Massachusetts’s top court has ruled that a 1960s wiretapping law prohibiting eavesdropping on electronic communications such as phone calls does not bar website operators from collecting users’ browsing activities, without their consent, using popular analytics tools produced by the likes of Google and Meta.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled on Oct. 24 in a narrow 4–3 decision that the use of tracking software such as Meta Pixel or Google Analytics by website operators, including health care providers, does not violate the state’s wiretap law. The court concluded that these tracking tools, which collect user data for analytics or advertising purposes, do not constitute the type of “communication” protected under the law….