Web browsing tracking doesn't violate Massachusetts wiretap law, court rules
By Nate Raymond
Oct 24 (Reuters) -Massachusetts' top court on Thursday held that a 1960s law prohibiting eavesdropping on phone calls does not bar website operators from collecting users' browsing activities without their consent using analytics tools including ones produced by Meta PlatformsMETA.O and Alphabet's GOOGL.O Google.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on a 5-1 vote ruled in favor of two hospitals seeking to dismiss proposed class action lawsuits alleging they violated the privacy of users of their websites by holding that the state's wiretap statute did not cover the tracking of a person's web browsing.
The lawsuits were being closely watched by business groups, which had warned of the risk of exposing thousands of commercial website operators to liability for using popular website analytics tools like Google Analytics and Meta Pixel.
Justice Scott Kafker, writing for the majority, said that when Massachusetts Wiretap Act was enacted, "wiretaps involved the interception of person-to-person conversations and messages using hidden electronic surveillance devices placed in people's homes or businesses or tapping their telephone lines."
He said the law was expansive enough to prohibit eavesdropping on more modern means of communication, including text messages, internet chats and e-mails messages than what the legislature could have imagined in 1968.
But Kafker said the browsing tracking activities that occur when someone uses the websites of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and New England Baptist Hospital do not involve person-to-person conversations the law clearly intended to protect.
"If the Legislature intends for the wiretap act's criminal and civil penalties to prohibit the tracking of a person's browsing of, and interaction with, published information on websites, it must say so expressly," Kafker wrote.
The lawsuits were filed in 2023 by the same lead plaintiff, Kathleen Vita, who said she regularly visited both hospitals' websites and that they illegally transmitted users' browsing activities to Google and Meta without her permission.
The hospitals said those lawsuits would have exposed them to "massive" damages if allowed to proceed based on the financial penalties in the law. A website with just 1,000 unique visitors per day would face at least $36 million in damages per year over a three-year statute-of-limitations period under Vita's legal theory, they said.
Lawyers for the hospitals and Vita did not respond to requests for comment.
Hundreds of similar cases have been filed nationally, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in an amicus brief had expressed concern that the Massachusetts' court could buck a trend in which courts in other states had tossed such cases.
In Massachusetts, the first such case, against the healthcare system now called Mass General Brigham, settled for $18.4 million in 2022. At least 24 other cases have been filed in Massachusetts since then, including the two decided Thursday.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt said the hospitals at issue understood their websites were a means to communicate privately with patients yet aided third parties to record their healthcare information.
"The court decides that the wiretap act provides no recourse despite its prohibition on surreptitious electronic surveillance by private parties," she wrote. "Lamentably, the court is right about one thing; the Legislature will need to correct today's error."
The case is Kathleen Vita v. New England Baptist Hospital, et al, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, No. SJC-13542.
For the plaintiffs: Patrick Vallely of Shapiro Haber & Urmy
For the hospitals: David Gacioch of McDermott Will & Emery
Read more:
Massachusetts top court considers allowing website tracking class actions
Biden-era policy against hospital web trackers unlawful, judge rules
Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston
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