This cartoon makes fun of the fact that these days, there seem to be so many GDPR experts. There are, indeed, many experts who know a lot about GDPR. The problem is that there are a lot more “experts” out there who know only a little about GDPR.
May 25, 2018 is just around the corner. That’s the date when GDPR enforcement starts. Many organizations are scrambling to address GDPR compliance. But many still don’t even know what GDPR is. A recent survey [link no longer available] conducted of EU citizens and EU companies reveals some interesting details about GDPR preparation and compliance on the other side of the pond. For EU consumers, 90% believe that the GDPR is “good for consumers.”
GDPR compliance efforts by companies in the EU remain rather limited. And I’m putting it nicely. The survey reveals a rather low amount of knowledge about the GDPR and not enough preparation:
Evan Seligner, Jules Polonetsky, and Omer Tene have just published a terrific edited volume of essays called The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy. This is a truly impressive collection of writings by a wide array of authors from academia and practice. There’s a robust diversity of viewpoints on wide-ranging and cutting-edge issues. The book has a hefty price tag, but it is a terrific resource.
I have a blurb on the back of the book. This is what I wrote:
The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy is a magnificent collection of essays – each one short, engaging, and thought-provoking. The broad range of topics covers the most important and vital issues in consumer privacy, and these essays will be relevant for years to come. The authors are a superb assembly of the leading scholars and practitioners from diverse fields and perspectives. This book is a true feast of ideas.
Below is the table of contents. I found a few of these essays on SSRN, where they are available for free, and I am linking to the ones I found.Continue Reading
I hope you enjoy my latest cartoon about passwords on the Dark Web. These days, it seems, login credentials and other personal data are routinely stocking the shelves of the Dark Web. Last year, a hacker was peddling 117 million LinkedIn user email and passwords. And, late last year, researchers found a file with 1.4 billion passwords for sale on the Dark Web. Hackers will have happy shopping for a long time.
Hot off the press is Professor Woodrow Hartzog’s new book, Privacy’s Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies (Harvard Univ. Press 2018). This is a fascinating and engaging book about a very important and controversial topic: Should privacy law regulate technological design?
In In re Zappos.com, Inc., Customer Data Security Breach Litigation (9th Cir., Mar. 8, 2018), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a decision that represents a more expansive way to understand data security harm. The case arises out of a breach where hackers stole personal data on 24 million+ individuals. Although some plaintiffs alleged they suffered identity theft as a result of the breach, other plaintiffs did not. The district court held that the plaintiffs that hadn’t yet suffered an identity theft lacked standing.
Standing is a requirement in federal court that plaintiffs must allege that they have suffered an “injury in fact” — an injury that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent. If plaintiffs lack standing, their case is dismissed and can’t proceed. For a long time, most litigation arising out of data breaches was dismissed for lack of standing because courts held that plaintiffs whose data was compromised in a breach didn’t suffer any harm. Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, 568 U.S. 398 (2013). In that case, the Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs couldn’t prove for certain that they were under surveillance. The Court concluded that the plaintiffs were merely speculating about future possible harm.
Early on, most courts rejected standing in data breach cases. A few courts resisted this trend, including the 9th Circuit in Krottner v. Starbucks Corp., 628 F.3d 1139 (9th Cir. 2010). There, the court held that an increased future risk of harm could be sufficient to establish standing.
Recently, South Dakota and Alabama passed data breach notification laws. These were the last two states to pass such laws, and now all 50 states have breach notification laws. There’s also a federal breach notification requirement under HIPAA (passed with the HITECH Act of 2009).
In 2003, California passed the first data breach notification law. The law didn’t get a lot of attention until the ChoicePoint data breach was announced in 2005. That breach attracted national media attention largely because people started receiving notification letters in the mail. Other states started to follow California’s lead, passing their own breach notification laws. Now, just 15 years later, a milestone has been reached with all 50 states having breach notification laws. Washington, DC also has a breach notification law.
There still is no omnibus federal breach notification statute — just the requirement for health data (protected health information) under HIPAA. Other countries have started to jump on the notification bandwagon. Canada will have a breach notification requirement starting on November 1, 2018. In the EU, the GDPR has a breach notification requirement.
I have mixed feelings about breach notification laws. On the pro side, they have shed a lot of light on data breaches, which used to remain hushed up. The bright light has shown us just how woeful the state of data security is. Individuals have learned a lot from the process as well, including how often their data is affected.
But on the con side, breach notification laws are a great expense to comply with, amounting to a de facto strict liability fine on organizations that suffer a breach. The expense is the same no matter whether a company was careful, negligent, or even reckless with regard to its data security. But the most problematic thing about breach notification laws is that they have put so much focus on breach response when so many other dimensions of data security are being neglected. Many policymakers have looked to breach notification as the primary policy response to the problem of data security, but breach notification alone is far from a solution.
Professor Woodrow Hartzog and I are currently working on a book that will explore these issues, so please stay tuned.
Organizations are racing to get ready for the GDPR implementation date of May 25, 2018. Complete GDPR compliance in a few months is likely not feasible for many organizations, but this shouldn’t mean that these organizations should give up. Making a good-faith effort and continuing to strive to improve are quite worthwhile.
Recently, I created two new HIPAA training resources.
I created a 1-page visual summary of HIPAA, which I call the HIPAA Whiteboard. The idea was to summarize HIPAA in a concise and visually-engaging way. You can download a PDF handout version here. We’ve been licensing it to many organizations for training and awareness purposes.
I subsequently created a new training module — an interactive version of the HIPAA Whiteboard — the HIPAA Interactive Whiteboard. When people click on each topic, the program provides brief narrated background information, presented in a very understandable and memorable way. Trainees can learn at their own pace. This program is designed to be very short — it is about 5 minutes long.
It can readily be used on internal websites to raise awareness and teach basic information about HIPAA. It can also be used in learning management systems.
Recently, I created two new GDPR training resources.
I created a 1-page visual summary of the GDPR, which I call the GDPR Whiteboard. The idea was to capture the key points of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in a succinct and visually-engaging way. It has become quite popular, receiving thousands of downloads. You can download a PDF handout version here. We’ve been licensing it to many organizations for training and awareness purposes.
I subsequently created a new training module — an interactive version of the GDPR Whiteboard – the GDPR Interactive Whiteboard. When people click on each topic, the program provides brief narrated background information, presented in a very understandable and memorable way. Trainees can learn at their own pace. This program is designed to be very short — it is about 5 minutes long.
It can readily be used on internal websites to raise awareness and teach basic information about GDPR. It can also be used in learning management systems.
