by Scott Nelson As Jeff noted earlier this morning, Equifax's offer of "complimentary" enrollment in "TrustedID Premier" to people potentially affected (and even people that it doesn't identify as potentially affected) by its data breach came with a catch: The TrustedID Premier terms and conditions include an arbitration clause and class action ban. The terms […]
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By Scott Nelson The nation's three big credit-reporting companies have tremendous power over American consumers and collect the most sensitive data about us. With that great power should go great responsibility to protect that information. Now comes news, via CNN, that one of the big three, Equifax, discovered on July 29 that between May and […]
Center for Science in the Public Interest's longtime president, Mike Jacobson, is stepping down next week. NPR reports: "Michael Jacobson invented a new style of food activism. For four decades, he led the fight against 'junk food.'" Read NPR's full story, which includes some interesting history about CSPI, here.
by Paul Alan Levy Today we filed our brief on behalf of three anonymous Internet users who object to the breadth of the proposed orders submitted by the Government and by DreamHost, each spelling out their alternative versions of the how Chief Judge Robert Morin had articulated his ruling that enforced a narrowed search warrant […]
The House yesterday passed a bipartisan bill, called the “Self Drive Act,” addressing driverless cars. Among other things, the bill would allow car companies to introduce as many as 100,000 such vehicles a year — exempted from safety standards while the technology is developing. At the same time, the bill would bar states from implementing […]
The House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee is holding a hearing this morning on HR 2359, entitled the "FCRA Liability Harmonization Act," which would reduce consumer remedies for credit reporting abuses. It would impose a $500,000 cap on damages in class actions brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and eliminate punitive damages in individual […]
That's the issue addressed in The Price of Ignorance: The Constitutional Cost of Fees for Access to Electronic Public Court Records by Stephen Schultze. Here's the abstract: The United States federal judiciary maintains a system called PACER, “Public Access to Court Electronic Records.” PACER is the public gateway into the electronic repository for documents filed in federal […]
by Jeff Sovern Housing Wire reports on mortgage origination costs in a report headlined MBA: The cost to produce a mortgage falls closer to historic lows, with a subhead reading "Independent mortgage bank production profitability improves." Reports like this make it difficult to justify claims that the CFPB is significantly adding to lending costs.
Those who follow the arbitration wars probably know that the upcoming Supreme Court term will kick off with an epic battle in those wars–literally. The first argument on the first Monday in October will be in the consolidated cases of Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris, and NLRB v. Murphy Oil Corp.. The […]
We've posted several times (for instance, here and here) about the Obama Administration's rule significantly raising the pay threshold that triggers exceptions to the general rule that workers must be paid 1.5 times their ordinary pay for every hour they work over 40 per week. Put simply, the Obama Administration rule meant overtime pay for far more workers. […]