… The government collects and produces information across sectors as diverse as scientific research and internal government functioning. Information is collected about economic indicators, health, product recalls, and government services such as Medicaid. Many databases are already made available in processed formats, but not in raw form. Different data sets will have different qualitative privacy…
Category: U.S.
Privacy groups urge rejection of ‘Pass ID Act’
In a letter to key lawmakers, the American Civil Liberties Union today joined 17 other civil liberties groups to oppose the Pass ID Act, a bill that intended but failed to fix the flawed Real ID Act of 2005 designed to turn the state driver’s license into a national identity card. The coalition letter was…
U.S. and UBS in negotiations
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…
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…