I’m
not a lawyer. So when several lawyers I know point me to a draft law
that concerns them, I tend to listen. The proposed law in question
is the ‘‘Data
Security and Breach Notification Act of 2015’’ which
is intended to replace all the state laws dealing with data breach
notification with one simple federal law. The problem seems to be
that “simple” part. From several reviews of the law (all
negative) I get the impression that in “simplifying,” several
important bits and pieces have been omitted.
The
law's sponsor, Marsha Blackburn, seems to be in a bit over her head,
understanding neither the technical nor legal issues involved. But
perhaps that's just me. I don't have a degree in home economics so I
could be underestimating her knowledge. Look at the draft of the
bill and judge for yourself.
(Related)
How
This Federal Data Breach Law Could Actually Hurt Consumers
(Related)
The
Data Security and Breach Notification Act of 2015
(Related)
Needed
Improvements to the Data Security and Breach Notification Act
Not
a simple problem as police departments often ask the victim to
provide proof of a crime. (Recent experience)
Katharine
Goodloe writes:
At a talk today with members of Covington’s Privacy and Data
Security Group, Danielle Citron highlighted the need for more
remedies for victims of online harassment, including women harassed
by so-called revenge pornography.
Citron, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law,
focuses on information privacy law and is the author of Hate
Crimes in Cyberspace. Her book argues that online harassment of
women is a civil rights issue, a position made more compelling in
light of the recent online assaults on women in the Gamergate and
iCloud photograph hacking scandals.
Citron grouped online harassment into four different models: (1)
using the internet to terrorize a victim, such as by cyberstalking,
(2) using the internet to destroy a victim’s reputation, such as by
defamatory postings, (3) using technology to invade a victim’s
privacy, such as by posting private materials and (4) using
technology to essentially shove a victim offline, such as by
cyberattacks.
Read
more on Covington & Burling Inside
Privacy.
Not
sure I like the idea that I need a “formal” relationship with an
entity to be protected from that entity. (At least I think that's
what this case implies.)
Jacob
Gershman reports that a federal court in New York dealt
a setback to the case of a woman who claims
AMC Networks violated the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) by
sharing information about her visits to the cable network’s website
with Facebook. Read more on WSJ.
[From
the article:
In
her ruling, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said
Austin-Spearman failed to demonstrate that she was a “subscriber”
to AMC’s website under the meaning of the law.
“Such
casual consumption of web content, without any attempt to affiliate
with or connect to the provider, exhibits none of the critical
characteristics of ‘subscription’ and therefore does not suffice
to render Austin-Spearman a ‘subscriber’ of AMC,” Judge
Buchwald wrote in her opinion.
…
“This ruling to a certain extent validates the idea that a party
can gather information about what an end user is doing across the web
on sites not controlled by that party,” Evan Brown, a technology
and intellectual property attorney at Much Shelist PC in Chicago,
said.
In
essence, Brown said, that means “Facebook can track the viewing
habits of people on other parts of the web not controlled by
Facebook.”
For
my Computer Security students. Every now and then I like to point to
articles like this to remind my students that there plenty of reasons
for lawyers to come after companies that can't (or won't) secure
their data.
There’s
another development in a patient privacy breach that I had covered on
PHIprivacy.net. The case involved a doctor,
Nikita Levy, who surreptitiously filmed his female patients
during pelvic examinations. The doctor committed suicide after a
co-worker tipped the hospital as to what was going on. Johns Hopkins
subsequently offered
counseling services to those impacted and then settled a patient
privacy lawsuit
for
$190 million. Now the attorneys representing the class of
patients have been awarded legal fees of $32.8 million.
Y.
Peter Kang reports:
Baltimore
City Circuit Court Judge Sylvester B. Cox said the fees award, which
was below the 35 percent plaintiffs’ counsel was seeking, was
“fair, just, reasonable, and appropriate.” He also ordered that
expenses of about $829,600 be reimbursed, according to court records.
Read
more on Law360.
Good
luck. They won't even escrow a copy in case they go out of business.
http://www.bespacific.com/boing-boings-doctorow-leads-campaign-to-ban-digital-locks-on-ebooks-music/
Boing
Boing’s Doctorow leads campaign to ban digital locks on ebooks,
music
by
Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Apr 10, 2015
James
Bridle – UK Guardian: “In my last column I wrote about
Tesco’s
graceful exit from the ebook business, offloading its customers –
and their precious libraries – to Kobo.
While applauding the commitment to preserving customers’
purchases, it remains a shame that this sort of transfer is even
necessary. Storing books – or anything else – in “the
cloud” always comes with a trade-off: everything you put there
is backed up and presumably safe for a while, but it’s also still
controlled by the retailer- – not by the customer who legally
purchased it. More than just a question about books, this is a
fundamental issue at the heart of the content industry and the
internet itself. And now the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, which has fought for digital civil liberties
since 1990, has launched a
campaign to eradicate digital
rights management (DRM) called Apollo
1201, referring to the section of the US Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that prevents users tampering
with the digital locks on the things they own, such as books, music
and movies… Legal challenges to DRM strike at the heart of this
issue: is it us, or distant, unaccountable corporations that control
not only our media, but the software in our phones, our cars, and our
fire alarms? The name Apollo 1201 also refers to the scale of the
struggle: it’s a moonshot; it might take a decade, but it’s a
stand worth taking, and fighting for.”
Interesting.
Another resource made more valuable (and more timely) by moving
online. I wonder what took them so long?
Cambridge
Yearbook of European Legal Studies Now Online
by
Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Apr 11, 2015
“The
Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies is CELS’
flagship publication. It provides a forum for the scrutiny of
significant issues in European Union Law, the Law of the Council of
Europe, and Comparative Law with a “European” dimension, and
particularly those which have come to the fore during the year
preceding publication. The contributions appearing in the collection
are commissioned by CELS. The
papers presented are all at the cutting edge of the fields which they
address, and reflect the views of recognised experts drawn from the
University world, legal practice, and the civil services of both the
EU and its Member States. Inclusion of the comparative
dimension brings a fresh perspective to the study of European law,
and highlights the effects of globalisation of the law more
generally, and the resulting cross fertilisation of norms and ideas
that has occurred among previously sovereign and separate legal
orders. The Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies is
an invaluable resource for those wishing to keep pace with legal
developments in the fast moving world of European integration.”
- “The Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies has been published since 1998 and is now in its 17th volume. From 2015, the Yearbook will be published by Cambridge University Press via Cambridge Journals Online, and will now be fully accessible online as well as in print. The Yearbook publishes pieces of up to 11,000 words and all articles will appear online on FirstView in advance of print publication. We have a benchmark of publishing online via FirstView within 16 weeks of receipt of a manuscript. All articles are reviewed by the editorial board and anonymously by an external expert peer reviewer. The first article for 2015 is already online and can be accessed here.” [Kenneth Armstrong, Editor-in-Chief]
An
interesting summary that I can use to show my statistics students
that you can learn something even with simple statistics.
Membership
of the 114th Congress: A Profile
by
Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Apr 11, 2015
Membership
of the 114th Congress: A Profile. Jennifer E. Manning,
Information Research Specialist. March 31, 2015
“This
report presents a profile of the membership of the 114th Congress
(2015-2016). Statistical information is included on selected
characteristics of Members, including data on party affiliation,
average age, occupation, education, length
of congressional service, [It's
getting shorter Bob] religious affiliation, gender,
ethnicity, foreign births, and military service.
Since
I have to read it, the least my students can do is try to
write well.
Analyze
My Writing - Way More Than Word Clouds
A
couple of days ago I received an email from the developer of Analyze
My Writing. At first glance I thought it was just another word
cloud tool like Wordle.
Then when I really looked at it I realized that there was much more
to it than a word cloud generator.
Paste
your text into Analyze
My Writing and it will generate a ton of information about your
writing. Analyze My Writing will give you a break-down of the
readability of your writing on five
indices. The analysis will include listings of the most common
words and most common word pairs in your writing. A listing of how
frequently you use punctuation and punctuation types is included in
the analysis provided by Analyze My Writing. Finally, a word cloud
is included at the end of the analysis of your writing. The word
cloud and the graphs of your
Applications
for Education
Analyze
My Writing could be a great resource for high school and collage
students to use in editing their works. Beyond the readability of the
their papers students will receive important information about the
words and phrases they have used repetitively in their writings.
Giant
oaks from little acorns grow. I'm trying to show my students how
businesses should be monitoring even very temporary changes in
custome behavior.
How
J Lo inspired Google to create image search
Google
image search was created 15 years ago but its surprising backstory
was only revealed earlier this year.
The
search giant created image search because of overwhelming demand from
people who wanted to see pictures of pop singer Jennifer Lopez in the
green dress she wore to the 2000 Grammy Awards, executive chairman
Eric Schmidt explained in a January blog post.
"At
the time, it was the most popular search query we had ever seen,"
Schmidt wrote for Project
Syndicate. "But we
had no surefire way of getting users exactly what they wanted:
JLo wearing that dress. Google Image Search was born."
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