Actuate Law

Delighted to welcome James Ward to the Board of Directors at Circulai Limited 🙌👏

Make the most of what you've got! Contacting consumers can be frustrating. The data you have on hand is a powerful tool, but it only helps if you use it. In this webinar, sponsored by TransUnion we'll hear from Actuate Law founder Dara Tarkowski, TransUnion's, Thomas Nowaczyk and Ashley Walker about how the data you have on hand can help you develop a precision contact strategy. Register here: https://lnkd.in/e7ufxSUM We'll talk about the evolution of digital collections, how intelligence from your own data can help your organization, what's on the regulatory horizon, and real results seen by organizations that utilize phone and email intelligence.

I want to introduce you to the biggest consumer protection and privacy theme of the next five years: adequate disclosure v. pay-for-privacy. When GDPR came into effect in 2018, and then when CCPA went live in 2020, one of the big questions was "what happens to notice and consent as the basis for collecting data?" The view was that the "consent" we give to a clickwrap popup or on a hidden privacy policy weren't worth the paper they were written on. And that's largely true: anyone who tells you that these laws are about consent has badly misunderstood the law. In fact, consent is *disfavored* as a basis for collecting data under GDPR precisely because it's very hard to show that the consent was genuine. So what happens? There's a slow, slow shift towards giving much more robust disclosure, which is IMHO, a good effect of GDPR. Not because it's easier for consumers to understand, of course -- these disclosures are still the written equivalent of John Moschitta delivering a Micro Machines commercial in 1987. Instead, it's because when a company's disclosures are more robust, there's a greater likelihood that a regulator or a lawyer will be able to point to a specific promise about how data is used and hold that company to account. I'll give you an example. You've seen privacy policies before where the only disclosure about sharing data is "We share your data with our partners to help improve our products, deliver you the Services, and for marketing purposes." That's so vague it can literally mean anything. But if XYZ corp, under the new laws, has to get specific and says to you "we only sell your data to A, B, C, and D," you have a basis to hold them accountable when they actually sell your data to 3,000 other companies who use the data to track, profile, or harass you. Specificity matters. That's what probably happens here, with Chevy. LexisNexis is not the culprit, because LexisNexis is just following their general data strategy: Everything Everywhere All at Once (no relation). It's Chevy who is going to have explaining to do, because unless they can show that their data sharing practices were sufficiently clear, there's a potential FTC investigation looming. This brings us to pay-for-privacy. To avoid that FTC investigation, businesses will offer the option to "upgrade" your service to keep data sharing to a minimum. You may have paid to get an ad-free app experience, now get ready to pay to not be tracked, profiled, and nudged. The premise, in this case, would be that your car won't snitch on you for doing 80 in a 50 when you were late to pick up your fellow Swifties because you've paid for the Platinum Privacy Package (Taylor's Version). Not an impovement by any means, and already on the regulatory "kill it with fire" list. But this fight -- how good were your disclosures and the permissibility of privacy pay-to-play -- is going to dominate the legal/regulatory space in the next five years.

Tune in for a chat with James J. Ward, Managing Partner at Ward PLLC and Special Counsel at Actuate Law, about strategically managing data within your organization. James comes from a background as a big law attorney, sifting through vast corporate data repositories to build out litigation cases. This experience led to the identification of common data management patterns and in turn, a passion for helping organizations learn to better manage and leverage their data for the protection of organizations and those they serve. He drills down into some of the topics covered in the book that he co-authored with his brother, a data entrepreneur, including the importance of using structured tools to manage operational workflows and more. For details on the book discussed in this episode: Data Leverage: Unlocking the Surprising Growth Potential of Data Partnerships by Christian J. Ward and James J. Ward Available for purchase here: https://zurl.co/FvBp Learn more with this week’s Receivables Roundtable! Subscribe to Receivables Info, follow #ReceivablesRoundtable and don’t miss an episode as we sit down with accounts receivable industry notables to discuss topics, trends, and emerging issues that are important today. #Receivables #ReceivablesManagement #DataStrategy

I am sharing below what I think are the privacy and data protection threads in today’s Biden-Harris EO on AI (based on the Factsheet), with an eye to global policy implications and comparative notes. 💡 But first, keep in mind that privacy/data protection relevant provisions go well beyond the short chapter labeled “Privacy”, as this field deals with vastly more than obscuring personal information. It also deals with collecting, accessing and using personal information in ways that respect civil rights and liberties, ensure equity and due process, among others. Here is a preview: 🔐 Support for Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) plays an incredibly big role in the Administration’s EO. 🔎 Privacy “audits” of federal agencies would be mandated, so is further privacy guidance to account for AI risks. 🤖 There is a focus on ensuring fairness of algorithms used for individual decisions that have a discriminatory effect or other harmful consequences. 👩🏫 “Resources” will be provided to support educators for “personalized tutoring” in schools through AI. I expect that a lot of the safeguards related to how personal information is used to fuel algorithms that have an impact on individuals and communities will be laid out subsequently in the announced guidance. It’s notable that the Administration unequivocally called again on the US Congress to pass bipartisan comprehensive privacy legislation. The US Administration is clearly aiming to play a significant role globally in setting the standards and the tone for AI governance. My two cents: this will be more difficult to achieve in the absence of comprehensive privacy/data protection legislation, considering that all the other major players in this game (EU, UK, India, Japan, the other G7 nations, Brazil, the other G20 nations) start from this essential baseline (i.e. of having a comprehensive privacy/data protection law). #AI #EOAI #BidenEO #DataProtection #Privacy #AIGovernance #Fairness