PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

Without Scalia, Will There Be a 4th Amendment Revolution?

The passing of Justice Antonin Scalia has brought a wave of speculation about current and future U.S. Supreme Court cases.  One area where there might be a significant impact will be the 4th Amendment, which provides the primary constitutional protection against government surveillance and information gathering.  A new justice could usher in a dramatic expansion […]

The Ultimate Unifying Approach to Complying with All Laws and Regulations

Professor Woodrow Hartzog and I have just published our new article, The Ultimate Unifying Approach to Complying with All Laws and Regulations, 19 Green Bag 2d 223 (2016).  Our article took years of research and analysis, intensive writing, countless drafts, and endless laboring over every word. But we hope we achieved a monumental breakthrough in the […]

A List of Privacy Law Fellowships

One way to enter the privacy profession is to do a fellowship, and fortunately, an increasing number of fellowship opportunities are emerging. I have written about the challenges of breaking in to the privacy law profession, especially the challenges that recent law school graduates will face.  There are no established career paths in this field […]

A New US-EU Safe Harbor Agreement Has Been Reached

Last year, the death of the US-EU Safe Harbor Arrangement sent waves of shock and despair to the approximately 4500 companies that used this mechanism to transfer personal data from the US to the EU.  But a new day has dawned.

What Can We Learn From Bad Passwords?

By Daniel J. Solove The SplashData annual list of the 25 most widely used bad passwords recently was posted for passwords used in 2015.  The list is compiled annually by examining passwords leaked during a particular year.  Here is the list of passwords for 2015, and below it, I have some thoughts and reactions to […]

Notable Privacy and Security Books 2015

For several years, I have been posting about notable books on privacy and security, and this post lists some of the notable books from 2015.  To see a more comprehensive list of nonfiction works about privacy and security, you might consult this resource page that Professor Paul Schwartz and I maintain: Nonfiction Privacy + Security […]

New Privacy and Security Awareness Training Programs

I created some new training programs last year, and here are some of the highlights: The Ransomware Attack (~5 mins) This short program (~5 minutes) consists of an interactive cartoon vignette about malware.  The program is highly interactive, and trainees engage with a scenario involving ransomware. Although this program involves ransomware, the lessons it teaches […]

3 Types of Incidents Account for 86% of HIPAA Data Breaches

A new report by Verizon, the PHI Data Breach report, analyzes 1,931 data breaches of protected health information (PHI) under HIPAA,  The incidents occurred between 1994 and 2014, with most occurring from 2004-2014.  An article from Computer World sums up the findings of the report. One interesting statistic is that 392 million PHI records were […]

Is HIPAA Enforcement Too Lax?

By Daniel J. Solove ProPublica has been running a series of lengthy articles about HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) enforcement that are worth reading. A Sustained and Vigorous Critique of OCR HIPAA Enforcement A ProPublica article from early in 2015 noted that HIPAA fines were quite rare. The article noted that from 2009 through […]