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Here’s why Congress is interested: today, the United States and Turkey are the only developed nations in the world without a comprehensive law protecting consumer privacy. European citizens have privacy rights, Asian citizens have privacy rights, Latin American citizens have privacy rights. In the US, however, in lieu of a comprehensive approach, we have a handful of inconsistent, sector-specific laws around particularly sensitive information like health and financial data. For everything else, the only rule for companies is just “don’t lie about what you’re doing with data.”
Microsoft is set to launch a new cloud service next week. It said it will allocate its customers a region where their information will be physically stored, but said it could not guarantee that it would tell EU customers' details if US authorities sought access to their data.
"When it comes to privacy, the Internet has long been something of a Wild West but that that is starting to change, with regulators in Europe and the United States beginning to pull in the reins.
On both sides of the Atlantic, officials are scrutinizing how companies such as Facebook and Google handle users' personal data, as they draw up plans to protect surfers while ensuring the growth of rapidly expanding social media, search engine and other Web-based businesses."
"The New York Stock Exchange has been bruised for years by rising competition
and electronic trading. But its decline as a symbol of American financial clout
was punctuated by Wednesday's announcement that parent company NYSE Euronext is
nearing agreement to be bought by Deutsche Börse of Germany.
Big Board owner NYSE Euronext already has reduced employment by 40% at its
exchanges scattered around the world. Most traders have left the famous trading
floor at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in lower Manhattan, replaced by
lightning-fast computers in New Jersey and elsewhere that match buyers and
sellers anonymously."
"Canada's privacy watchdog has "concerns" about new American security rules that
will require Canadian airlines to give personal information of passengers flying
over the United States to the U.S. government, but there is nothing Ottawa can
do about it, parliamentarians were told Tuesday."
....
This means the U.S. government will have the ability to prevent someone in Canada from boarding a flight to Mexico. And it will take, on average, 50 to 60 days to resolve false positives, effectively cancelling travel plans.
"The Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday that it is suing Intel, alleging that the chip maker has “waged a systematic campaign to shut out rivals’ competing microchips.” In addition, the FTC is looking to shape the future of the graphics processor market by keeping Intel in check.
In the complaint the FTC argues that Intel (statement, PDF, Techmeme):
* Cut off rivals’ access to the marketplace;
* Deprived consumers of choice and innovation;
* Was anticompetitive for a decade as it moved to shore up its monopoly;
* And now is working to choke off rivals in graphics chips.
The FTC alleges that:
Intel’s anticompetitive tactics were designed to put the brakes on superior competitive products that threatened its monopoly in the CPU microchip market. Over the last decade, this strategy has succeeded in maintaining the Intel monopoly at the expense of consumers, who have been denied access to potentially superior, non-Intel CPU chips and lower prices.
Sound familiar? It is. The FTC argument is very similar to the EU’s case against Intel. The FTC alleges that Intel used threats and rewards against PC giants like Dell, HP and IBM to “coerce them not to buy rival computer CPU chips.” In addition, restrictive dealing kept PC makers from marketing non-Intel machines."
"The United States House of Representatives took a major step this week toward enacting a national data breach notification law.
H.R. 2221, the Data Accountability and Trust Act (DATA), cleared the House with a voice vote. In its current form, DATA requires businesses to notify customers and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) if sensitive information has been exposed to a security breach.
If the U.S. Senate can reconcile its own approach to data breach notification legislation with DATA, a new federal standard will emerge. If signed into law by President Barack Obama, a federal data breach ¬law would pre-empt the jumbled mass of dozens of state laws. "You'd be better served by federal legislation if the federal legislation has teeth and doesn't pre-empt the state's law," said California state senator Joe Simitian, speaking to executive editor Scot Petersen in September. "If there was a meaningful standard at the national level, I think many states would be happy to accept it."
Aside from the data breach notification required by the HITECH Act, DATA would put into place the first national law of its kind. H.R. 2221 was sponsored by House Subcommittee Chair Rep. Bobby L. Rush of Illinois. The bill specifically states that:
"Any person engaged in interstate commerce that owns or possesses data in electronic form containing personal information shall, following the discovery of a breach of security of the system maintained by such person that contains such data --
1. notify each individual who is a citizen or resident of the United States whose personal information was acquired by an unauthorized person as a result of such a breach of security; and
2. notify the Federal Trade Commission."
"Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has gotten tough with US companies that have not lived up to their own privacy promises to European consumers. In particular, it has filed complaints against seven US companies that claimed that they were adhering to the European Union's Safe Harbor Program, but allegedly were not. (The FTC issues or files a complaint when it has "reason to believe" that the law has been or is being violated, and it appears to the Commission that a proceeding is in the public interest. The complaints themselves are not a finding or ruling that the named parties have violated the law.)
By taking action, the FTC has shown that the Safe Harbor program, as applied to US companies, is not a set of empty promises. Rather, the FTC is keeping watch over businesses and will sanction those that misrepresent their own policies.
In this column, I will explain how the Safe Harbor program works, and also discuss the recent FTC enforcement actions."
"The EU and the US have made progress on reaching a deal on a binding agreement on data sharing aimed at fighting terrorism and crime, US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday.
"Last week an EU-US high-level contact group identified a core set of common principles that unite our approaches to protect personal data while processing and exchanging information amongst law enforcement authorities," she said in an address to an international conference in Madrid.
"The next step is a binding US-EU agreement on data sharing and privacy," she added.
Data-sharing deals between the European Union and the United States have so far been made on a case-by-case basis.
Officials on both sides of the Atlantic have sought to boost information sharing in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States as a way to thwart fresh attacks as well as organised crime.
"The US and most European countries have found that this cooperation has paid dividends in the form of preventing terrorist incidents, detaining criminals and preventing illegal immigration," said Napolitano.
But reaching a formal bilateral agreement between the two sides over the issue has reportedly been hampered by questions over what impact a deal would have on private companies' obligations during data transfers as well as over the adequate length of time that shared data should be retained."
"The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued an interim final rule to beef up penalties for violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act (HIPAA), as several Congressmen criticize the agency for leaving dangerous loopholes in the law.
The new rules significantly increase penalty amounts that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services can impose for HIPAA violations of patient privacy, according to a statement from HHS. The new rules reflect requirements enacted in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) sections of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.
Before HITECH, maximum penalties were $100 for each violation or $25,000 for all identical violations of the same provision. A covered health care provider, health plan, or clearinghouse could be exempt from civil financial penalties if it demonstrated it did not know it violated the HIPAA rule.
The HITECH act increases civil financial penalties by establishing tiered ranges of increasing minimum penalties, with a maximum $1.5 million for all violations of identical provisions. And a "covered entity" can plead ignorance as a protection only if it fixes the violation within 30 days of discovery."
"America could use a good data protection law, one that would set some standards for protecting sensitive personal information and establish a national requirement for data breach notification. One staffer for the Senate Judiciary committee says this might be the year we get it. Or maybe next year.
“I’m optimistic,” said Lydia Griggsby, the committee’s chief counsel for privacy and information policy. “Hopefully, this year will be the year.”
She is talking about S.1490, the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2009, introduced by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) in July and now being considered by the Judiciary Committee. If it doesn’t move to the Senate floor this year, there is always next year, the final session of the current Congress. But the bill has been introduced in two previous congresses and has twice made it out of the committee without being passed by the Senate.
The difference this year, Griggsby said, is that Congress has become better educated about cybersecurity and data security issues over the past five years. Identity theft has become a hot issue, and agencies are repeatedly being dinged in the press with reports of data breaches that have exposed personally identifiable information.
“We are hopeful that this year we will see it move to the floor,” Griggsby said at a recent panel discussion on cybersecurity issues."
Comments that the World Trade Organization on Friday backed a U.S. complaint against European Union aid to plane maker Airbus are wrong and misleading, EU sources with knowledge of the WTO ruling said.
"The ruling is not a black-and-white case. It simply is not a great victory for the United States," one source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
"The claim that the WTO ruled that subsidies given (by the EU) to Airbus for their A380 plane were illegal is wrong and misleading."
Reuters reported earlier from Washington, citing a person familiar with the case, that the WTO had ruled that billions of dollars in European loans to help Airbus develop civilian aircraft were an illegal subsidy under world trade rules.
Another EU source said aid given by Brussels to the European plane maker for its A350 aircraft was "not mentioned in the (WTO) report and so would not have to be repaid."
He was speaking after the WTO issued a pivotal, but highly confidential, ruling on subsidies given by the EU to Airbus that stands to impact the global aircraft sector.
The World Trade Organization ruled on Friday that billions of dollars in European loans to help Airbus develop civilian aircraft are an illegal subsidy under world trade rules, a person familiar with case said.
The source, who spoke on condition that he not be identified, said the decision was a big win for the United States, but should not be a surprise to either side.
"I don't think people are shocked that launch aid is deemed to be an inconsistent subsidy. I think the shock would have been if the U.S. had lost," he said.
Even as the Canadian government is fighting against "Buy American" policies that discriminate against Canadian firms, the federal government appears to be quietly continuing with policies that effectively block U.S. firms from winning some kinds of federal contracts.
Case in point: a contract worth $150 million to help relocate nearly more than 18,000 public servants every year was awarded to the only Canadian bidder in mid-August. American firms were interested in the contract but say they were essentially blocked from the bidding because of a provision that personal information about Canadians cannot be stored on computerized databases outside of Canada.
Canada Post, a Crown corporation, is about to award its own multimillion-dollar relocation services contract and it, too, has effectively blocked U.S. companies from bidding with a requirement that personal information be stored only on computers in Canada.
The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search -- without suspicion of wrongdoing -- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.
The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.
But representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.
"It's a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It provides a lot of procedural safeguards, but it doesn't deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people's laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever."
The EU is about to enter talks with the US on giving it access to banking data in its fight against terrorism. German politicians from across the political spectrum are up in arms, and members of the European Parliament say they will try to scupper any deal that violates data privacy.
US anti-terror officials want to be able to continue examining Europeans' financial transactions, and it appears likely that the European Union is going to comply.
In a far-ranging speech on Friday, Bill Gates criticized the American government’s policy on immigration and data privacy, predicted giant leaps in technology in the near future and explained why he had to shut down his Facebook page.
You may already have seen an ominous looking radar and camera perched atop a traffic light in your neighborhood. And almost all drivers have seen a patrol car cruising a freeway looking for speeders, or a law-enforcement officer standing at the side of a road wielding a radar gun.
But most have yet to see a freeway speed camera, which are common in Europe but currently are operated in just two U.S. states.
Opponents and backers of speed cameras both suggest that eventually speed cameras will become the norm on U.S. freeways. But just how likely is a nationwide roll-out? And what factors stand in the way? We take a look.
Largest US Bankruptcies
When automaker General Motors announced they were filing for bankruptcy today, the company joined the ranks of the largest companies in history to do so.
Take a look at ten of the biggest corporate filings in US bankruptcy court, based on pre-bankruptcy assets.
Source: BankruptcyData.com
Updated June 1, 2009
»Slideshow: World's Biggest Debtor Nations
»Slideshow: S&P's Leanest Companies
Malware Wednesday crippled Windows-based computer systems at the U.S. Marshals Service, which hunts federal fugitives and operates the country's witness protection program, knocking the agency’s network offline.
The agency's press office confirmed it was having network problems and that its e-mail system was down this morning, but it was unclear if the outage extended across the entire network.
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