Plaintiffs in Baker v. Seattle Children’s Hospital claim that the hospital’s use of the Meta Pixel for marketing turned patients’ clicks and page views into illegally intercepted private communications. The IAB warns that if courts treat browser-to-server calls as wiretaps, common web functions such as analytics, attribution, and fraud prevention could trigger copycat lawsuits. The IAB expects pressure to move from existing practices to an opt-in model. The IAB filed an amicus brief because state wiretapping laws were created for telephone-call interception, where privacy expectations are much higher, and are being applied to routine online data flows. The IAB argues these lawsuits are profit-driven and do not meaningfully improve privacy, and that modern privacy statutes should set the rules.
"The lawmakers who designed these state wiretapping laws operated in a completely different era. They were written to address interception of telephone calls, where you have a very high expectation of privacy. Now they're being applied to routine online data flows that everyone has come to expect when they use the internet."
"We're seeing plaintiffs' lawyers use those laws to bring what I'd call spurious lawsuits. They generate settlement demands and payments, and it's become a mini industry for them, without actually doing anything meaningful for privacy."
"If courts start treating browser-to-server calls as wiretaps, then ordinary web functions like analytics, attribution and fraud prevention could face a wave of copycat lawsuits and pressure to flip to an opt-in model, according to the IAB."
"Most of these cases never reach a state supreme court. This one did. When a case like this gets to the Washington Supreme Court, its impact can go far beyond a single hospital or a single pixel implementation. That's why we felt it was important for the IAB's voice to be heard and to provide the c"
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