UBS AG, the largest Swiss bank by assets, is in talks with the U.S. government to settle a lawsuit seeking the names of 52,000 American account holders suspected of using Swiss secrecy laws to evade taxes. The bank agreed with the U.S. and Swiss governments to seek a settlement and postpone an evidentiary hearing [on…
Category: Court
Ohio drivers sue over sale of their data
The Ohio Department of Public Safety and Bureau of Motor Vehicles has been hit with a potentially costly class action lawsuit alleging that two senior employees contravened federal privacy laws when they authorized the sale of information in the state’s databanks. “At this point we don’t know what motivated them to sell the data,” says…
Employee privacy, health privacy, and public safety
Every so often, a case comes along that pits health privacy against public safety, such as the case involving a honeymooning Atlanta lawyer who was publicly named — and sued by fellow air passengers — for posing a risk to the public of a treatment-resistant strain of tuberculosis. The lawyer eventually sued the Centers for…
Fourth State Dept. snooper pleads guilty
William A. Celey became the latest State Department employee to plead guilty to illegally accessing passport files. Celey had been charged with unauthorized computer access and will be sentenced in October. As reported on Examiner.com: In pleading guilty, Celey admitted that between June 22, 2004, and July 15, 2004, he logged onto the PIERS database…