privacy

Subscribe to privacy via RSS

With social networking sites proliferating across international boundaries, privacy and data protection concerns are becoming increasingly relevant. With these concerns in mind, the Article 29 Working Party, an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy, adopted an opinion on online social networking on June 12, 2009.

As noted…

I recently spoke with Lora Bentley of IT Business Edge regarding privacy, data security, and cloud computing — There’s More Than One Way to Tackle Privacy in the Cloud.
…

In a year when behavioral advertising was already expected to be at the top of the hot button privacy issues list, on January 13, 2008, the Center for Digital Democracy (“CDT”) and U.S. Public Interest Research Group (“US PIRG”) filed a document with the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) urging the FTC to investigate online mobile marketing practices, to take new actions to stop mobile marketing activities that “abuse consumer rights,” and to recommend new federal legislation and enhanced enforcement power for the FTC in this area. The document expands on the groups’ concerns about online behavioral advertising generally – the delivery of ads tailored to consumers’ interests based on browsing habits and/or consumer demographics – to the mobile space. In doing so the groups cite the potential for even greater consumer harm because of the additional possibility of location-based targeting linked to a cell phone or other mobile device that is typically tied to a single consumer who uses it for multiple applications, including voice, video and data.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) (“FERPA”) imposes various requirements on educational institutions regarding the privacy of personally identifiable information contained in education records of students.  On December 9, 2008, the U.S. Department of Education (“DOE”) published final rules amending the regulations that implement FERPA.   

 

Originally proposed on March 28, 2008, the DOE published a notice which proposed various changes to FERPA and its implementing regulations “to implement various statutory changes made to FERPA to implement two recent US Supreme Court decisions, to respond to changes in information technology, and to address other issues identified through the Department’s experience in administering FERPA.”  (73 FR 74806).  According to the DOE, approximately 121 parties submitted comments in response to the March, 2008 NPRM.  The Final Rules become effective January 8, 2009.

On December 19, 2008, in Party City Corp. v. The Superior Court of San Diego County, the California Court of Appeal in the Fourth Appellate District held that zip codes are not “personal identification information” under California’s Song-Beverly Credit Card Act of 1971, California Civil Code Sec. 1747.08 (the “Act.”). The Act prohibits a retailer that accepts credit cards from, among other things, “request[ing], or require[ing] as a condition to accepting the credit card as payment in full or in part for goods or services, the cardholder to provide personal identification information, which the [retailer] writes, causes to be written, or otherwise records upon the credit card transaction form or otherwise.” Id. at § 1748.08(a)(2). Under the Act, “personal identification information” is “information concerning the cardholder, other than information set forth on the credit card, and including, but not limited to, the cardholder’s address and telephone number.” Id. at § 1747.08(b). Subdivision (e) of the statute provides that “[a]ny person who violates this section shall be subject to a civil penalty not to exceed two hundred fifty dollars ($250) for the first violation and one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each subsequent violation, to be assessed and collected in a civil action brought by the person paying with a credit card, by the Attorney General, or by the district attorney or city attorney of the county or city in which the violation occurred.”

As we prepare to welcome both the 44th President and a revamped Congress to Washington, it is time to consider what privacy under the new administration will look like. Barack Obama polled strongly on the campaign trail as the candidate most likely to advance individual privacy rights, but are the pollsters a good indicator what privacy will look like under the new administration?    Here are some of our thoughts about what we may see in the next four years.