Thursday, February 06, 2020


Clear security issues. Will the database match the iPhone? Only your friendly neighborhood hacker knows for sure.
Why the N.Y.P.D. Dropped One of Its Oldest Crime-Fighting Tools
For more than a century, the New York City Police Department has required its officers to keep a detailed, handwritten memo book while on patrol.
The department is retiring handwritten memo books by Feb. 17 in a transition to a digital version — an app on officers’ department-issued iPhones. Instead of making entries by hand, whether with flowery script from ink-dipped pens in Victorian-era New York or ballpoints today, officers will type in their notes, which the app will send to a department database.
The transition represents a major shift in the way the department regards this daily record keeping by more than 30,000 of its uniformed members, and it will vastly revamp how the department can access memo book information.




The debate heats up! So if I choose “public” for my photos the terms of service overrides that so no one can copy my photos?
Google, YouTube and Venmo send cease-and-desist letters to facial recognition app that helps law enforcement
Google, YouTube and Venmo have sent cease-and-desist letters to Clearview AI, a facial recognition app that scrapes images from websites and social media platforms, CBS News has learned. The tech companies join Twitter, which sent a similar letter in January, in trying to block the app from taking pictures from their platforms.
"YouTube's Terms of Service explicitly forbid collecting data that can be used to identify a person. Clearview has publicly admitted to doing exactly that, and in response we sent them a cease and desist letter," YouTube Spokesperson Alex Joseph said in a statement to CBS News.
"Scraping Venmo is a violation of our terms of service and we actively work to limit and block activity that violates these policies," Venmo said in a statement to CBS News.
In addition to demanding that Clearview AI stop scraping content from Twitter, the social media platform demanded that the app delete all data already collected from Twitter, according to an excerpt of the cease-and-desist letter given to CBS News.
CBS News has also learned Facebook sent Clearview multiple letters to clarify their policies, requested detailed information about their practices, and demanded they stop using data from Facebook's products. Although the company continues to evaluate its options, no formal cease and desist letter has been sent.
Ton-That argued that Clearview AI has a First Amendment right to access public data. "The way we have built our system is to only take publicly available information and index it that way," he said.
Ton-That also argued that Clearview AI is essentially a search engine for faces. "Google can pull in information from all different websites," he said. "So if it's public and it's out there and could be inside Google search engine, it can be inside ours as well."
[Note: At the bottom of this page, there is a link “CA Do Not Sell My Info” which links to the first “Opt Out” page I’ve seen. Bob]




34 days and still counting? I expected lawyers to react faster.
CCPA Cited for the First Time in Litigation
In a complaint filed on Monday involving an alleged data breach, Barnes v. Hanna Andersson, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)—the State’s comprehensive privacy law that went into effect on January 1, 2020—was cited for what appears to be the first time in a lawsuit. Importantly, however, the plaintiff in this case has not asserted a claim under the CCPA or alleged a violation of the CCPA as a predicate for a claim under the California Unfair Competition Law (UCL). This might be because, according to the complaint, the alleged data breach occurred between September–November 2019, before the CCPA went into effect.




Corn Husker privacy.
Analyzing the 2020 Nebraska Consumer Data Privacy Act
On January 8, 2020 Nebraska state Senator Carol Blood introduced the Nebraska Consumer Data Privacy Act (LB746 ) (the “Act”).
The Act would apply to any Nebraska resident acting as an individual. The Act does not apply to persons acting in a commercial or employment context.
In general, the Nebraska Act is a slimmed down version of the CCPA. Those who are familiar with the CCPA’s provisions will readily recognize many provisions of this proposed law.




I can hear the insurance industry scrambling to re-write their policies.
Maryland Court Finds Coverage for Lost Data and Slow Computers After Ransomware Attack
Seen on Hunton Andrews Kurth’s blog,
As previously posted on our Hunton Insurance Recovery blog, a Maryland federal court awarded summary judgment to policyholder National Ink in National Ink and Stitch, LLC v. State Auto Property and Casualty Insurance Company, finding coverage for a cyber attack under a non-cyber insurance policy after the insured’s server and networked computer system were damaged as a result of a ransomware attack. This is significant because it demonstrates that insureds can obtain insurance coverage for cyber attacks even if they do not have a specific cyber insurance policy.




Do they actually say “squash?”
EU Deepens Antitrust Inquiry Into Facebook’s Data Practices
European Union antitrust investigators have sought internal documents related to Facebook Inc.’s alleged efforts to identify and squash potential rivals, deepening authorities’ preliminary probe into the social-media company, according to people familiar with the matter.



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