During week 1 of the 2007 NFL season, the New England Patriots were facing the New York Jets. Right before halftime, a video assistant for the Patriots was caught illegally videotaping the hand signals from the Jets defensive assistants. The Patriots later admitted to the videotaping, and both the Patriots and head coach Bill Belichick were fined. Additionally, the Patriots were forced to forfeit their first-round draft pick in the next draft.[1] This scandal is now referred to as “Spygate.”
Now, in 2024, the Patriots are again getting in trouble for stealing information. Except this time it isn’t due to stealing football signs. The Patriots are facing a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that the New England Patriots’ team app tracks and shares users’ personal information.[2] The Massachusetts man, Anthony Serra, who brought the suit, alleges that the app shares users’ locations with data that is accurate to within 40 feet.[3] This type of geolocation tracking is extremely precise and can even provide street-level accuracy.”[4] Sharing data, such as the location sharing, without consent is a violation of federal video privacy laws.[5]
Serra claims, in the complaint filed on the first of February in federal court in Boston, that the Patriots team app was violating the federal Video Privacy Protection Act.[6] He alleges that the violations came about when the Patriots app disclosed data from users to third parties without the users’ knowledge or consent.[7] Serra claims that he was not aware that his viewing history was being shared to third parties.
The Patriots app gathered information of all sorts from its users’ phones. Users had zero clue that any information of theirs was being taken and shared. The lawsuit says that the Patriots app “gathers a swath of data from users, including the videos they watch, and shares that personal information with Rover and Google’s Anvato through application programming interface.”[8] Furthermore, the shared data includes, “location, an advertising ID, and details about video consumption.”[9]
Rover is a software company that has helped develop analytics and marketing tools for the sports industry. However, Rover also supposedly helps the Patriots to “serve targeted ads to the app’s users.”[10] The lawsuit also alleges that the system developed by Rover allowed the Patriots app to send the Rover system “geolocation data that included altitude and highly precise location data ‘sufficient to identify a user’s exact location by GPS.’”[11]
In the lawsuit filed by Serra, he is seeking to bring claims “on behalf of all people in the U.S. who watched videos on the app and had personally identifiable information transmitted to a third party.” Furthermore, according to Serra’s complaint, the Plaintiff is expecting that the number of class members for this proposed class action suit to be more than 1 million class members.[12]
The statutory damages are set at $2,500 per violation of the law. With such a high number of expected class members, Serra believes that the damages from the actions of the Patriots will easily exceed the $5 million minimum for federal class actions. If this lawsuit goes the way that Serra is expecting, the Patriots may be in line for a “Spygate 2.0.”
[1] NFL nabs New England Patriots in “Spygate” scandal | September 9, 2007 | HISTORY
[2] New England Patriots App Harvests Users’ Data, Suit Claims – Law360
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] See id.
[6] New England Patriots Sued Over Video Viewing App’s Alleged Privacy Violations (insurancejournal.com)
[7] New England Patriots App Harvests Users’ Data, Suit Claims – Law360
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
[12] Id.
Not sure what was posted when Mr. Serra downloaded the app, but in the Google Play Store today, everything that he is complaining about is listed.