Ethically-tangled aspects of 21st century societies and cultures.
In the vein of Charles Darwin’s 1859 “entangled bank” metaphor—a complex and evolving digital ecosystem of difference and dependence, where humans, technologies, ethics, law, policy, data, and information converge and diverge. Kip Currier, PhD, JD
Liam Tung, ZDNet; FBI to parents: Beware, your kid's smart toy could be a security risk "The FBI has warned parents that internet-connected toys could pose privacy and "contact concerns" for children. The FBI on Mondayreleased a public service announcement (PSA)warning that smart toy sensors such as microphones, cameras and GPS, raise a concern for the "privacy and physical safety" of children. "These features could put the privacy and safety of children at risk due to the large amount of personal information that may be unwittingly disclosed," it warns. It highlights that toys can collect the child's name, school, preferences and activities when conversing with the toy or talking near it."
Nathan Heller, New Yorker; What the Enron E-mails Say About Us "Small, sometimes moving dramas unwind in the folders of sent mail. In May, 2001, a trader who is given to enthusiastic, exclamation-laden e-mails tells a friend that it’s already getting hot in Houston, which is a pain, because he’s begun jogging again, to lose 8.5 pounds. He has just been through a breakup. A vice-president is having a custody battle in September, 2001, and sends a legal aide a frenzied, unedited, and wrenching plea: “How can she be aloud to keep me from my son?” Some of the most interesting messages were never meant for anyone else’s eyes. That same jogger, still romantically at loose ends, e-mails his Hotmail account a link to workouts on fitnessheaven.com. An employee on the legal team sends his personal AOL account a joke he may have found worth mastering. (“Moses, Jesus and an old man are golfing,” it begins.) “Do you know what’s included in Enron’s Code of Ethics?” an e-mail advertising an in-house informational event prompts. “Do you know what policies affect corporate conduct? Ask Sharon Butcher, Assistant General Counsel of Corporate Legal, all your questions about our corporate policies today.” The message was sent on June 5, 2001. Ten weeks later, Jeffrey Skilling resigned as president and C.E.O. A programmed search could find this e-mail, but it wouldn’t be able to locate the irony. For this, we need the same human instrument—faulty, romantic, and duplicitous—that brought Enron to that self-defeating point."
Fran Quigley, New York Times; Escaping Big Pharma’s Pricing With Patent-Free Drugs "Although President Trump said before taking office that drug companies were“getting away with murder”and had campaigned on lowering drug prices, his administration is doing the opposite. A draft order on drug pricing that became public in June would grant pharmaceutical companieseven more powerto charge exorbitantly. For example, it could shrink a federal program that requires companies to sell at a discount to clinics and hospitals serving low-income patients. Exorbitant prices are one thing that’s very wrong with the way we make medicines. The other is: medicines for what? If a malady has no market in wealthy countries, it gets no attention. Poor-country diseases, known as “neglected diseases,” have a ferocious impact: One of every six peoplein the world, including a half-billion children, suffers from neglected diseases. Yet of the 756 new drugs approved between 2001 and 2011,less than 4 percenttargeted those diseases. The industry spends far more on lobbying government agencies to extend monopolies on high-cost drugs — or hand out deals like the Zika vaccine — than it does on research for a vaccine against dengue fever, which poses a risk for 40 percent of the world’s population. But there’s one drug company that behaves differently."
Eric Lipton and Nicholas Fandos, New York Times; Outgoing Ethics Chief: U.S. Is ‘Close to a Laughingstock’ "Walter M. Shaub Jr.,who is resigningas the federal government’s top ethics watchdog on Tuesday, said the Trump administration had flouted or directly challenged long-accepted norms in a way that threatened to undermine the United States’ ethical standards, which have been admired around the world. “It’s hard for the United States to pursue international anticorruption and ethics initiatives when we’re not even keeping our own side of the street clean. It affects our credibility,” Mr. Shaub said in a two-hour interview this past weekend — a weekend Mr. Trump let the world know he was spending at a family-owned golf club that was being paid to host the U.S. Women’s Open tournament. “I think we are pretty close to a laughingstock at this point.” Mr. Shaub called for nearly a dozen legal changes to strengthen the federal ethics system: changes that, in many cases, he had not considered necessary before Mr. Trump’s election. Every other president since the 1970s, Republican or Democrat, worked closely with the ethics office, he said."
[Kip Currier: Cathy O'Neil is shining much-needed light on the little-known but influential power of algorithms on key aspects of our lives. I'm using her thought-provoking 2016 Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy as one of several required reading texts in my Information Ethics graduate course at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Computing and Information.] "A proliferation of silent and undetectable car crashes is harder to investigate than when it happens in plain sight. I’d still maintain there’s hope. One of the miracles of being a data sceptic in a land of data evangelists is that people are so impressed with their technology, even when it is unintentionally creating harm, they openly describe how amazing it is. And the fact that we’ve already come across quite a few examples of algorithmic harm means that, as secret and opaque as these algorithms are, they’re eventually going to be discovered, albeit after they’ve caused a lot of trouble. What does this mean for the future? First and foremost, we need to start keeping track. Each criminal algorithm we discover should be seen as a test case. Do the rule-breakers get into trouble? How much? Are the rules enforced, and what is the penalty? As we learned after the 2008 financial crisis, a rule is ignored if the penalty for breaking it is less than the profit pocketed. And that goes double for a broken rule that is only discovered half the time... It’s time to gird ourselves for a fight. It will eventually be a technological arms race, but it starts, now, as a political fight. We need to demand evidence that algorithms with the potential to harm us be shown to be acting fairly, legally, and consistently. When we find problems, we need to enforce our laws with sufficiently hefty fines that companies don’t find it profitable to cheat in the first place. This is the time to start demanding that the machines work for us, and not the other way around."
"The meeting remained secret until this week, when its details and the emails were leaked to the New York Times. In response, Trump, his aides, and their allies in the right-wing media have presented a flurry of excuses. The excuses are even more damning than the emails. They expose the nihilism of the Trump family and its allies. Here’s the list..."
Adam Taylor, Washington Post; Ramzan Kadyrov says there are no gay men in Chechnya — and if there are any, they should move to Canada [Kip Currier: Kudos to brave and principled journalists around the world for raising awareness of untold examples of barbarism and ignorance, giving voice to those who suffer and are often silenced and unrecognized. Humankind is indebted to you for your important work.] "“This is nonsense,” Kadyrov said when asked about the allegations. “We don't have those kinds of people here. We don't have any gays. If there are any, take them to Canada.” “Praise be to god,” the Chechen leader adds. “Take them far from us so we don't have them at home. To purify our blood, if there are any here, take them.” Kadyrov's comments came during an interview with HBO reporter David Scott for the show “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.” The interview is just one part of a broader package that will air at 10 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday about how Kadyrov is using mixed martial arts (MMA) to spread a political message overseas... In his interview with Scott, Kadyrov initially laughs dismissively at questions about the allegations. “Why did he come here?” he says to someone off camera. “What's the point of these questions?” But as Scott presses him, Kadyrov talks angrily about the reporters and activists who write about LGBT rights in Chechnya. “They are devils. They are for sale. They are not people,” he says. “God damn them for what they are accusing us of. They will have to answer to the almighty for this.” Elena Milashina, one of the two Novaya Gazeta reporters who broke the story,told WorldViewsin April that she had gone into hiding after threats against her newspaper's staff from religious leaders in Chechnya. “It reminds us of the situation with Charlie Hebdo,” Milashina said, referring to the satirical French newspaper that was attacked by Islamist militant gunmen in 2015, resulting in the deaths of 12."
Kaeli Subberwal, HuffPost; New Bill Aims To Prevent White House From Dodging The Free Press "A Connecticut representative has introduced a newbillThursday that would require the White House to hold at least two televised press briefings per week, in response to the Trump administrations’s recent restrictions on press access. “The Free Press Act,” sponsored by Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), comes in the wake of a series of White House actions that limit the media’s access to the executive. The White House has repeatedly prohibited news outlets from televising White House press briefings, and has increasingly communicated with reporters in restricted settings shielded from public view... Himes noted that he did not expect the bill to garner much support from the Republican majority, but that he would keep pushing it. “While a Republican might say, gosh this feels like it’s anti-Trump, it’s actually pro-transparency, it’s pro-democracy, and it would apply equally to future Democratic presidents as it does to this Republican president,” he said. “When you’re talking about something as important as White House policy, I think it’s really important that American citizens can at least feel like they were in the room.”"
Frank Bajak and David Koenig, Associated Press via Hawaii News Now; Face scans for US citizens flying abroad stir privacy issues "During the trials, passengers will be able to opt out. But a DHS assessment of the privacy impact indicates that won't always be the case.
"The only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling," says the June 12 document on the website of Customs and Border Protection, which runs the DHS program...
Such concerns shouldn't stop the government from moving ahead with the program and U.S. citizens have already sacrificed considerable privacy as the price of fighting terrorists, said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which promotes restrictions on immigration.
Scott Neuman, NPR; Vote Fraud Commission Releases Public Comments, Email Addresses And All "The presidential commission investigating alleged election fraud has released 112 pages of unredacted emails of public comment, raising further privacy concerns amid a legal challenge to the panel's request for sensitive voter data. In many cases, theemails, which are largely critical and often mocking of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity led by Vice President Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, contain expletives as well as the sender's email address. "This cavalier attitude toward the public's personal information is especially concerning given the commission's request for sensitive data on every registered voter in the country," Theresa Lee, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project, said. However, the vice president's press secretary, Marc Lotter,in an email cited by The Washington Post, compared the comments to those of "individuals appearing before commission" who would submit their names before making comments."
Claire Bushey, Crain's Chicago Business; A patent lawyer switches teams "Unlike a traditional law firm, Blackbird is structured as a limited liability company, not a partnership, and it has no clients. Instead, it acquires patents from inventors or small businesses. Blackbird then sues companies for patent infringement on its own behalf, and it shares an unspecified percentage of any settlement or judgment with the original patent owner. Blackbird filed 107 lawsuits between September 2014 and May, including against Amazon, Fitbit, Netflix and kCura, a Chicago company that makes software used by law firms. It has settled with Amazon. The other three cases are ongoing. Three months ago it sued San Francisco-based Cloudflare, and in May the website infrastructure company blasted Blackbird as"a dangerous new breed of patent troll"and launched a scorched-earth campaign against the 11-person business. Cloudflare,valued at $3.2 billionand with a seven-employee Champaign office, offered to the public a total of $50,000 for evidence that would invalidate any of 35 patents Blackbird holds. It also lodged ethics complaints with legal disciplinary bodies in Illinois and Massachusetts, and it was successful in prompting Illinois Rep. Keith Wheeler (R-Oswego) tointroduce a billthat would outlaw Blackbird's business model... A lawyer at Intel coined the epithet "patent troll" in 2001 to refer to Anthony Brown, a one-time Jenner & Block partner turned serial patent lawsuit filer, and his Chicago lawyer, the late Ray Niro. A troll asserts a patent of dubious quality, hoping the company will settle the infringement lawsuit quickly for maybe $50,000 to avoid spending millions on litigation. Detractors often slap the label on patent holders who do not manufacture a product, so-called nonpracticing entities."
Evan Balgord, Torontoist; Toronto Public Library Refusing to Cancel Planned Neo-Nazi Gathering "Prominent members of Canada’s neo-Nazi movement are holding a memorial service at a Toronto Public Library branch tonight for Barbara Kulaszka—a lawyer who defended them in front of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
Jewish organizations want the Toronto Public Library to cancel the Richview Library booking, but, in an email, Ana-Maria Critchley, manager of stakeholder relations for the Toronto Public Library, tells Torontoist that’s not happening."
"With the current controversy surrounding the permitting of CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding operations]in Yankton County and concerns being voiced about the seeming unethical and almost subliminal way the commissioners and the zoning commission have relaxed zoning laws for proposed CAFOs, I asked the question: Is there a code of ethics and principles that Yankton County commissioners must adhere to in the performance of their duties as commissioners?
A Google search of the topic as well as a search of the county web site fails to specify the code. What is out there is a Commissioners Handbook, authored by the South Dakota Association of County Commissioners (SDACC). I read the second edition. The ethics section is on page 17.
Reading the section several times gives me the sinking feeling that there are potential ethical land mines faced by the commissioners. Two of the five commissioners are officers at a local bank, and a third is described in his bio on the commissioners’ website as, “He runs a diversified operations of alfalfa, soybeans, corn and hogs. Ray sits on many agricultural-related boards and is all about the future of the industry.” Really? Is he also all about the welfare of the citizens who elected him to office?
In the ethics section of the SDACC Commissioner’s Handbook on page 18: “… they should abstain from a vote on issues on which they would profit or enhance a relationship.” Clearly there are potential ethical issues facing our commissioners that need to be cleared up. Should these three commissioners recuse themselves from voting on CAFO issues to avoid the appearance of impropriety or conflict of interest? It is unsettling to think that Yankton County commissioners could be blatantly violating the code of ethics suggested by their association."
Dana Milbank, Washington Post; Watching America lose its moral authority in real time "I traveled with my family in Australia for three weeks as a guest of the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne, invited to explain what’s happening in President Trump’s America. As if there were an explanation. Of more interest was what I learnedfromthe Australians. To visit this stalwart ally and talk with its people was to see how the United States, in the space of just a few months, has utterly lost its moral authority."
David Brooks, New York Times; Moral Vacuum in the House of Trump "Once the scandal broke you would think Don Jr. would have some awareness that there were ethical stakes involved. You’d think there would be some sense of embarrassment at having been caught lying so blatantly. But in his interview with Sean Hannity he appeared incapable of even entertaining any moral consideration. “That’s what we do in business,” the younger Trump said. “If there’s information out there, you want it.” AsWilliam Saletan pointed out in Slate, Don Jr. doesn’t seem to possess the internal qualities necessary to consider the possibility that he could have done anything wrong. That to me is the central takeaway of this week’s revelations. It’s not that the Russia scandal may bring down the administration. It’s that over the past few generations the Trump family has built an enveloping culture that is beyond good and evil."
Daisy Contreras, NPR Illiois; Illinois Issues: The Battle Over Transparency And Privacy In The Digital Age "Privacy experts like John Verdi from the Future of Privacy Forum says that he believes much of the debate between opponents and proponents comes from the nature of the topic, which is in of itself a complicated issue because of the patchwork of legislation across different states. “It is a vastly complicated space, where you have potential benefits from data to consumers, to businesses, to the economy — to governments. And you also have real concrete privacy and security risks for individuals.”... For the time being, some consumers and privacy advocates like Carolyn Parrish, just want website owners and app developers to establish consensus about what might be considered too much data sharing and to establish ground rules for transparency with consumers. “Giving people greater visibility into what’s happening behind the scenes—it’s useful. Knowledge is helpful to people to help them make educated choices.”"
Julia Carrie Wong, Guardian; Monkey selfie photographer says he's broke: 'I'm thinking of dog walking' "The one consolation for Slater is that he believes that hisphotograph has helped to save the crested black macaquefrom extinction. “These animals were on the way out and because of one photograph, it’s hopefully going to create enough ecotourism to make the locals realize that there’s a good reason to keep these monkeys alive,” Slater said. “The picture hopefully contributed to saving the species. That was the original intention all along.”"
Olivia Solon, Guardian; Why the 12 July protest to protect net neutrality matters "About 200 internet companies and activist groups are coming together this week to mobilize their users into opposing US government plans to scrap net neutrality protections. Theinternet-wide day of action, scheduled for Wednesday 12 July, will see companies including Facebook, Google, Amazon, Vimeo, Spotify, Reddit and Pornhub notify their users that net neutrality – a founding principle of the open internet – is under attack. The Trump administration is trying to overturn Obama-era regulation that protected net neutrality, and there is less than a week left for people to object. Just as the internet came together in a blackout toprotest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) in 2012, many websites will on Wednesday feature a prominent message on their homepage, showing visitors what the web would look like without net neutrality and urging them to contact Congress. But what exactly is net neutrality, why is it under threat, and what can individuals do to protect it?"
Aarti Shahani, NPR, All Tech Considered; Microsoft Courts Rural America, And Politicians, With High-Speed Internet "Millions of people in rural America don't have the Internet connectivity that those in cities take for granted. Microsoft is pledging to get 2 million rural Americans online, in a five-year plan; and the company is going to push phone companies and regulators to help get the whole 23.4 million connected."
If you and your future partner are planning to have kids, would you start saving money for college tuition, or for printing the genome of your offspring?
The question is a follow up to “At what point will the cost of printing DNA to create a human equal the cost of teaching a student in Stanford?” Both questions refer to the very real possibility that it may soon be in the realm of affordability to print off whatever stretch of DNA you so desire, using genetic sequencing and a machine capable of synthesizing the four building blocks of DNA — A, C, G, and T — into whatever order you desire...
It is vital to discuss the ethics of gene editing in order to ensure that the technology is not abused in the future. Stanford’s question is praiseworthy because it makes today’s students, who will most likely be spearheading the technology’s developments, think about the consequences of their work."
Andrew Krok, CNet; 55 Years Ago Today, Volvo Received a Patent that Saved Countless Lives "Instead of sitting on the patent and licensing it out to other automakers for a big ol' chunk of change, Volvo opened up the patent so that any automaker could incorporate it into vehicles. The automotive industry took the idea and ran with it, and it proved so safe and popular that derivatives of Bohlin's original design are still in use today. Back in 2009, Volvo estimated that more than 1 million people have been saved by the three-point seatbelt. That number has obviously risen since then, and they all have Volvo and Nils Bohlin to thank for it."
Alyssa Rosenberg, Washington Post; ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ is a superheroic meditation on how to be a good person [Kip Currier: Spoiler-Free Comment: I saw Spider-Man: Homecoming this weekend and it's great--for all of the reasons (and more) that Alyssa Rosenberg identifies in her column today. The film doesn't actually quote the oft-quoted Spider-Man touchstone "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility", but you feel its invisible presence throughout the film's narrative arc.] "This column discusses the plot, and ethical dilemmas, of “Spider-Man: Homecoming.”
“Spider-Man: Homecoming,” which zipped into theaters last weekend, is almost everything a summer blockbuster should be: It’s very funny without using humor as an excuse to be less than emotionally accessible; its super-sized throw-downs are anchored in real, human-scale conflicts; its world is richly populated with characters who aren’t solely defined by their powers or lack thereof; and it resists the urge to revisit the most famous story beats associated with its title character’s origin story. All of these elements made “Spider-Man” only the second blockbuster this year I’m eager to rewatch as soon as possible. And another element has left me thinking of it with more than mere amusement: “Spider-Man: Homecoming” is at its most poignant when it’s concerned with how to be a good person — often, specifically, a good man."
Douglas Heaven, New Scientist; The ethics issue: Should we abandon privacy online? "In an age where fear of terrorism is high in the public consciousness, governments are likely to err on the side of safety. Over the past decade, the authorities have been pushing for – and getting – greater powers of surveillance than they have ever had, all in the name of national security. The downsides are not immediately obvious. After all, you might think you have nothing to hide. But most of us have perfectly legal secrets we’d rather someone else didn’t see. And although the chances of the authorities turning up to take you away in a black SUV on the basis of your WhatsApp messages are small in free societies, the chances of insurance companies raising your premiums are not."
Peter Overby, NPR; Exiting Ethics Chief Walter Shaub Calls Trump White House 'A Disappointment' "Walter Shaub Jr., outgoing director of the Office of Government Ethics, says there's a new normal for ethics in the Trump administration. "Even when we're not talking strictly about violations, we're talking about abandoning the norms and ethical traditions of the executive branch that have made our ethics program the gold standard in the world until now," Shaub toldAll Things Considered host Robert Siegel... Defenders of federal ethics standards say OGE, and the ethics laws themselves, may be at a turning point. "Previous administrations have sort of cared a lot about trying to do something about a violation of those conflicts of interest standards, and we have an administration now that honestly doesn't care," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, or POGO."
Editorial Board, New York Times; Surprise Us, Mr. Trump: Name an Ethics Watchdog With Teeth "Walter Shaub Jr.announced his resignationas director of the Office of Government Ethics on Thursday, plunging the federal government’s top ethics watchdog agency into limbo. President Trump now has the chance to appoint an accommodating loyalist who’d give him far less trouble than Mr. Shaub has. Or he could surprise us, and name another independent director committed to the ethical rules of public service. The president’s past behavior doesn’t offer much hope, but it would be in his long-term interest to choose a director with integrity. The 70-person O.G.E. works with some 4,500 executive branch ethics officials whose goal is preventing conflicts of interest among 2.5 million civilian federal employees. The energy, commitment and character of the person at the top is crucial to the office’s success, not least because it has no real enforcement power. Its influence derives from a mix of financial disclosure rules, public pressure and, ideally, White House support for its mission of ensuring that civil servants act on the behalf of Americans, not themselves."
Sheelah Kolhatkar, New Yorker; Walter Shaub’s Brave, Quixotic Ethics Battle with Trump "After leaving his post at the O.G.E., Shaub will join the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C., as the director of its ethics program. According to Lawrence Noble, the Center’s general counsel, Shaub learned about the job opening only recently. “When the opportunity came for us to hire Walt, we couldn’t pass it up,” Noble said. He added that, to the best of his knowledge, Shaub “was under no outside pressure” to leave the O.G.E. before his term ended, and Shaub told the Washington Post much the same. In his new role, Shaub will be helping the Center to expand its ethics program, strengthen its watchdog role, and help design potential fortifications to the ethics rules, which have been “stress-tested” under President Trump, as Noble put it. He added that Trump had exposed many weaknesses in ethics laws. With Shaub’s help, his organization will be looking at ways to strengthen and update conflict-of-interest rules for the President specifically, as well as ways to potentially give more power to the O.G.E., which, currently, can only offer advice and suggestions and has no enforcement role."
Todd Shields, Bloomberg via News Chief; States consider tougher web privacy laws "Soon after President Donald Trump took office with a pledge to cut regulations, Republicans in Congress killed an Obama-era rule restricting how broadband companies may use customer data such as web browsing histories.
But the rule may be finding new life in the states.
Lawmakers in almost two dozen state capitols are considering ways to bolster consumer privacy protections rolled back with Trump’s signature in April. The proposals being debated from New York to California would limit how AT&T, Verizon Communications and Comcast use subscribers’ data."
State Rep. John Gannon, Idaho Mountain Express; Federal commission invades voting privacy "This new federal commission will cost plenty of our taxpayer dollars and our privacy. What are they going to do with this data? How are they going to track those that move and what right does the federal government have to even do that? Are federal investigators going to contact landlords, look at assessor records and interrogate voters regarding residences in order to determine “vulnerabilities”? The monetary expense will be substantial and voter participation less likely."
"“For the machine to know you’re talking to it, it has to be taking that voice information that it’s recording and sending it back and processing,” said [cyber security expert Sean Lawson. "The technology is really cool, especially if you grew up watching ‘The Jetsons’ or ‘Star Trek.’ The problem is, I also know how they work and the privacy implications. The costs versus the benefits of what this device will do for me is just not worth paying in terms of the privacy you give up. But everyone needs to make that decision for themselves.”"
Nicholas Fandos, New York Times; Government Ethics Chief Resigns, Casting Uncertainty Over Agency "“I don’t think anyone who comes after Walter is going to challenge the White House publicly the way that I think he did,” said Richard W. Painter, who served as ethics counsel for the George W. Bush White House. “It is a great loss.” Mr. Painter said the administration would do itself a favor by naming a successor with experience in ethics law and a reputation for independence. A permanent replacement for Mr. Shaub would require confirmation in the Senate, where Democrats would probably use confirmation hearings to raise grievances about what they see asMr. Trump’s potential conflicts of interest, and Republicans are unlikely to act as a rubber stamp."
Jennifer Putnam Davis, American Libraries; Intellectual Freedom and Open Access: Working Toward a Common Goal? "How do the principles of intellectual freedom and open access intersect? That was the topic of the “Intellectual Freedom and Open Access: Working Toward a Common Goal?” panel discussion, sponsored by the Intellectual Freedom Round Table, which addressed the relationship from several different perspectives."
Wendy Davis, Digital News Daily; Privacy Rules Apply To Connected Toys, FTC Says "A federal law that limits companies' ability to collect data from children applies to businesses that gather data from connected toys and other devices, the Federal Trade Commission says. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which initially regulated data collection at Web sites, also "can apply to the growing list of connected devices that make up the Internet of Things," the FTC said inguidanceissued last week."
Hannah Meisel, Law360; Legislature Passes Geolocation Privacy Protection Act "A bill in the Illinois General Assembly seeking to limit the collection and disclosure of a smartphone user's geolocation data within applications will be sent on to Gov. Bruce Rauner after the House narrowly approved the legislation Tuesday. The so-called Geolocation Privacy Protection Act was already approved by the state Senate last month — one of a handful of bills proposed in the Illinois legislature this spring aimed at protecting mobile phone user data."
SF: It has already got their attention. It certainly is the one area where C-level executives are starting to pay attention. Four percent of a global annual revenue is pretty substantial and will put some companies out of business.
It will still be those large multinational organisations that their entire business relies on data that will try to push back and in their head they might think: there is no way we will be fined this.
However, what is going to happen is that the data protection authority is going to look for that first case, and that first case that they find, that first company that they can actually hold it accountable and sanction will become the poster child to get companies to rethink their position. They cannot be arrogant any longer."
Olivia Solon, Guardian; Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says "A judge has dismissed a lawsuit accusingFacebookof tracking users’ web browsing activity even after they logged out of the social networking site. The plaintiffs alleged that Facebook used the “like” buttons found on other websites to track which sites they visited, meaning that the Menlo Park, California-headquartered company could build up detailed records of their browsing history. The plaintiffs argued that this violated federal and state privacy and wiretapping laws. US district judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, dismissed the case because he said that the plaintiffs failed to show that they had a reasonable expectation of privacy or suffered any realistic economic harm or loss."
Carolyn Y. Johnson, Washington Post; Louisiana considers radical step to counter high drug prices: Federal intervention "Gilead, a company that hasprojectedbetween $7.5 billion and $9 billion in sales for 2017 for its hepatitis C drugs, says federal intervention would threaten future progress. In a statement, the company said the proposal “puts in jeopardy further medical innovation by undermining the patent system and de-incentivizing research and development.” Gilead said that the state’s predictions of the budget impact are unrealistic, based on the idea that the entire infected population could be screened, treated and connected to treatment in a year. Gilead offers states that do not restrict access to treatments deep discounts — less than $30,000 for a 12-week treatment... Gee said that she is not wedded to one approach and that she simply thinks the equity and access problems that are an outgrowth of high drug prices need to be tackled. After receiving the expert panel’s recommendation, Gee put out the proposal for public comment and received 102,a majority of which were in favor of taking some action. She expects to make a decision soon about a strategy to try to eliminate hepatitis C in Louisiana."
