I don’t own a smartwatch, smartring or any other devices or apps that track my health, so I had not really considered how much personal data they gathered and shared.

https://www.makeuseof.com/best-symptom-tracker-apps-medical-health/

The 5 Best Symptom Tracker Apps to Support Your Medical Health

Paying attention to unusual or persistent symptoms is important for your health. Curating a list of symptoms can help you determine if you need medical help—whether that’s self-treatment, advice from a pharmacist, or a doctor’s appointment.

As medical appointments can be brief, presenting your doctor with a list of clear and accurate symptoms can help progress your diagnosis when time is short. Here are the best symptom tracker apps you can use to identify medical issues and help support your doctor appointments.

Another law to examine...

https://fpf.org/blog/the-montana-consumer-data-privacy-act-reminds-us-that-privacy-is-bipartisan/

THE ‘MONTANA CONSUMER DATA PRIVACY ACT’ REMINDS US THAT PRIVACY IS BIPARTISAN

On Friday, April 21st, the Montana State Legislature approved the ‘Montana Consumer Data Privacy Act’ (MCDPA) to be sent to the Governor’s desk. If enacted by Governor Gianforte, Montana would join the 6 states that have adopted comprehensive privacy frameworks. Notably, at almost every stage of the legislative process, the MCDPA received unanimous bipartisan support and strengthening amendments.

The MCDPA includes what would be the strongest baseline consumer privacy rights and protections of any Republican-led U.S. state, comparable in substance and scope to leading privacy frameworks in Connecticut and Colorado. Furthermore, the MCDPA is unlikely to require significant modifications to the compliance programs of organizations that are already subject to either of these existing state laws.

All that is not forbidden is mandatory! (Not just in sports.)

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/04/hacking-pickleball.html

Hacking Pickleball

My latest book, A Hacker’s Mind, has a lot of sports stories. Sports are filled with hacks, as players look for every possible advantage that doesn’t explicitly break the rules. Here’s an example from pickleball, which nicely explains the dilemma between hacking as a subversion and hacking as innovation:

Some might consider these actions cheating, while the acting player would argue that there was no rule that said the action couldn’t be performed. So, how do we address these situations, and close those loopholes? We make new rules that specifically address the loophole action. And the rules book gets longer, and the cycle continues with new loopholes identified, and new rules to prohibit that particular action in the future.

Alternatively, sometimes an action taken as a result of an identified loophole which is not deemed as harmful to the integrity of the game or sportsmanship, becomes part of the game. Ernie Perry found a loophole, and his shot, appropriately named the “Ernie shot,” became part of the game. He realized that by jumping completely over the corner of the NVZ, without breaking any of the NVZ rules, he could volley the ball, making contact closer to the net, usually surprising the opponent, and often winning the rally with an un-returnable shot. He found a loophole, and in this case, it became a very popular and exciting shot to execute and to watch!

I don’t understand pickleball at all, so that explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. (I watched a video explaining the shot; that helped somewhat.) But it looks like an excellent example.

The blog post also links to a 2010 paper that I wish I’d known about when I was writing my book: “Loophole ethics in sports,” by Øyvind Kvalnes and Liv Birgitte Hemmestad:

Abstract: Ethical challenges in sports occur when the practitioners are caught between the will to win and the overall task of staying within the realm of acceptable values and virtues. One way to prepare for these challenges is to formulate comprehensive and specific rules of acceptable conduct. In this paper we will draw attention to one serious problem with such a rule-based approach. It may inadvertently encourage what we will call loophole ethics, an attitude where every action that is not explicitly defined as wrong, will be seen as a viable option. Detailed codes of conduct leave little room for personal judgement, and instead promote a loophole mentality. We argue that loophole ethics can be avoided by operating with only a limited set of general principles, thus leaving more space for personal judgement and wisdom.