PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

A Decade of Notable Privacy and Security Books

I’m pleased to announce that there is a newly-created archive of all of my notable privacy+security books posts – for years 2008-present.  Together, there are probably about 100 books featured.  The past decade has seen a tremendous abundance of scholarship on privacy and security topics, and there are some truly essential books discussed in these […]

Archive of Concurring Opinions Posts

It is sad to say goodbye to ConcurringOpinions.com, a law professor blog I co-founded in 2005.  The blog began when a group of us (Dave Hoffman, Kaimi Wenger, Nate Oman, and me) who were blogging at PrawfsBlawg decided we wanted more autonomy in blog governance, so we founded Concurring Opinions.   Over the years, we added […]

The Internet of Bots

Much Internet traffic is not human.  According to the NY Times: How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this […]

The Robocall Wars: The Rise of Robocalls and the TCPA Robocall Cops

Move over robocop, there’s a new constable in town — the robocall cop. In the past decade, robocalls have surged.  There has also been a dramatic rise in litigation about these calls under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The TCPA litigation is led by a small group of serial litigators, people who have assumed the […]

HIPAA Enforcement: Employee Access and BAAs Matter

Pagosa Springs Medical Center (PSMC) has agreed to pay $111,400 to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for an alleged violation of HIPAA. OCR found that the company failed to deactivate a former employee’s access to a web-based calendar that contained the protected health information […]

Largest COPPA Penalty Ever – NY AG Settles with Oath (Formerly AOL)

On December 4, 2018, New York Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood announced a $4.95 million settlement with Oath, Inc. (formerly known as AOL), for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This is the largest penalty in a COPPA enforcement case in U.S. history.

Vendor Management Matters: HIPAA Enforcement for $500K for Lack of a Business Associate Agreement

Advanced Care Hospitalists PL (ACH) has agreed to pay $500,000 to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for an alleged violation of HIPAA. OCR found that the company shared protected health information (PHI) with an unknown vendor without a business associate agreement (BAA).  According to […]

Speaking at the FTC Hearing on Data Security on December 12

12/13/18 Update: Here is the video from the session described below. On Wednesday, December 12, 2018, I’ll be speaking at the Data Security hearing, part of the FTC Hearings on Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century.  My panel begins at 1:00 PM: The U.S. Approach to Consumer Data Security Wednesday, December 12, 2018 from […]

The Persistent Problems with Access to Records Under HIPAA

A study released last month in Jama Open Network entitled Assessment of US Hospital Compliance With Regulations for Patients’ Requests for Medical Records demonstrates that compliance with HIPAA’s right to access medical records remains woeful.  In the second half of 2017, researchers contacted 83 US hospitals and conducted a simulated patient experience to ask for medical records. […]