CHICAGO -- Privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) are "becoming a crucial part of the advertising ecosystem,” Google Government Affairs Manager Alex Propes said on a Wednesday keynote panel at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) ad law conference. PETs can be helpful inside a business and during tough conversations with privacy regulators, other panelists said.
CHICAGO -- Work in the House on a national privacy bill has continued even during the government shutdown, Venable’s Michael Signorelli said during a panel Tuesday at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) ad law conference. But with a year to go until the 2026 midterm elections, timing could be a problem, the privacy and advertising attorney said. “The calendar is no one’s friend right now.”
CHICAGO -- States’ comprehensive privacy laws are not “dead letters” or “paper tigers,” Perkins Coie privacy attorney Meredith Halama said during a panel at the Association of National Advertisers ad law conference. “We see real, active enforcement, particularly in California.”
CHICAGO -- It’s unusual for DOJ to be weighing state preemption in a public inquiry, said a former DOJ official on a panel about the second Trump administration during the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) ad law conference Monday. A former lead counsel in North Carolina’s attorney general's office suggested such an effort is unlikely to succeed, even as Democratic states seek to fill a regulatory void opened by the current federal government.
CHICAGO -- AI won't get immunity from FTC enforcement, Commissioner Melissa Holyoak said Tuesday in a keynote at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) ad law conference. Also, the Republican said the commission shouldn’t prejudge advertising practices that might benefit consumers or competition.
CHICAGO – With regulators increasingly focused on child privacy, compliance is critical, said privacy experts at the Association of National Advertisers conference on Monday.
CHICAGO -- Privacy regulators are looking beyond a company’s privacy policy when they review its advertising practices, said panelists at an Association of National Advertisers (ANA) ad law conference Monday. That can help or hurt an entity under investigation, they said. Also, panelists said it’s important to convey the value of privacy, not just its costs, in business conversations.
Privacy regulation might have short-term costs, but there’s a dearth of evidence about its long-term economic harms, Carnegie Mellon University professor Alessandro Acquisti said. Speaking on a Thursday webinar hosted by George Washington University privacy professor Daniel Solove, Acquisti also addressed the so-called “privacy paradox” and the challenges of assigning a price to someone’s personal data.
Amid intensifying regulatory pressure about kids' online safety, Character.AI said Wednesday that it will roll out age assurance and remove “the ability for users under 18 to engage in open-ended chat with AI" on its platform by Nov. 25. The changes respond to questions raised by regulators and in recent news reports “about the content teens may encounter when chatting with AI and about how open-ended AI chat in general might affect teens,” the chatbot platform said.
Much state enforcement is not publicly announced, said privacy lawyer Elliot Golding during a McDermott Will webinar Wednesday. “For every public enforcement we see, there's … dozens and dozens of ones that are not yet public.”