Sarah Hinchliff Pearson has a commentary on differing notions of privacy for celebrities and ordinary people that seems quite timely in light of the media fascination with Michael Jackson. Pearson, a Stanford Center for Internet and Society Residential Fellow, writes, in part: On one hand, we can tell ourselves that celebrities were asking for public…
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…
Bloggers react to the PSP report
I’ve been reading a number of mainstream news sources and columnists on the report that was released yesterday about the President’s Surveillance Program. It’s interesting to see what others feel the headline should be or the take-home message should be. Glenn Greenwald highlights one aspect of the report that I didn’t mention in my commentary…
Employee privacy, health privacy, and public safety
Every so often, a case comes along that pits health privacy against public safety, such as the case involving a honeymooning Atlanta lawyer who was publicly named — and sued by fellow air passengers — for posing a risk to the public of a treatment-resistant strain of tuberculosis. The lawyer eventually sued the Centers for…