A sampling of privacy news from Data Privacy Day

Whether it’s coincidence or intentional, with January 28 being Data Privacy Day in the U.S. and Data Protection Day in Europe, there was a lot going on in information privacy. The single most consistent focus of…

Excitement plus a little security trepidation about the iPad

Just a day after Steve Jobs presented the highly-anticipated iPad at an event in San Francisco, security analysts are raising concerns about malware, browser and other application attacks, phishing, and other threats seen against the iPhone….

Federal courts again dismiss claims related to NSA warrantless wiretapping

In the latest setback for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and its efforts to hold the National Security Agency accountable for its mass surveillance of phone calls and emails, a federal district court dismissed with prejudice two…

Privacy law in the 21st century: due for an update?

In honor of Data Protection Day (tomorrow, January 28) and its “Think Privacy” theme, let’s turn our attention to a few current efforts to bring legislated privacy requirements into the 21st century. In Europe, privacy watchers…

If you build it, will anyone come?

In all the discussion about health information exchange and electronic health records and establishing trust among public and private sector organizations, what’s often lost is the voice of the consumer. The goal of widespread EHR adoption…

Side-effect of the “instant information” world: frequency trumps accuracy

In a coincidental reinforcement of a point we raised recently in a different context about the difficulty of establishing the credibility of information found on the Internet, a reliance on unsubstantiated claims and poorly verified (or…

Microsoft pushing hard on privacy in the cloud

Whether due to clever marketing objectives or to its stated commitment to making privacy a core consideration for its products and services, there’s no denying Microsoft is emphasizing privacy across multiple dimensions. Taking center stage this…