Jennifer Emily reports on a lawsuit against Cornell Companies Inc. mentioned previously on the companion blog, PHIprivacy.net. A company that managed a residential facility for court-mandated drug treatment is being sued for allegedly violating the privacy of its female residents by videotaping them and distributing the material as a promotional DVD. According to the lawsuit…
Category: Court
1986 Privacy Law Is Outrun by the Web
Miguel Helft and Claire Cain Miller report on how ECPA needs updating to bring the same legal and privacy protections to electronic communications as postal mail enjoys: Concerned by the wave of requests for customer data from law enforcement agencies, Google last year set up an online tool showing the frequency of these requests in…
Canadian Privacy in the Courts: Linking Damage Awards to Values
Michael Power writes: If you’re someone caught up in a data breach or a person who can point to an actual violation of privacy, an obvious question is whether you suffered harm and should you be compensated? Three PIPEDA-related decisions from Canadian courts in 2010 offer a glimpse of different approaches to the subject of…
Michigan court ruling on privacy may hurt public’s right to know
Ron Dzwonkowski reports: In one of the last acts of its short-lived Democratic majority, the Michigan Supreme Court did some potential damage to the public’s right to know, in a ruling about the privacy of what public employees do on public time with publicly provided communications systems. The court ought to reconsider this decision before…