Hard to believe Google’s wi-fi data capture was accidental, may or may not be illegal

With momentum building in many countries for investigations into potential privacy violations and other possible transgressions by Google related to its practice of capturing unencrypted wireless network traffic as a part of its Google Street View…

Issues raised about no-fly list checks provide a nice lesson in disparate impact of false positives and false negatives

The last-minute apprehension of the would-be Times Square bomber, who had already boarded an international flight despite being placed on the government’s no-fly list, provides one of the rare instances where real-time integration or data propagation…

HITECH restrictions on sale of health record data constrain some EHR plans

As the provisions of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act continue to be implemented, many health care organizations are beginning to understand that changes to security and privacy requirements originally promulgated…

HHS says stronger HIPAA enforcement on the way with privacy and security audits

Representatives from the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) said last week that OCR plans to begin conducting HIPAA compliance audits for security and privacy later this year, implementing a proactive audit program required under the…

Change in European Commission, UK government likely to bring action on privacy

While there appears to no shortage of consideration in the current administration or Congress for addressing privacy practices in some contexts in the United States, efforts to strengthen personal privacy protections seem to be gaining momentum…

Thoughts about EHRs and accounting of disclosures

One of the provisions of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act portion of the Recovery Act changed the requirements for HIPAA-covered entities to maintain an accounting of disclosures of health information….

Observations on the first Congressional attempt at an Internet privacy bill

In a widely anticipated step, a discussion draft of an Internet privacy bill in the House of Representatives was released today, giving observers the chance to see where Congress might be headed with such legislation. The…