http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=9695
Hospital fulfills subpoena, gets hit with privacy suit
May 3, 2010 by Dissent
Amy Lynn Sorrel reports:
Patient privacy is no doubt paramount in any physician practice. But when a subpoena suddenly is thrust into the physician-patient relationship, doctors may find themselves caught between the law and their privacy obligations.
The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio found itself in such a predicament when it agreed to turn over a patient’s records in response to a grand jury subpoena in a criminal investigation.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, in a Feb. 1 ruling, said that more stringent state privacy standards superseded the hospital’s obligations to comply with the subpoena and related disclosure requirements under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The ruling allows a patient to sue the hospital for invading his privacy.
Read more on American Medical News. Sorrel provides the background on the case as well as a good summary of some of the legal issues of state privacy laws that extend greater protections than HIPAA.
Could this be re-titled as: “The Litigator's Guide to Privacy Policies?”
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=9680
Can We Rely on Privacy Policies?
May 3, 2010 by Dissent
Dan Solove introduces an invited article on Concurring Opinions:
With the recent case of Saffold v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co., involving a newspaper website that outed an anonymous commenter who was a judge, we invited Woodrow Hartzog to write a post about these issues. Woodrow is the author of a terrific article about the enforceability of the privacy policies (via promissory estoppel) of online communities and social network websites, forthcoming in Temple Law Review. — DJS
From the article on Concurring Opinions by Hartzog, the introduction:
Virtually every website you visit has a privacy policy. These policies are often incorporated into a website’s terms of use. This attachment of contractual obligation to privacy policies has significant implications. Like many standard-form contracts, these policies are often vague or practically unreadable, leaving most users with only a general sense of how their personal information will be treated. Yet, privacy policies often begin with promissory language along the lines of “we are committed to protecting your privacy and handling any personal information we obtain from you with care and respect.” Thus, the language in privacy policies raises a number of questions. Are website promises to protect anonymity binding? Can these promises create a reasonable expectation of privacy?
Read more on Concurring Opinions.
Is Comcast smarter than the FCC?
The Far-Reaching Effects of Comcast v FCC
Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 02, @04:11PM
eldavojohn writes
"We've had a lot of discussion about what the overturning of FCC v Comcast means for net neutrality, but CommLawBlog argues that net-neut is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the effects of this ruling. In the National Broadband Plan, Local TV broadcasters might be forced to give up their spectrum 'voluntarily' to be repurposed for broadband; this decision diminishes the FCC's authority to cut such deals. Another issue at stake is how this will affect the FCC's approval of Comcast's acquisition of NBC."
Seems that the iPad was used to check deposition and images during cross examination. Couldn't any computer do this? (Perhaps not while balanced on a podium.)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20003946-71.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
iPad helps lawyer win trial
For my Computer Security students. A tool for locating sensitive data. Now “it costs too much” is even harder to argue...
OpenDLP Aims To Stem Data Loss
Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 02, @03:05PM
rollcall writes
"A new free and open source tool, OpenDLP, has been released that will help organizations fight data loss caused by stolen laptops, missing HDDs, or compromised systems. OpenDLP is managed from a centralized Web application and it can simultaneously send and control thousands non-intrusive agents to Microsoft Windows systems over NetBIOS that look for user-defined regular expressions in data at rest. When sensitive data is found, the agents 'phone home' to the Web app with their results. While organizations have continued to lose sensitive data even though many commercial products are available to help prevent this, perhaps the introduction of a free alternative will finally spur organizations to locate their sensitive data proactively before it is lost." [Want to bet? Bob]
Another “buggy whip” industry?
http://www.techtified.com/2010/05/13-percent-of-international-calls-now-go-via-skype/
13 Percent Of International Calls Now Go Via Skype
… In 2008, skype was at 8 percent of the total international traffic, that is around 33 billion call minutes. Becker further said,
“Skype is now the largest provider of cross border communications in the world, by far,” Beckert said. “The proliferation of alternatives to telephone calls—including Skype for mobile devices, and Google’s gradual entry into the voice market—will present ever greater challenges to international carriers.”
According to Skype’s data analyst, Skype served over one Billion call minutes in 2009 with one third being video. Those minutes were generated by 520 million users from 250 different countries which means the VOIP network is pretty much spread in all territories around the globe.
It amazes me how often my students let their home computer “remember” their passwords for them. When they need to logon at school, they can't remember their passwords! This is better than writing them down. (3 of 5 are available free)
http://lifehacker.com/5529133/five-best-password-managers
Five Best Password Managers
You can't afford to use the same password for everything, nor do many of us have the recall skills to keep dozens and dozens of complex alphanumeric passwords stored in perfect order in our memories. A password manager is the compromise between using a few you can remember and risking forgetting some if you use too many complex passwords. The following five tools will help you build a strong password set and securely store it so you're never stuck using the same old password for fear of forgetting it.
Multiple pages are irritating...
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/autopagerize-paginated-pages/
AutoPagerize: Browser Extension For Auto-Loading Paginated Web Pages
If you read articles on online versions of top magazines like Wired and PC World then you will know what paginated web pages are and how frustrating it is to read them. Clicking on the numbers and going from one page to another isn’t always fun. AutoPagerize is a nifty tool that helps you get rid of that.
It comes as a Firefox and Chrome add-on, and as a greasemonkey script for Firefox.
No comments:
Post a Comment