Paul Meller reports: Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner who for the past five years has championed consumer rights in the telecommunications and IT arenas, has been picked to take charge of a re-write of the European Union’s 15-year-old data protection laws due to start next year. Reding is famous for slashing the cost of roaming…
Category: Laws
Keeping Personal Data Private (Editorial)
The following editorial urging Congress to pass a national data protection law is from today’s New York Times: In 2006, a Veterans Affairs Department analyst lost a laptop and external drive with Social Security numbers and other personal data from more than 26 million veterans and active duty troops. There was a national call for…
McDowell ‘Very Troubled’ By Social Security Number Collection
John Eggerton reports: FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell says that when he voted to approve collecting more data on the race and gender of broadcast station owners he was not endorsing collecting Social Security numbers as part of that increased data drop. That came in response to the commission’s notice late Monday that it was delaying…
JP: Overhaul the privacy law (Editorial)
This editorial appeared in the Japan Times: The intentions behind the Personal Information Protection Law, which went into effect in April 2005, are good, but it has contributed to a tendency for organizations to withhold benign information that has significantly useful social value. Ms. Mizuho Fukushima, state minister in charge of consumer affairs, who has…