This course is for professionals in business, technical, risk, and compliance roles who work with lawyers and need a working understanding of data privacy law; it is not designed for JD students. You will begin with what privacy means legally, including privacy practices, autonomy, and zones of privacy, and see how the law balances privacy against competing rights through name and likeness and the right of publicity. You will then learn how data privacy is defined and regulated in the United States, including personal data, personally identifiable information, the sources of privacy law, and how the federal and state patchwork compares with the GDPR. Next you will study federal laws that cover specific sectors, including the Video Privacy Protection Act, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and how courts apply them to cookies and online tracking. You will finish with the California Consumer Privacy Act as a model for reading a regulation, covering who it applies to, its key definitions, and consumer rights, and how that analysis leads to a privacy policy.

U.S. Data Privacy Law: Foundations for Professionals
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U.S. Data Privacy Law: Foundations for Professionals
This course is part of Data Privacy and AI Law: Compliance for Non-Lawyers Specialization

Instructor: Ken Suh
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Recommended experience
What you'll learn
Explain how U.S. law defines and protects privacy, including name and likeness, personal data, and personally identifiable information.
Analyze how federal privacy laws such as the VPPA, COPPA, and ECPA apply to children’s data, cookies, and online tracking.
Apply a step-by-step method for reading the CCPA, including its scope, key definitions, and consumer rights, to build a privacy policy.
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November 2026
18 assignments
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