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Today: The FTC struck a 10-year settlement with John Deere requiring the company to provide farmers and independent repair shops the same equipment repair resources it gives authorized dealers, a major win for right-to-repair advocates. The Supreme Court's recent Chatrie decision limiting geofence warrants may extend Fourth Amendment protections to automated license plate readers used by police nationwide. A Ryuk ransomware operator pleaded guilty to deploying attacks against companies in Michigan, Oregon, and Texas, with sentencing set for September and restitution exceeding $1.1 million.
FTC Settles Right-to-Repair Case Against John Deere
The FTC and five states reached a settlement requiring John Deere to provide farmers and independent repair providers the same equipment repair resources, including applicable software capabilities, that it currently provides to authorized Deere dealers. The agreement runs for 10 years under FTC and state supervision. The settlement follows years of complaints that John Deere acquired smaller independent repair centers to force customers into more expensive dealership repairs, withheld tools and manuals, and signed meaningless memorandums of understanding with trade groups to avoid state right-to-repair legislation while continuing monopolistic practices. U.S. PIRG's Nathan Proctor called the settlement a step up from the $99 million class action settlement John Deere reached earlier, noting it protects independent mechanics from anti-competitive practices in the repair marketplace.
Ryuk Ransomware Operator Pleads Guilty to Computer Fraud Conspiracy
Karen Serobovich Var[REDACTED]yan, a 34-year-old Armenian national, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Oregon federal court to conspiracy and computer fraud charges for deploying Ryuk ransomware against companies and a school between November 2019 and May 2020. Prosecutors said Var[REDACTED]yan and co-conspirators attacked a Michigan company that paid 200 bitcoin (over $1.1 million at the time), a Wilsonville, Oregon company, and a Texas school in February 2020. He was extradited from Ukraine in June 2025 after his arrest in Kyiv. He faces up to 15 years in prison, as much as $500,000 in fines, and has agreed to pay more than $1.1 million in restitution. Sentencing is scheduled for September 22, 2026. The case is connected to ongoing prosecutions of Armenian national Levon Georgiyovych Avetisyan (in custody in France) and Ukrainian nationals Oleg Nikolayevich Lyulyava and Andrii Leonydovich Prykhodchenko (not in custody).
BlackCat/AlphV Conspirator Receives Nearly 6-Year Sentence for Extortion
Angelo Martino, 41, of Land O'Lakes, Florida, received a 70-month federal prison sentence for helping the BlackCat/AlphV ransomware gang extort multiple victims beginning in April 2023. Prosecutors said Martino, who worked as a ransomware negotiator for DigitalMint, was paid by BlackCat attackers to provide confidential information about the negotiating position and strategy of his employer's clients to enable the ransomware actors to maximize the ransoms paid by victims. Two other men connected to the same case, Ryan Goldberg (who worked for incident response firm Sygnia) and Kevin Martin (DigitalMint), pleaded guilty to extortion charges and were given four-year prison sentences in May 2026. DigitalMint has instituted new controls mandating all negotiations be conducted over cloud-based platforms that can be audited and logged, with one of the company's founders personally overseeing all negotiations.
$1.8 Million Call-On-Doc Tracking Pixels Class Action Settlement
Call-On-Doc reached a $1.8 million class action settlement over allegations that the telemedicine provider secretly shared customer data with tech companies via tracking pixels despite privacy promises. The settlement provides $20 payments for California users affected by the tracking pixels. The claim deadline is August 29, 2026. The lawsuit alleged that Call-On-Doc used tracking technologies to intercept customers' personal information and share it with major advertising companies.
MeUndies Class Action Alleges Tracking Technologies Shared Consumer Data with Tech Giants
A new class action lawsuit alleges MeUndies secretly intercepts customers' personal information and shares it with major advertising companies despite promising shoppers their data would remain private. The lawsuit alleges the e-commerce company used tracking technologies to collect and share consumer data with tech companies without proper disclosure or consent.
Motorola Accused of Using License Plate Cameras to Track Drivers' Movements
A new class action lawsuit alleges Motorola Solutions violated privacy rights by operating an automated license plate recognition (ALPR) and vehicle tracking system that logs individuals' movements. The lawsuit comes as legal scholars and ALPR opponents say the Supreme Court's recent Chatrie v. United States ruling, which found that cell phone location history searches require a warrant, could have a ripple effect on the use of automated license plate readers.
Trump Seeks Supreme Court Do-Overs in Verdict and Birthright Citizenship Cases
President Donald Trump's legal team has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its denial of his petition for review of a $5 million jury verdict and has said he will ask for a rehearing of Trump v. Barbara, in which the court struck down Trump's executive order seeking to restrict access to birthright citizenship. CNN investigated how common it is for the court to grant such requests, noting that the last time the Supreme Court entertained a request to review a decision in an argued appeal was in 1965. Constitutional law professor Michael Dorf told CNN that it is extremely rare for the court to grant reconsideration. It is also rare for the court to reconsider a decision to deny an appeal, although that has happened more recently. About a year ago, the court granted such relief in a case involving a federal anti-doping law for the horseracing industry.
Supreme Court Ruling on Geofence Warrants May Extend to License Plate Cameras
The Supreme Court's recent Chatrie v. United States ruling, which found that cell phone location history searches require a warrant, could have a ripple effect on the use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), according to legal scholars and ALPR opponents. The ruling, the first major Supreme Court Fourth Amendment case in eight years, suggests that geofence searches are protected by the Fourth Amendment. Michael Soyfer, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, said the Supreme Court emphasized that the retrospective and indiscriminate nature of the location history surveillance was particularly worrisome, adjectives which also apply to ALPR data. The ruling also bolsters the case against ALPRs because the court focused on what the police had access to globally in their database, according to Soyfer. Flock Safety, the country's leading ALPR vendor, has between 90,000 to 100,000 cameras installed on public roadways and collects data on about 20 billion license plates a month. A Flock Safety spokesperson said the court decision addresses geofence warrants for Google location history, which is categorically different from license plate recognition technology, and that courts have repeatedly and uniformly treated ALPR differently from technologies like cell site location information and mobile geolocation data.
Europe Revives Law Allowing Big Tech to Scan for CSAM
The European Parliament voted Thursday to bring back a rule giving big tech permission to scan users' messages to hunt for child sexual abuse material (CSAM), a process critics call Chat Control. The vote occurred the day before summer recess and was the product of an unusual legislative procedure requiring an absolute majority to kill the provision. Because absolute majority votes count all lawmakers who are not present as yeses, the measure passed even though more present members opposed it than supported it. The law allowing the voluntary scanning, which dates to 2021, expired in April after Parliament could not come to agreement about how to move forward amid a privacy outcry. Big tech continued the scans even after the law lapsed, but European officials cautioned against doing so without legal protection. Now that the ruling has given firms like Google, Microsoft and Meta clear direction and legal cover to continue the CSAM scans until 2028, critics say privacy in Europe is under siege. A much bigger battle is being fought over Chat Control 2.0, which in its most extreme form could force service providers to scan conversations and hosted content, including in end-to-end encrypted communications.
Meta's Automated Moderation Errors Disproportionately Affect Arabic-Language Content
When whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked Meta documents in 2020, among the revelations was that the company's algorithms designed to detect terrorist content incorrectly deleted nonviolent Arabic-language content 77 percent of the time, while failing to detect hate speech under the company's own policies in many instances. Five years later, researchers in the region report that overzealous moderation remains a problem, while paths to remedy have all but collapsed. A 2025 report from the Center for Democracy and Technology found that labeled datasets in certain languages and dialects such as Maghrebi Arabic and Kiswahili contain inconsistencies, bias, and inaccuracies due to the limited hiring of annotators who actually speak the languages as well as shifts in the languages themselves. From the systemic suppression of content from Palestine to the repeated misclassification of LGBTQ+ content as adult or explicit material, these varied examples demonstrate the risks of overreliance on automated moderation and the need for stronger safeguards.
FCC General Counsel Calls for Stronger Obscenity Regulation
Adam Candeub, the general counsel for FCC chair Brendan Carr, published an opinion column with the Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal calling for stronger obscenity regulation. Candeub, who previously represented Jared Taylor in an unsuccessful lawsuit against Twitter for being moderated and was a key player in the first Trump administration's effort to eliminate Section 230, argued that from the Founding through most of American history, courts allowed the legislature to control pornographic material, and that judicial reactions to internet pornography broke this tradition. He frames his arguments as a patriotic call to action referencing the founding fathers and says they would have supported stronger obscenity regulations and a resumption of obscenity prosecutions. Candeub is expected to move to a top-level DOJ position soon. Republican Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana also sent a letter to Trump's Justice Department in May, arguing that the feds ending obscenity prosecution was a mistake.
Supreme Court Decision Undermines Independent Oversight of Section 702
The Supreme Court's recent decision in Slaughter, which affirmed sweeping removal powers for the president, may have implications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702 oversight. Trump dismissed three Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board (PCLOB) in January 2025, leaving it with just a single Republican member and consequently without a quorum. The PCLOB oversees the Data Protection Review Court and is one of the independent bodies that the European Commission cited in its decision to approve the Data Privacy Framework (DPF). Coupled with the Trump administration's actions and the Supreme Court's recent decision, there might be reasons for concern. Privacy advocate Max Schrems is expected to argue that this is a constitutional clash: EU treaty law demands independent supervisory authorities, but the U.S. Constitution now prohibits them.
AI-Powered Surveillance Systems Pose Chilling Effects on Democracy
In the near future, AI-powered surveillance systems will be able to track everything we do in public, and much of what we do in private, according to an analysis by security experts. These systems will combine powerful AI, public and private surveillance via real-time facial recognition technology and digital tracking, mass databases and highly personalized enforcement. If deployed at scale, they will have profound chilling effects not just on personal freedoms, but democracy and social progress itself. China has been developing its surveillance infrastructure for years, with over 600 million surveillance cameras increasingly powered by AI and facial recognition to enforce legal and social rules. AI surveillance is now being experimented with in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. A new report shows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is rapidly increasing its use of AI-based surveillance, including facial recognition and the monitoring of social media accounts, to keep tabs on immigrants, dissidents, journalists, legal observers and protesters. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has said: "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting."
Right-to-Repair Compliance: Equipment manufacturers should review dealer agreements and independent repair provider access to tools, manuals, and software to ensure compliance with the FTC's John Deere settlement framework. The 10-year enforcement period signals long-term FTC scrutiny of repair market restrictions.
Tracking Pixel Audits Due August 29: Healthcare providers and e-commerce companies must audit third-party tracking pixels for privacy law compliance before the Call-On-Doc settlement claim deadline of August 29, 2026. Remove or reconfigure pixels that transmit personal or protected health information to advertising platforms without proper consent.
ALPR Warrant Readiness: Law enforcement agencies and private ALPR network operators should prepare for potential Fourth Amendment warrant requirements following the Chatrie decision. Document data retention policies, access controls, and law enforcement data-sharing agreements to demonstrate compliance with emerging location privacy standards.
EU Data Transfer Risk Mitigation: Companies using the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework should implement backup transfer mechanisms (Standard Contractual Clauses or Binding Corporate Rules) to prepare for potential invalidation of the DPF following Privacy and Civil Liberties Board quorum loss and Supreme Court removal power expansion.
Ransomware Negotiator Controls: Organizations using third-party ransomware negotiators must implement auditable communication platforms and insider threat controls to prevent negotiators from sharing victim information with threat actors. The Angelo Martino case demonstrates insider collusion risk in incident response supply chains.