal Arbitration Act. Arbitration to allow large, sophisticated entities like corporations to avoid expensive legal fights. Today, however, it is used to prevent consumers, employees, and anyone with less bargaining power from having . Congress can easily fix this injustice by in one-sided contracts of adhesion, and it’s past time that they did so.Likewise, when Congress enacts a comprehensive consumer data privacy law, it must bar enforcement of arbitration agreements that unfairly limit user enforcement of their legal rights in court. The do so.Despite the federal court’s dismissal of the case against AT&amp;T, we remain hopeful that the FCC will take action against the company for its disclosure of location data. The agency last year, and we hope that once President Biden appoints new FCC leadership, the agency will move quickly to hold AT&amp;T accountable.Share ItThe scourge of stalkerware—malicious apps used by perpetrators of domestic violence to secretly spy on their victims—is not going unchallenged or unaddressed. are increasingly adding stalkerware to the list of apps their products detect on devices; victim help people figure out whether their devices are...The ease with which bad actors can find a worldwide market for malicious apps that spy on people’s digital devices is at the center of an Australian Federal Police case against a man who, starting at the age of 15, wrote a stalkerware application and sold it to 14,500 people...When data broker SafeGraph , it had a public relations trick up its sleeve. After the company agreed to from its platforms in response to public outcry, CEO Auren Hoffman tried to flip the narrative:...Congress must pass the to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the yearly funding bill for national security and the military. It would require the Department of Defense to disclose, both to Congress and the public, information about when it purchases geolocation data collected by cell phones...Data brokers harvest location information from our phone apps, then sell access to the highest bidder, including government. This is a way sheriffs and bounty hunters in anti-abortion states may try to identify and punish people seeking and providing abortion.Some good news: three members of Congress are this...SAN FRANCISCO—Community activists in Northern California today announced a in their lawsuit against the County of Marin and Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle, whose office illegally made the license plate and location information of local drivers, captured by a network of surveillance cameras, available to hundreds of federal...This blog post was drafted with help from former EFF Legal Intern Emma Hagemann.Massachusetts’ highest court has upheld the collection of mass cell tower data, despite recognizing that this data not only provides investigators with “highly personal and private” information but also has the potential to reveal “the locations, identities,...2000 Mules is a movie which claims to expose election fraud with phone app location data. While these claims have , the movie also deserves condemnation for performing wildly invasive research on thousands of people’s location data without their consent or even knowledge....The ad identifier - aka “IDFA” on iOS, or “AAID” on Android - is the key that enables most third-party tracking on mobile devices. Disabling it will make it substantially harder for advertisers and data brokers to track and profile you, and will limit the amount of your personal information...On Tuesday, that data broker SafeGraph was selling location information “related to visits to clinics that provide abortions including Planned Parenthood facilities.” This included where people came from and where they went afterwards.In response, SafeGraph to stop selling data about Planned Parenthood visitors. But it...Share It

Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItLocation data generated from our cell phones paint an incredibly of our movements and private lives. Despite the sensitive nature of this data and a federal law prohibiting cellphone carriers from disclosing it, repeated unauthorized disclosures over the last several years show that carriers will sell this sensitive information to almost .With cellphone carriers brazenly violating their customers’ privacy and the Federal Communication Commission , it fell to consumers to protect themselves. That’s why in June 2019...

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Forced Arbitration Thwarts Legal Challenge to AT&T’s Disclosure of Customer Location Data

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