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Libbie Canter

Libbie Canter represents a wide variety of multinational companies on managing privacy, cyber security, and artificial intelligence risks, including helping clients with their most complex privacy challenges and the development of governance frameworks and processes to comply with U.S. and global privacy laws. She routinely supports clients on their efforts to launch new products and services involving emerging technologies, and she has assisted dozens of clients with their efforts to prepare for and comply with federal and state laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act, the Colorado AI Act, and other state laws. As part of her practice, she also regularly represents clients in strategic transactions involving personal data, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence risk and represents clients in enforcement and litigation postures.

Libbie represents clients across industries, but she also has deep expertise in advising clients in highly-regulated sectors, including financial services and digital health companies. She counsels these companies — and their technology and advertising partners — on how to address legacy regulatory issues and the cutting edge issues that have emerged with industry innovations and data collaborations. 

Chambers USA 2024 ranks Libbie in Band 3 Nationwide for both Privacy & Data Security: Privacy and Privacy & Data Security: Healthcare. Chambers USA notes, Libbie is "incredibly sharp and really thorough. She can do the nitty-gritty, in-the-weeds legal work incredibly well but she also can think of a bigger-picture business context and help to think through practical solutions."

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Since the beginning of 2025, there have been a flurry of bills introduced at the state and federal level related to genetic privacy, which follows a similar trend over the past several years.  These bills have focused on a range of issues, including general genetic privacy, national security implications of “foreign adversaries” accessing genetic information, the privacy practices of direct-to-consumer (“DTC”) genetic testing companies, and the transfer of genetic data as part of bankruptcy proceedings, among others.  We summarize a subset of such bills moving through state and federal legislatures below.

State Legislation

Montana SB 163

On May 1, the Montana governor signed SB 163 to amend the state’s Genetic Information Privacy Act (“MT GIPA”), which was originally enacted in 2023.  Effective October 1, 2025, there will be several changes to the law, including:

  • Creating Deidentification Exemption: The original version of MT GIPA did not contain an express exemption for deidentified data.  SB 163 amends the law to include an express exemption for the use of deidentified genetic data for certain research purposes.  Specifically, SB 163 includes an exemption for “deidentified genetic data obtained from a third party to the extent that the data is used to conduct internal, medical, or scientific research.”  The deidentification standard is similar to the standard adopted under many comprehensive state privacy laws and other state DTC genetic privacy laws.
  • Waiver of Certain Rights in the Clinical Trial Context: The law provides that consumers’ rights to access and delete data, destroy samples, and revoke consent must be waived in a limited context related to the collection of genetic data as part of a clinical trial if certain conditions are met, including prescriptive requirements for consent.  Specifically:
    • The relevant entity generally must obtain express and informed written consent for participation in a clinical research trial, including the collection and use of any genetic data, which must, among others, be in accordance with the good clinical practice (“GCP”) guideline issued by the international council for harmonisation of technical requirements for pharmaceuticals for home use and include the entity’s biological sample and data retention, sharing, and use policies.
    • The biological sample and genetic data must be utilized for clinical research purposes only.

SB 163 states that these requirements are meant to “supersede all exceptions to, and waivers of” informed consent pursuant to the federal Common Rule.  However, it is not clear how this new limited exemption is meant to interact with the existing exemption for entities that are engaged in collecting, using, or analyzing genetic data or biological samples in the context of scientific or clinical research with express consent of the individual and in accordance with human subject research frameworks, including GCP, the federal Common Rule, or FDA’s human subjects research regulations at 21 C.F.R. parts 50 and 56.Continue Reading Multiple States Enact Genetic Privacy Legislation in a Busy Start to 2025

Website analytics and advertising tools, such as pixels, are regularly targeted in lawsuits brought under various wiretap laws, including the federal Wiretap Act and the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”).  We cover significant developments and trends in website wiretapping lawsuits on Inside Class Actions.  Over the last several…

Continue Reading Website Wiretapping Litigation: Recent Decisions and Developments

Attorneys General in Oregon and Connecticut issued guidance over the holiday interpreting their authority under their state comprehensive privacy statutes and related authorities.  Specifically, the Oregon Attorney General’s guidance focuses on laws relevant for artificial intelligence (“AI”), and the Connecticut Attorney General’s guidance focuses on opt-out preference signals that go…

Continue Reading State Attorneys General Issue Guidance On Privacy & Artificial Intelligence

On September 28, California’s governor signed a number of bills into law, including to regulate health care facilities’ use of artificial intelligence (“AI”).  This included AB 3030, which regulates certain California-licensed health care facilities’ use of AI and SB 1223, which amends the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)…

Continue Reading California Enacts Health AI Bill and Protections for Neural Data

An Illinois federal court has dismissed a proposed class action alleging X Corp. violated the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) through its use of PhotoDNA software to create “hashes” of images to scan for nudity and related content. The court held that Plaintiff failed to allege that the hashes identified photo subjects and therefore failed to allege that the hashes constituted biometric identifiers. Martell v. X Corp., 2024 WL 3011353, at *4 (N.D. Ill. June 13, 2024).

BIPA prohibits private entities from collecting or capturing “a person’s or a customer’s biometric identifier or biometric information” without first obtaining the subject’s informed consent, among other requirements. 740 ILCS 14/15(b). BIPA defines “biometric identifier” as “a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or scan of hand or face geometry” and defines “biometric information” as any information “based on an individual’s biometric identifier used to identify an individual.” 740 ILCS 14/10.

In dismissing the complaint, the court agreed with X’s arguments that Plaintiff failed to plausibly allege (1) that the PhotoDNA software collects scans of facial geometry and (2) that the hashes identified photo subjects. First, the court rejected Plaintiff’s “conclusory” assertion that the creation of a hash from a photo that includes a person’s face “necessitates” creating a scan of facial geometry, saying, “The fact that PhotoDNA creates a unique hash for each photo does not necessarily imply that it is scanning for an individual’s facial geometry when creating the hash.” Id. at *2. The court distinguished Plaintiff’s allegation from those that withstood dismissal in a different case in which the plaintiff alleged that scans of photos “located her face and zeroed in on its unique contours to create a ‘template’ that maps and records her distinct facial measurements.” Id. at 3 (quoting Rivera v. Google Inc., 238 F. Supp. 3d 1088, 1091 (N.D. Ill. 2017)).Continue Reading Illinois Federal Court Dismisses BIPA Suit Against X, Holding “Biometric Identifiers” Must Identify Individuals

On June 6, the Texas Attorney General published a news release announcing that the Attorney General has opened an investigation into several car manufacturers.  The news release states that the investigation was opened “after widespread reporting that [car manufacturers] have secretly been collecting mass amounts of data about drivers directly…

Continue Reading Texas Attorney General Opens Investigation into Car Manufacturers’ Collection and Sale of Drivers’ Data

On May 16, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) adopted amendments to Regulation S-P, which implements the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act (“GLBA”) for SEC-regulated entities such as broker-dealers, investment companies, registered investment advisers, and transfer agents.

Among other requirements, the amendments require SEC-regulated entities to adopt written policies and procedures…

Continue Reading SEC Adopts Amendments to Regulation S-P

On April 26, 2024, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (“HHS”) published a final rule that modifies the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information (“Privacy Rule”) under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) regarding protected health information (“PHI”) concerning reproductive health. We previously covered the proposed rule (hereinafter, “the NPRM”), which was published on April 17, 2023. The final rule aligns closely with the NPRM.

OCR noted that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (holding that there is no constitutional right to abortion) created a legal landscape that “increase[s] the potential that use and disclosure of PHI about an individual’s reproductive health will undermine access to and the quality of health care generally.” According to OCR, the final rule aims to “continue to protect privacy in a manner that promotes trust between individuals and health care providers and advances access to, and improves the quality of, health care” by “limit[ing] the circumstances in which provisions of the Privacy Rule permit the use or disclosure of an individual’s PHI about reproductive health care for certain non-health care purposes.”

The final rule prohibits a regulated entity from using or disclosing an individual’s PHI:

  • to conduct a criminal, civil, or administrative investigation into or impose criminal, civil, or administrative liability on any person for the mere act of seeking, obtaining, providing, or facilitating reproductive health care that is lawful under the circumstances in which it is provided; and
  • to identify an individual, health care provider, or other person to initiate an investigation or proceeding against that person in connection with seeking, obtaining, providing, or facilitating reproductive health care that is lawful under the circumstances in which it is provided.

“Lawful under the circumstances in which it is provided” means that the reproductive health care is either:

  • lawful under the circumstances in which the health care is provided and in the state in which it is provided; or
  • protected, required, or authorized by Federal law, including the United States Constitution, regardless of the state in which such health care is provided.

Continue Reading HHS Modifies Privacy Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy

On Friday, April 26, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) voted 3-2 to issue a final rule (the “final rule”) that expands the scope of the Health Breach Notification Rule (“HBNR”) to apply to health apps and similar technologies and broadens what constitutes a breach of security, among other updates.  We previously covered the proposed rule, which was issued on May 18, 2023.

In the FTC’s announcement of the final rule, the FTC emphasized that “protecting consumers’ sensitive health data is a high priority for the FTC” and that the “updated HBNR will ensure [the HBNR] keeps pace with changes in the health marketplace.”  Key provisions of the final rule include:

  • Revised definitions:  The final rule includes changes to current definitions in the HBNR that codify the FTC’s recent position on the expansiveness of the HBNR.  Specifically, among other definition changes, the HBNR contains key updates to the definitions of:
    • “Personal health records (‘PHR’) identifiable information.”  In the final rule, the FTC adopts changes to the definition of PHR identifiable information that were included in the proposed rule to clarify that the HBNR applies to health apps and other similar technologies not covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, as amended, and its implementing regulations (collectively, “HIPAA”).  In the final rule, the FTC discusses the scope of the definition, noting that “unique, persistent identifiers (such as unique device and mobile advertising identifiers), when combined with health information constitute ‘PHR identifiable health information’ if these identifiers can be used to identify or re-identify an individual.”
    • “Covered health care provider.”  In the proposed rule, the FTC proposed adding a definition of “health care provider” to include providers of medical or other health services, or any other entity furnishing “health care services or supplies” (i.e., websites, apps, and Internet-connected devices that provide mechanisms to track health conditions, medications, fitness, sleep, etc.).  The final rule does not make substantive changes to this proposed definition but does contain a slight terminology change to “covered health care provider” to distinguish that term from the definition of “health care provider” in other regulations. 

Continue Reading FTC Issues Final Rule to Expand Scope of the Health Breach Notification Rule