From The Associated Press: Starting next year, dozens of states will begin knitting together databases to watch prescription drug abuse, from powerful painkillers to diet pills. With federal money and prodding, states are being asked to sign onto an agreement allowing police, pharmacies and physicians to check suspicious prescription pill patterns from Nevada to North…
Category: Laws
No right to know for bullying?
I’m no longer amazed when journalists occasionally report as news that schools cannot reveal disciplinary outcomes of students due to FERPA. In today’s installment, Michael Brindley reports: When students are disciplined for bullying, privacy laws prevent school officials from telling victims and their parents what action was taken, Superintendent Mark Conrad said last week. During…
Emails on laptop not protected by the Stored Communications Act
Evan Brown comments on Thompson v. Ross, 2010 WL 3896533 (W.D. Pa. September 30, 2010): Messages from Yahoo and AOL email accounts saved on laptop computer were not in “electronic storage” as defined by Stored Communications Act. Plaintiff’s ex-girlfriend kept his laptop computer after the two of them broke up. The ex-girlfriend let two of…
AU: Privacy revisions present risk for offshore clouds
Brett Winterford reports: Changes to privacy legislation under consideration by the Federal Government should pose serious concerns for businesses embracing cloud computing, according to a leading intellectual property lawyer. A revised Privacy Principle 8, released in an exposure draft [PDF] [see page 17] in June 2010, creates new requirements for organisations outsourcing data that identifies Australian citizens to offshore data…