The Portsmouth Police Department doesn’t deny it placed a recording device in its records room – without proper notification – to eavesdrop on its clerks. It’s just that neither the police nor County Attorney Jim Reams believe any laws were broken. But the more we think about the official explanation for these improper recordings the…
Category: U.S.
When is personal data truly de-identified?
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is about to rule whether health care entities will need to notify patients if their de-identified data — patient data that has been stripped of all potential for identifying individuals, which is often used for research and development — is breached. As it stands now, de-identified…
German politicians protest EU plan to share bank data
German politicians and government officials have reacted angrily to a plan by the European Commission to renew an agreement with the United States, which gives anti-terror officials’ the ability to scrutinize the banking activities of European citizens. The oversight occurs through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions or SWIFT, which handles millions of transactions…
Wal-Mart to revamp its privacy policy
One month from now, Wal-Mart will unveil a radically changed privacy policy, one that envisions a merged channel world, where consumers are as likely to use their phone and laptop to interact with Wal-Mart as much as they would walk into a store or speak with a call center. The policy talks about data not…