- Disclosure of personal information, even without demonstration of misuse of the information, creates de facto injury under FCRA
- Court vacates and remands
Justia provides a summary of an opinion issued by the
Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that revives a potential class action
lawsuit again a New Jersey health insurer.
The litigation stemmed from a breach in November, 2013
when two laptops with almost 840,000 members’ personally identifiable
information were stolen
from Horizon’s offices in New Jersey.
In addition to spawning litigation, the breach also contributed to the enactment of legislation
in New Jersey requiring encryption of protected health information.
Not surprisingly for the time, in 2015, the lower court dismissed
litigation against Horizon, finding that the plaintiffs had not established
standing solely by virtue of their data having been stolen. The plaintiffs, who had sued under
the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and state laws, appealed.
Now, the Court of Appeals holds that the plaintiffs have
demonstrated an injury sufficient for Article III standing under FCRA, and
vacates the dismissal and remands.
In re: Horizon Healthcare Inc. Data Breach Litigation, No.
15-2309 (3d Cir. 2017)
Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield
provides health insurance products and services to approximately 3.7 million
members. Two laptop computers,
containing sensitive personal information about members, were stolen from
Horizon. Four plaintiffs filed suit on
behalf of themselves and other Horizon customers whose personal information was
stored on those laptops, alleging willful and negligent violations of the Fair
Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), 15 U.S.C. 1681, and numerous violations of state
law. The district court dismissed the
suit for lack of Article III standing. According to the court, none of the plaintiffs
had claimed a cognizable injury because, although their personal information
had been stolen, none of them had adequately alleged that the information was
actually used to their detriment. The
Third Circuit vacated. In light of the
congressional decision to create a remedy for the unauthorized transfer of
personal information, a violation of FCRA gives rise to an injury sufficient
for Article III standing purposes. Even
without evidence that the plaintiffs’ information was in fact used improperly,
the alleged disclosure of their personal information created a de facto
injury.
You can access the full opinion on Justia.
A governance question: Why is obsolete data stored on
active records? Why was valid (if
obsolete) data ‘corrected?’
TriHealth in Cincinnati has issued the following notice
about a mailing error that resulted in communications – including billing
statements – being sent to patients’ previous addresses rather than their
current addresses. The error was attributed to a “software glitch.” [Sure, blame the poor
computer for doing what it was told.
Bob]
January 20, 2017
In late November of 2016,
TriHealth discovered a software glitch inadvertently replaced the current
mailing addresses of 1,126 TriHealth patients with a previous address we had on
file for them. This caused TriHealth
billing statements and other correspondence to be sent to the former address of
those people impacted by this error. Since
TriHealth is unable to determine if the billing statements and other correspondence
reached patients at their current address, we are notifying affected patients
of this incident.
Billing statements, reminder
letters and other correspondence sent out by TriHealth to those affected took
place from November 15, 2015 through
January 12, 2017. […and no one noticed?
Bob] The mailings may
have contained patient name, place of service, visit dates, descriptions of
services, financial charges, payments and adjustments, balance and amount due
or appointment reminders. The mailings
did not contain patient social security number, credit card number or any other
financial institution information.
… Please be assured that TriHealth takes
patient privacy very seriously. The addresses of the affected patients have been
corrected in TriHealth’s computer system and the software problem
has been fixed.
Only six or seven years?
Speedy government action! (What
else can we ask tech companies to help with?)
FTC Busts Two Major Robocall Organizations Guilty Of Spamming
People On Do Not Call Registry
Two more robocallers have bitten the dust. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just filed complaints
against two robocall organizations that have allegedly helped to make billions
of robocalls between March 2009 through May 2016. Many of the calls were to numbers on the “Do
Not Call” Registry.
… The FTC has been
hard at work this past year at getting rid of robocalls. Last August, AT&T, Apple, Comcast, Google, Verizon, and other major
companies joined together to create the “Robocall
Strike Force”. The group's purpose
is to work with the FCC to create “concrete plans to accelerate the development
and adoption of new tools and solutions” that would eliminate robocalls.
It’s not just Siri…
http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/20/introducing-the-european-bots-landscape/?google_editors_picks=true
Introducing the European Bots Landscape
Over the past half year, bots have been a widely discussed topic. Experts and the media heavily discussed all
the possible benefits, the future, and the value bots could create for
businesses and consumers. Arguably, the
tipping point was Facebook’s F8 conference in April. Since then, many developers and consumers have
massively experimented with bots and tested their limits to find the most
suitable use cases for bots.
During this trend, the U.S. market has proven to be highly
interested in bots. Several published
surveys are showing strong U.S. bot companies, as you can see in VentureBeat’s
Bots Landscape. But Europe is not
far behind.
You can download a high-resolution version of the European
Bots Landscape here.
I’m not worried. I’ve
been developing a course for AIs to teach other AIs about learning to
program. Job security!
AI Software Learns to Make AI Software
Progress in artificial intelligence causes some people to
worry that software will take jobs such as driving trucks away from humans. Now leading researchers are finding that they
can make software that can learn to do one of the trickiest parts of their own
jobs—the task of designing machine-learning software.
In one experiment, researchers at the Google Brain
artificial intelligence research group had software design a machine-learning
system to take a test used to benchmark software that processes language. What it came up with surpassed previously
published results from software designed by humans.
In recent months several other groups have also reported
progress on getting learning software to make learning software. They include researchers at the nonprofit research
institute OpenAI (which was cofounded by Elon Musk), MIT, the University
of California, Berkeley,
and Google’s other artificial intelligence research group, DeepMind.
If self-starting AI techniques become practical, they
could increase the pace at which machine-learning software is implemented
across the economy. Companies must
currently pay a premium for machine-learning experts, who are in short supply.
Were the tweeting ‘false news?’ I wonder if the White House will monitor all
government Twitter accounts for anything President Trump might find
offensive?
Interior Dept. reactivates Twitter accounts after shutdown
The Department of the Interior has revived its Twitter
accounts after being told to shut down its operations on Friday, the Washington Post reported.
The Trump administration reportedly told the department to
stop tweeting after the National Parks Service account
retweeted a post about the crowd size at Trump's inauguration. Another post reportedly involved policies on
the White House’s website.
My first reaction is, ‘Not with my tax dollars!’ Are these assumptions correct? I gotta think about this.
Europe Moves One Step Closer To Making Universal Income A
Reality
The rise of
robots is unstoppable. And as
they take over an ever-increasing number of manual jobs, the threat of mass
unemployment is looming closer than ever. In light of this ongoing ‘technological
revolution’ and its possible implications on everything we know, a report initiated by Member of the European Parliament (MEP)
Mady Delvaux-Stehres of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and
Democrats has recently earned the approval of the Legal Affairs Committee of
Parliament with an overwhelming result of 17 votes in favor and 2 votes
against.
Because sometimes I have to paint my students a picture…
The Growth of Artificial Intelligence in Ecommerce
(Infographic)
… To learn how AI
will shape the future of ecommerce, check out redstagfulfillment.com’s infographic
For my geeks.
This Company Has Just Given The Entire World Access To
Quantum Computing
Quantum computing. Quantum
software. For most regular folks, these
terms are enough to bring on a headache. Because math is hard enough. But quantum computing is on an entirely different
level. And right now, only computer
programmers and developers who have studied about quantum physics or advanced
math can probably relate to what we are writing about. But that’s okay. This is what this news is supposed to change.
Hoping to help push the field of quantum computing
forward, D-Wave — a
small Canadian company that makes quantum computers and which by the way is
backed by the likes of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, NASA, and the CIA among
others — has decided to release an
open-source quantum software tool for the whole world to use. It’s called qbsolv and through it, coders and program developers will
have the chance to program D-Wave’s quantum machines, even if they don’t
actually have the expertise or skill to do quantum programming on their own.
… To be able to
run qbsolv, you would need the corresponding hardware, meaning, you would need
a quantum computer, just like those that D-Wave has. Because there are only a few who have access
to such, D-Wave has come up with a simulator
which people can download so it can be used to run qbsolv, and hopefully solve
a wider variety of complex problems by using quantum computers that can perform
even faster.
Right now, qbsolv is being used to solve large
optimization problems — calculating the best or most optimal solution from a
variety of options.
(Related). Less
powerful than a quantum computer, but cheaper too.
ASUS Launches 'Tinker Board', Its Raspberry Pi Competitor
With 4K Support
… . The hardware
is advertised as supporting 4K, while the Ethernet is Gigabit (compared to the
Pi's 100Mb/s). This might be enough to
sway Pi enthusiasts with a taste for compact home theatre boxes.
Here are the
full specifications (via CPC):
Read the book, so you can hate the movie?
10 epic sci-fi novels you should read before they become
blockbusters
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