Here’s a cartoon on HIPAA and social media use to jump start your week. You can’t think enough about HIPAA these days. HIPAA audits are back, and OCR is having a vigorous enforcement year this year, something I plan to post about soon.
By Daniel J. Solove
It is essential that children learn about data privacy and security. Their lives will be fully enveloped by technologies that involve data. But far too little about these topics is currently taught in most schools.
Fortunately, there is a solution, one that I’m proud to have been involved in creating. The Internet Keep Safe Coalition (iKeepSafe), a nonprofit group of policy leaders, educators, and various experts, has released the Privacy K-12 Curriculum Matrix.
The Privacy K-12 Curriculum Matrix is free. It can be used by any school, educator, or parent. It contains an overview of the privacy issues that should be taught, including which details about each issue should be covered in various grade levels. It includes suggestions for appropriate learning activities for each grade level.
“It is a sexual violation. It’s disgusting.
The law needs to be changed, and we need to change.”
— Jennifer Lawrence on her nude photos being
non-consensually disclosed online
Fairly recently, Jennifer Lawrence’s iCloud account was hacked and her private nude photos were stolen and posted online. She was mortified.
Her case is just one of many, according to Professor Danielle Citron (University of Maryland School of Law), who very recently published a book about online harassment, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace (Harvard University Press 2014).
It is a compelling and provocative book. It is a bold book. And as the recent news stories indicate, it is a book that couldn’t be more timely and more needed. One might think that online harassment is rare. Who would write such mean and vile things? What kind of person would harass Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin Williams, who was viciously attacked online immediately after her father’s death? Even Caligula would show more humanity.
If you are interested in privacy and data security issues, there are many great ways Professor Solove can help you stay informed:
Professor Solove’s LinkedIn Influencer blog
You can follow Professor Solove on his blog at LinkedIn, where he is an “LinkedIn Influencer.” He blogs about various privacy and data security issues. His blog has more than 600,000 followers.
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Professor Solove’s Twitter Feed
Professor Solove is active on Twitter and posts links to current privacy and data security stories and new scholarship, cases, and developments of note.
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Sign up for our newsletter where Professor Solove provides information about his recent writings and new training programs that he has created.
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Professor Solove’s LinkedIn Discussion Groups
Please join one or more of Professor Solove’s LinkedIn discussion groups, where you can follow new developments on privacy, data security, HIPAA, and education privacy issues. You can also participate in the discussion, share interesting news and articles, ask questions, or start new conversations:
| Privacy and Data Security | HIPAA Privacy and Security | Education Privacy and Data Security |
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by Daniel J. Solove
For trial attorneys, a key component to winning is carefully selecting people for the jury and tailoring arguments to best influence, nudge, or perhaps even manipulate jurors into reaching a particular verdict. As a result, there is a hunger to learn about the private lives of jurors, and serving on a jury can entail a huge loss of privacy.
by Daniel J. Solove
Why does privacy matter? Often courts and commentators struggle to articulate why privacy is valuable. They see privacy violations as often slight annoyances. But privacy matters a lot more than that. Here are 10 reasons why privacy matters.
1. Limit on Power
Privacy is a limit on government power, as well as the power of private sector companies. The more someone knows about us, the more power they can have over us. Personal data is used to make very important decisions in our lives. Personal data can be used to affect our reputations; and it can be used to influence our decisions and shape our behavior. It can be used as a tool to exercise control over us. And in the wrong hands, personal data can be used to cause us great harm.
by Daniel J. Solove
In 2012, the media erupted with news about employers demanding employees provide them with their social media passwords so the employers could access their accounts. This news took many people by surprise, and it set off a firestorm of public outrage. It even sparked a significant legislative response in the states.
I thought that the practice of demanding passwords was so outrageous that it couldn’t be very common. What kind of company or organization would actually do this? I thought it was a fringe practice done by a few small companies without much awareness of privacy law.
Posted by Daniel J. Solove
The frequent use of social media by employees has created a new domain of risk for employers – employees who reveal confidential or sensitive information or who otherwise say things that damage their institution’s reputation or create strife with their colleagues.
For example, in the healthcare context, in a number of widely-publicized incidents, employees revealed confidential information about patients on their blogs and social network profiles. For example, according to a Boston Globe story, an emergency room physician posted data online about the patient. The physician thought that it was safe to post about as long as she did not include the patient’s name. But others could identify the patient. There are numerous recent cases where hospital staff have posted photos and other information about patients online.
Posted by Daniel J. Solove
A common argument I hear is that young people just don’t care about privacy. If they cared about privacy, why would they share so much personal data on Facebook? Why would they text so much? Why would they be so cavalier about their privacy? Privacy will be dead in a generation, the argument goes.
This argument is wrong for several reasons. Studies show that young people do care about privacy. A few years ago, a study by Chris Hoofnagle and others revealed that young people’s attitudes about privacy didn’t differ much from older people’s attitudes. A more recent study sponsored by Microsoft found that “[p]rivacy and security rank as college students’ #1 concern about online activity.”
But what accounts for the behavior of sharing so much personal data online? First, young people—especially teenagers—might not be thinking through the consequences of their actions. It doesn’t mean they will never care about privacy; they might care about privacy at a point in the future.