Privacy & Cybersecurity

Labor Day is passed, and the Privacy & Security Matters blog is back after a bit of a hiatus.    The California State Legislature was busy up to the last day of the session working on privacy legislation.

The European Parliament passed a resolution today strongly criticizing Privacy Shield and recommending that Privacy Shield be suspended as of September 1, 2018, if the US doesn’t shape up by that deadline.  Should US companies that rely on Privacy Shield panic?

In its most recent Cybersecurity Newsletter, OCR focuses on the intersection of HIPAA and information security.  To be sure, HIPAA requires covered entities and business associates to address their organizations’ information security.

The Supreme Court ruled, at the end of June, that seizing cell-site location information—data that tracks cell phone users’ movements—constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.

June 28, 2018 will be a watershed day in the history of U.S. data privacy legislation.   California has become the first state to move away from the U.S. approach of legislating data privacy in slow bits.  

Manufacturers of wireless devices used for Internet of Things (IoT) applications should take heed of new Trump Administration proposals aimed at reducing the cybersecurity threats from botnets and other automated and distributed attacks.

In the latest decision concerning standing in data breach cases, the Fourth Circuit has vacated a district court’s dismissal and reinstated putative class action data breach litigation against the National Board of Examiners in Optometry Inc. (“NBEO”).

Earlier this week, I moderated a panel discussion at an event hosted by the New York chapter of the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). The panel was comprised of private sector health information technology and security experts and was tasked with discussing challenges related to the interoperability and security of health information systems.

Recently, a new bill was signed by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, creating far reaching new requirements for entities that collect or maintain personal identifying information of Colorado residents. These requirements, which will create one of the strictest state based privacy and data breach laws in the country, will go into effect September 1, 2018. 

The May 2018 cyber security newsletter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) focused on a topic often overlooked by covered entities and their business associates: physical security.

If you glance at the “countdown clock” in the left hand sidebar of our blog, you’ll see that it has reached 00:00:00. GDPR Day is here. But, unlike Y2K (for those of you old enough to remember the near-hysteria), 25 May 2018 is only the beginning of the GDPR compliance road and not a “completion date.”

We are now in the 10-day countdown to the GDPR enforcement date that we’ve been talking about since 2015. If you are a charter member of Procrastinators Anonymous, or just secretly hoped that this would all go away, the sands in the hourglass are running low.

Answering the centuries’ old question, it appears it is the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) that watches the watchmen. The FTC sent warning letters to a pair of foreign app developers cautioning them that their practices of collecting children’s geolocation data without parental consent may be in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”).

A challenge to the use of a cy pres charitable donations to settle privacy claims against Google will be heard by the Supreme Court. In Frank v. Gaos, petitioners seek reversal of lower court decisions rejecting their objection to an $8.5 million settlement of claims arising from Google’s transmission of users’ search terms to third-party websites.

With the recent enactment of data breach notification laws in South Dakota and Alabama, all 50 US states now have laws regulating data breach notification. We’ve updated the Mintz Matrix (maintained by the Mintz Privacy Team for nearly 10 years) to provide you with the latest information.

Uber Technologies, Inc. (“Uber”) has agreed to an expansion of its initial August 2017 proposed consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), in light of revelations of an additional security breach in October 2016, which it knew about but did not disclose until November 2017, after it settled over its initial May 2014 breach.

Facebook has recently chosen to no longer fund opposition to the California Consumer Privacy Act, which could appear on the California State Ballot as an initiated state statute on November 6, 2018.

As the clock ticks down to May 25, 2018, when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) becomes fully enforceable throughout the EU, the Internet and airwaves have become saturated with guidance for companies about what to expect and how to prepare for its new protections and restrictions.

Alabama has joined the "crazy quilt" of state data breach notification laws with the governor's signature of the Alabama Data Breach Notification Act of 2018.

Only one U.S. state without a data breach notification law, that is.
South Dakota as become the 49th state to enact a data breach notification law, which take effect on July 1. The South Dakota law follows the pattern of the most recent notification laws, including an expansive definition of "Personal Information".