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...what would be an extraordinary request for everyone else is nothing more than an ordinary day [...] for this Administration.
— Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
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Welcome back to Snippets đź‘‹ Here's what's been happening at the intersection of privacy, AI, and tech:
- The Supreme Court ruled in favor of DOGE on two key cases.
- As Palantir's data tools are rolled out across several federal agencies, the CDC plans to use it to centralize and analyze patient health data.
- OpenAI's court battles around copyright has resurfaced questions on how to balance privacy and legal discovery.
- And so much more!
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Supreme Court backs DOGE in social security and FOIA records cases
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The Supreme Court gave the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) two major legal victories on Friday, lifting data access restrictions for Social Security Administration (SSA) systems and halting a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) discovery order.
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- In the first ruling, the court lifted a lower court order that had restricted DOGE personnel from accessing SSA systems that contain personal and financial data.
- Following the ruling, dissenting Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor criticized the majority for weakening judicial oversight of executive power.
- In the second decision, the court blocked a judge’s order that would have forced DOGE to disclose internal records in a FOIA case questioning whether DOGE qualifies as a federal agency.
- These rulings come amid public tensions between President Trump and Elon Musk and ongoing legal efforts to shield DOGE’s inner workings.
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Improving member satisfaction and engagement for a national membership organization 🙌
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A major North American membership organization, serving millions of members, recognized an urgent need to modernize how it managed user data. With a growing focus on privacy, this organization faced increasing complexity in managing consent across its diverse business lines.
To meet these goals, the organization implemented Transcend Consent Management—empowering a 30% increase in member trust and satisfaction and a 20% lift in targeted campaign engagement from better data and personalization.
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CDC’s data migration plan raises privacy concerns
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Michael Ciaglo/Bloomberg
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) plan to centralize patient data within Palantir Technologies’ analytics system has raised concerns about patient privacy, delays on long-term trends analysis, and potential for data misuse by the Trump Administration.
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- The CDC’s plan to use Palantir’s system aligns with the broader federal rollout—raising concerns among some officials about attempts to merge data across agencies, which could expose sensitive patient information, including reproductive health records.
- While healthcare providers are required to report cases of nationally notifiable diseases, including measles, tuberculosis, polio, and sexually-transmitted infections, states can decide how much of that data is shared with the CDC.
- Many states have previously declined to share this type of data—a trend likely to continue unless federal agencies provide strong privacy safeguards.
- This reluctance to share data, combined with delays in last year’s data release due to system migration, means critical information gaps could emerge—making it harder to predict and manage national health risks.
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OpenAI’s legal battle resurfaces the discovery-privacy conundrum
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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OpenAI’s challenge to a court order requiring it to preserve all ChatGPT outputs, including deleted user conversations, has put the spotlight on mounting legal tensions between data discovery and personal privacy.
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- The case marks the first time an AI-related copyright lawsuit has reached the discovery phase, raising new questions about how courts should treat user data generated by large language models.
- OpenAI argues the court’s “sweeping” preservation order violates the privacy rights of millions of users, saying individuals should control what happens to their personal data.
- Legal experts note that, while the concerns are valid, courts are unlikely to overhaul discovery rules based on privacy claims alone—the magistrate judge who issued the order has stated that it's a temporary one and that any user data would be protected.
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- Is Google’s Privacy Sandbox still relevant?
- Chrome extensions caught leaking sensitive browsing data.
- WhatsApp users will soon be able to create usernames.
- Privacy4Cars wins patent for its vehicle privacy rating method.
- How to claim your piece of Apple’s Siri privacy settlement.
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President Trump scraps Biden-era cybersecurity initiatives
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Andrew Harnik via Getty Images
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President Trump signed an executive order reversing key parts of President Biden’s cybersecurity policies, rolling back initiatives on software security, AI, and quantum encryption.
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- The new order eliminates Biden-era requirements for federal contractors to submit secure software attestations and AI-based cybersecurity testing programs.
- Trump’s directive also scrapped mandates for agencies to adopt post-quantum encryption and removed support for promoting these standards internationally.
- Initiatives related to phishing-resistant authentication, digital identity, and broader IT vendor risk assessments were also cut, with Trump calling some "inappropriate."
- One major Biden initiative left intact is the FCC’s cybersecurity labeling program for internet-of-things (IOT) devices, set to take effect by January 2027.
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Employee monitoring apps and the decline of workplace privacy
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Shutterstock
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The rise of employee monitoring applications (EMAs) has introduced a more invasive and often hidden form of workplace surveillance, raising concerns about privacy and ethical data use in remote work environments.
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- EMAs track detailed user activity—like keystrokes, websites, and webcam footage—often without the employee’s knowledge.
- A Canadian study found that though many employers use EMAs to boost productivity and manage remote teams, most are also concerned about the apps’ invasive nature and impact on employee trust.
- Despite privacy concerns, over half of companies surveyed continued using EMAs, though many said they would prefer less intrusive features.
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Explore Transcend's Q1 2025 integrations release
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Our Q1 integration release is here. With new integrations spanning cloud infrastructure, marketing, HR, and customer experience systems, the Transcend Integration Network continues to lead the industry in breadth, depth, and unmatched extensibility—designed to fit your company’s unique architecture.
By using Transcend’s proprietary integrations to embed controls at the data layer, companies are operationalizing privacy into a real-time data permissioning layer that drives compliance and growth. Learn more about this release below.
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Snippets is delivered to your inbox every Thursday morning by Transcend. We're the platform that helps companies put privacy on autopilot by making it easy to encode privacy across an entire tech stack. Learn more.
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