After a public comment period, the Federal Trade Commission has approved final orders resolving complaints that PaymentsMD, LLC and its former CEO, Michael C. Hughes, violated consumers’ privacy by collecting personal medical information without their consent. The settlements were first announced in December, 2014. In its complaints, the FTC alleged that Payments MD and Hughes altered the signup…
Category: Govt
GCHQ mass internet surveillance was unlawful, court rules
Owen Bowcott reports: Mass surveillance of the internet by the British monitoring agency GCHQ was unlawful until the end of last year, the UK’s most secretive court has ruled. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled on Friday that the agency’s access to intercepted information obtained by the US National Security Agency (NSA) breached human rights law….
US legal opinion upheld privacy protections of census data
AP reports: A newly released legal opinion says the Commerce Department is not required to provide census data to federal law enforcement or national security investigators. The Justice Department this week turned over a 2010 opinion from its Office of Legal Counsel after dropping a public records court fight with a privacy group. Read more…
Judge tosses evidence obtained by agents posing as Internet repairmen
Ken Ritter of AP reports: Undercover FBI and Nevada regulatory agents misled a federal judge and violated the rights of a wealthy Malaysian businessman and his son by posing as Internet repairmen to get into Las Vegas Strip hotel rooms in a gambling probe last summer, a U.S. magistrate judge said. In a case with…