The White House’s Aversion to Ethical Scrutiny; New York Times, May 25, 2017

Editorial Board, New York Times; 

The White House’s Aversion to Ethical Scrutiny

"Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department disagreed, saying on Tuesday that its ethics experts “determined that Mr. Mueller’s participation in the matters assigned to him is appropriate.” Mr. Mueller did not represent Mr. Kushner nor Mr. Manafort while at WilmerHale, a firm that employs 300 lawyers in Washington and 1,200 globally. Nor was Mr. Mueller privy to any confidential information about their cases, a state of affairs that satisfies both District of Columbia and federal rules.

Why would White House lawyers pursue such a baseless line of attack? “They’re trying to use the ethics rules to fire a special prosecutor,” Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House, said. “That’s insane.” If the Bush administration had told him to concoct legal justifications for evading ethics rules and legal inquiries in this way, Mr. Painter said, “I’d have quit.”"

The investigation of Jared Kushner fits a very troubling pattern; Washington Post, May 25, 2017

Aaron Blake, Washington Post; The investigation of Jared Kushner fits a very troubling pattern

"Former Obama administration ethics counsel Norman L. Eisen was among those criticizing that move. And here's what Eisen said back in December, when Kushner's potential role in the Trump White House first made news:

The problem with it is it sends a message that if you want to have influence in the administration, do it through the kids. And there’s a tradition. This is not the first time this has happened. I’m just shocked it’s happened in the United States.

It's possible that Kushner's familial relationship with Trump is part of the reason he's been subjected to more scrutiny than any other White House adviser in this probe. And as emphasized above, we have no idea what will come of this.

But if scrutiny of Kushner becomes more intense and there appears to be some validity to it, it will reinforce a central reason why ethics experts say these kinds of arrangements are to be avoided in the first place.

Target to Pay $18.5M to States Over Data Breach; Inside Counsel, May 24, 2017

P.J. D'Annunuzio, Inside Counsel; 

Target to Pay $18.5M to States Over Data Breach

"Deterrence was a major theme brought up by many of the attorneys general who released statements about the agreement.

The $18.5 million settlement with the states, coupled with the $10 million consumer class action settlement approved last week, may seem like a drop in the bucket for a retail juggernaut like Target, but according to Lambiras, the deterrent effect lies in the residual legal and public relations costs companies incur following a data breach.

In a statement Tuesday, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said the settlement should serve as a wake-up call to companies to tighten their data security. He also gave kudos to Target for working with authorities after the breach."

Obama chief data scientist: Trumpcare health plan would ‘cripple’ precision medicine; FedScoop, May 24, 2017

Billy Mitchell, FedScoop; Obama chief data scientist: Trumpcare health plan would ‘cripple’ precision medicine

"DJ Patil, U.S. chief data scientist in the latter years of Barack Obama’s presidency, wrote on Medium that Trumpcare, as the AHCA is nicknamed, would threaten the country’s ability to leverage data to advance medical science, particularly in the fight against major diseases like cancer. The White House’s proposal would allow insurance companies to deny coverage or charge more when people have preexisting medical conditions. That provision could make people less willing to share important information about themselves with researchers, Patil says, because of fear it could be used against them later.

“[M]y deep fear is that people won’t be willing to donate their data. And there are too many people who have diseases that need us to donate our data to help,” Patil writes.

At the center of the Precision Medicine Initiative introduced under Obama is the “responsible collection of large amounts of data to be able to develop truly customized medical treatments for each patient,” Patil explains. The Trump legislation essentially threatens that project."

One Year Until EU Privacy Regime Change: Prep Time is Now; Bloomberg BNA, May 25, 2017

Jimmy H. Koo and Daniel R. Stoller, Bloomberg BNA; One Year Until EU Privacy Regime Change: Prep Time Is Now

"Companies should start preparing for the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which takes effect May 25, 2018, privacy attorneys said. But regardless of how much they prepare, full compliance with the GDPR is an elusive goal, attorneys said...

The GDPR, which takes effect May 25, 2018, provides one EU-wide regulation to replace a more than 20-year-old directive that required each country to pass its own privacy laws. The GDPR will bring stricter standards for user consent to the use of their personal data, mandatory data breach notification, and fines as high as $20 million euros ($22.4 million) or 4 percent of a company’s annual worldwide income, among other things...

The GDPR “at its core is about information governance,” Clarissa Horowitz, vice president of communications at Mountain View, Calif.-based software company MobileIron Inc., told Bloomberg BNA."

Fox News crew ‘watched in disbelief’ as Montana’s Greg Gianforte ‘slammed’ and ‘began punching’ reporter; Washington Post, May 25, 2017

Fred Barbash, Washington Post; Fox News crew ‘watched in disbelief’ as Montana’s Greg Gianforte ‘slammed’ and ‘began punching’ reporter

"The Gazette referenced an incident at a campaign event in which a Gianforte took questions from the audience, including a man who said:

“Our biggest enemy is the news media. How can we rein in the news media?”

The man then looked at the Ravalli Republic reporter sitting next to him and raised his hands as if he would like to wring his neck.

Gianforte smiled and pointed at the reporter.

“We have someone right here,” the candidate said. “It seems like there is more of us than there is of him.”

That and “other questionable interactions Gianforte had with reporters … must now be seen through a much more sinister lens,” the Gazette said. “What he passed off as a joke at the time now becomes much more serious.”

The Gianforte campaign, it added, “should be appalled” by its statement “that would seem to justify the fight when it said the Bozeman Republican had tussled with a ‘liberal journalist.’ How would the campaign have known the reporter’s political beliefs? And, is it suggesting that it’s acceptable to put your hands on a reporter if you believe their political views are different from yours?”

The Society of Professional Journalists denounced the alleged assault, saying “it is never acceptable to physically harm or arrest a journalist who is simply trying to do his or her job.”"

Stanford scholars, researchers discuss key ethical questions self-driving cars present; Stanford News, May 22, 2017

Alex Shashkevich, Stanford News; 

Stanford scholars, researchers discuss key ethical questions self-driving cars present

"Trolley problem debated

A common argument on behalf of autonomous cars is that they will decrease traffic accidents and thereby increase human welfare. Even if true, deep questions remain about how car companies or public policy will engineer for safety.

“Everyone is saying how driverless cars will take the problematic human out of the equation,” said Taylor, a professor of philosophy. “But we think of humans as moral decision-makers. Can artificial intelligence actually replace our capacities as moral agents?”

That question leads to the “trolley problem,” a popular thought experiment ethicists have mulled over for about 50 years, which can be applied to driverless cars and morality.

In the experiment, one imagines a runaway trolley speeding down a track which has five people tied to it. You can pull a lever to switch the trolley to another track, which has only one person tied to it. Would you sacrifice the one person to save the other five, or would you do nothing and let the trolley kill the five people?

Engineers of autonomous cars will now have to tackle this question and other, more complicated scenarios, said Taylor and Rob Reich, the director of Stanford’s McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society."

Big Settlement in Privacy Case Involving 2 Patients, HIV Data; Gov Info Security, May 24, 2017

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee, Gov Info Security; Big Settlement in Privacy Case Involving 2 Patients, HIV Data

"Sensitive Health Information

The high settlement amount paid by St. Luke's in a case involving privacy incidents impacting only two individuals reflects the sensitive nature of information that was breached.

"There is no doubt that OCR felt compelled to act due to the sensitivity of the PHI disclosed, that the organization should have been aware of the enhanced safeguards surrounding this type of PHI and there had been repeated occurrences of similar unauthorized disclosures," says privacy attorney David Holtzman of security firm CynergisTek.

"The message here is fix your problems when they happen," notes privacy attorney Kirk Nahra of the law firm Wiley Rein. "This was obviously a particularly sensitive piece of information, and it is possible that this also implicates a request for confidential communication or request for restriction in the HIPAA individual rights. So, while the [settlement] number may seem a bit high, this is both a repeated problem, and one that was not fixed, as well as a particularly harmful step.""

WSJ Privacy Test: Who Can See Your Personal Data?; Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2017

[Video] Geoffrey A. Fowler, Wall Street Journal; 

WSJ Privacy Test: Who Can See Your Personal Data?

"People would care more about privacy if they knew how exposed they already are online, says WSJ Personal Tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler. In an experiment, he showed a handful of strangers their own personal info—and managed to shock every one."

Telco-Backed Politician Wants to Restore Privacy Rules She Helped Kill; Wired, May 24, 2017

Klint Finley, Wired; Telco-Backed Politician Wants to Restore Privacy Rules She Helped Kill

"...[L]ast week Representative Blackburn, Republican chair of the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee, introduced the BROWSER Act (yes, it’s an acronym: Balancing the Rights of Web Surfers Equally and Responsibly). Not only would the bill apparently reinstate the ban on internet providers selling data without opt-in permission; it would also subject “edge providers”—websites apps, in other words—to the same restrictions.

That’s right: The bill would require any internet company to get opt-in permission before sharing sensitive information such as health data, your social security number, or internet browsing history. Simply allowing users to opt out wouldn’t cut it. What’s more, companies wouldn’t be able to make opting in a requirement to use their services."

Why Scanning Your Fingerprint Could Cost You Your Privacy; Inc.com, May 23, 2017

Adam Levin, Inc.com; Why Scanning Your Fingerprint Could Cost You Your Privacy

"Scanning a fingerprint or even an eyeball to authenticate your identity is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Biometric identification has been in practical use for a while now, and the technology gets more sophisticated every day.

It should come as no surprise that security and privacy concerns have arisen along the way. And now the legal ramifications are rapidly getting more complicated.

Washington state lawmakers last month passed pioneering legislation that forbids companies from obtaining or selling biometric information without consent of the individual."

"What Would YOU Do?"; Go Comics, May 24, 2017

Lincoln Peirce, Big Nate, Go Comics; 
"What Would YOU Do?"

Privacy Concerns in Emerging Technologies; American Bar Association Webinar: Thursday, May 25, 2017

American Bar Association Webinar: Thursday, May 25, 2017Privacy Concerns in Emerging Technologies

• 

1.50 CLE

Format:

Webinar

Date:

May 25, 2017

Time:

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM ET

Add to Calendar

Credits:

1.50 General CLE Credit Hours

Panelist(s):

Jodi Daniel

Scott Stiefel

Moderator(s):

Alya Sulaiman

Sponsor(s):

Center for Professional Development

Health Law Section

The rise in health information technology and wearable devices has brought innovative models of healthcare delivery, as well as increasing privacy risks and compliance concerns. Join our expert faculty as they discuss privacy issues confronting emerging technologies.

Topics will include:

• Applicability of HIPAA to technology companies
• Office for Civil Rights (OCR) guidance on HIPAA and cloud computing
• Increasing Focus on Patient Right of Access
• Recent enforcement settlements affecting emerging health care technologies and developers
• Privacy considerations in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT)/Wearables

I’ve Created a Monster!; Slate, May 22, 2017

Cory Doctorow, Slate; 

I’ve Created a Monster!

"I’m a Facebook vegan. I won’t even use WhatsApp or Instagram because they’re owned by Facebook. That means I basically never get invited to parties; I can’t keep up with what’s going on in my daughter’s school; I can’t find my old school friends or participate in the online memorials when one of them dies. Unless everyone you know chooses along with you not to use Facebook, being a Facebook vegan is hard. But it also lets you see the casino for what it is and make a more informed choice about what technologies you depend on...

Your mobile device, your social media accounts, your search queries, and your Facebook posts— those juicy, detailed, revelatory Facebook posts—contain everything the NSA can possibly want to know about whole populations, and those populations foot the bill for its gathering of that information.

The adjacent possible made Facebook inevitable, but individual choices by technologists and entrepreneurs made Facebook into a force for mass surveillance. Opting out of Facebook is not a personal choice but a social one, one that you brave on your own at the cost of your social life and your ability to stay in touch with the people you love.

Frankenstein warns of a world where technology controls people instead of the other way around. Victor has choices to make about what he does with technology, and he gets those choices wrong again and again. But technology doesn’t control people: People wield technology to control other people."

America’s dangerous Internet delusion; Washington Post, May 21, 2017

Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post; America’s dangerous Internet delusion

"We are addicted to the Internet and refuse to recognize how our addiction subtracts from our security. The more we connect our devices and instruments to the Internet, the more we create paths for others to use against us, either by shutting down websites or by controlling what they do. Put differently, we are — incredibly — inviting trouble. Our commercial interests and our national security diverge.

The latest example of this tension is the “Internet of things” or the “smart home.” It involves connecting various devices and gadgets (thermostats, lights, cameras, locks, ovens) to the Internet so they can be operated or monitored remotely."

ILLINOIS ADVANCES “RIGHT TO KNOW” DIGITAL PRIVACY BILLS; Electronic Frontier Foundation, May 22, 2017

Adam Schwartz, Electronic Frontier Foundation; ILLINOIS ADVANCES “RIGHT TO KNOW” DIGITAL PRIVACY BILLS

"EFF supports Illinois legislation (SB 1502 and HB 2774) that would empower people who visit commercial websites and online services to learn what personal information the site and service operators collected from them, and which third parties the operators shared it with. EFF has long supported such “right to know” legislation, which requires company transparency and thereby advances digital privacy."

How to Fight Back Against Revenge Porn; New York Times, May 18, 2017

Niraj Chokshi, New York Times; 

How to Fight Back Against Revenge Porn

"Consider criminal action

Despite increasing awareness about the issue, many officials may still be unaware of legal protections in place for victims of nonconsensual porn, according to the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. So victims should researchstate laws targeting nonconsensual porn before approaching the authorities.

And while the decision to prosecute lies with the government, victims can help by providing documentation. “In order to have a successful prosecution, you’ve got to have evidence,” Ms. D’Amico said.

Victims may help to strengthen a case, and penalty, by highlighting violations of related laws, including those aimed at child pornography, harassment, stalking, extortion and copyright. The Initiative maintains a list of such laws and encourages victims to bring printed copies when filing a police report."

Monica Lewinsky: Roger Ailes’s Dream Was My Nightmare; New York Times, May 22, 2017

Monica Lewinsky, New York Times; 

Monica Lewinsky: Roger Ailes’s Dream Was My Nightmare

"Our world — of cyberbullying and chyrons, trolls and tweets — was forged in 1998. It is, as the historian Nicolaus Mills has put it, a “culture of humiliation,” in which those who prey on the vulnerable in the service of clicks and ratings are handsomely rewarded.

As the past year has revealed, thanks to brave women like Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly, it is clear that at Fox, this culture of exploitation wasn’t limited to the screen. The irony of Mr. Ailes’s career at Fox — that he harnessed a sex scandal to build a cable juggernaut and then was brought down by his own — was not lost on anyone who has been paying attention...

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t have a credible conservative point of view in our media — quite the opposite. If we’ve learned nothing else from the 2016 presidential election, it’s that we must find a way to foster robust and healthy discussion and debate. Our news channels should be just such places.

So, farewell to the age of Ailes. The late Fox chief pledged Americans fair and balanced news. Maybe now we’ll get it."

How the Right and Left (and Everyone Else) Reacted to Roger Ailes’s Death; New York Times, May 18, 2017

Jonah Engel Bromwich, New York Times; 

How the Right and Left (and Everyone Else) Reacted to Roger Ailes’s Death

"Dr. Jeffrey Jones, the director of the Peabody Awards, which celebrate public service from media figures and organizations, was unsparing in his criticism of Mr. Ailes, saying that, “no single individual has done more harm to American democracy in the last generation.”

“He ushered in the post-truth society,” Dr. Jones wrote in an emailed statement. “Through a constant drumbeat of fear, anger, and hatred, he turned citizen-on-citizen. He helped craft an enormous gulf of distrust between people and news.”"

Sir Harold Evans’ New Book Is a Master Class in How to Write; Daily Beast, May 20, 2017

Malcolm Jones, Daily Beast; Sir Harold Evans’ New Book Is a Master Class in How to Write

"Like George Orwell, Evans understands in his bones that words are not just pretty things, that in the wrong hands they can mislead, betray, and even cause great harm. Beginning on page one and running right through to the end of the book is an iron spine of fair play and honesty. “This book on clear writing is as concerned with how words confuse and mislead, with or without malice aforethought, as it is with literary expression,” he writes in the introduction, and then circles back on the last page of the book to drive home the point once more: “The fog that envelops English is not just a question of good taste, style, and esthetics. It is a moral issue.”"

"Magic Words"; FamilyCircus.com, May 21, 2017

Bil Keane, Family Circus.com; "Magic Words"

HOW TO OPT OUT OF TWITTER'S NEW PRIVACY SETTINGS; Electronic Frontier Foundation, May 19, 2017

Gennie Gebhart, Electronic Frontier Foundation; 

HOW TO OPT OUT OF TWITTER'S NEW PRIVACY SETTINGS

"Since Wednesday night, Twitter users have been greeted by a pop-up notice about Twitter’s new privacy policy, which will come into effect June 18:

Contrary to the inviting “Sounds good” button to accept the new policy and get to tweeting, the changes Twitter has made around user tracking and data personalization do not sound good for user privacy. For example, the company will now record and store non-EU users’ off-Twitter web browsing history for up to 30 days, up from 10 days in the previous policy."

White House looking at using ethics rule to weaken special investigation: Sources; Reuters via CNBC, May 20, 2017

Reuters via CNBC; White House looking at using ethics rule to weaken special investigation: Sources

"The Trump administration is exploring whether it can use an obscure ethics rule to undermine the special counsel investigation into ties between President Donald Trump's campaign team and Russia, two people familiar with White House thinking said on Friday."

Justice Dept. to review possible ethics conflicts involving Mueller’s former law firm; Washington Post, May 18, 2017

Matea Gold and Rosalind S. Helderman, Washington Post; Justice Dept. to review possible ethics conflicts involving Mueller’s former law firm

"Newly appointed special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will undergo a Justice Department ethics review that will examine possible conflicts of interest regarding his former law firm, which represents several figures who could be caught up in the probe into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.

Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said Thursday that the agency will conduct a background investigation and detailed review of conflict-of-interest issues, a process outlined in the regulation governing special counsels under which he was appointed...

Ethics experts said they anticipate that the Justice Department will grant a waiver, noting that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein would have taken Mueller’s past employer into consideration when selecting him."

What Do Twitter’s Privacy Changes Mean For You?; CBS DFW, May 19, 2017

CBS DFW; What Do Twitter’s Privacy Changes Mean For You?

"“Twitter’s announcement is bad news for online privacy. The company dropped Do Not Track and gave advertisers access to more user data,” said Marc Rotenberg, president of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Also, all of the settings now default to disclosure, which means users have to go in and change their privacy settings.”

YOUR OPTIONS

If you are in the U.S., move to Europe. Besides achieving your dreams of finally living in a tiny flat in Paris with a stray cat named Gaston and a mustached baker named Olivier, you will also have stronger online privacy protections."

Boy, 11, hacks cyber-security audience to give lesson on 'weaponisation' of toys; Agence France-Presse via Guardian, May 16, 2017

Agence France-Presse via Guardian; 

Boy, 11, hacks cyber-security audience to give lesson on 'weaponisation' of toys

"“Most internet-connected things have a Bluetooth functionality ... I basically showed how I could connect to it, and send commands to it, by recording audio and playing the light,” [Reuben Paul] told AFP later.

“IOT home appliances, things that can be used in our everyday lives, our cars, lights refrigerators, everything like this that is connected can be used and weaponised to spy on us or harm us.”

They could be used to steal private information such as passwords, as remote surveillance to spy on kids, or employ GPS to find out where a person is, he said. More chillingly, a toy could say “meet me at this location and I will pick you up”, Reuben said."

Gene pattern research prompts privacy concerns; Stanford Daily, May 19, 2017

Elise Most, Stanford Daily; 

Gene pattern research prompts privacy concerns

"Professor of Biology and senior author of the paper Noah Rosenberg was able to match over 90 percent of datasets comprised of 13 genetic markers to sets of 642,563 markers in which the sets of 13 were not included.

CODIS, or the what the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) describes as its “program of support for criminal justice DNA databases,” formerly depended on these 13 markers before recently converting to a 20-marker system. The researchers reached 99 percent accuracy when they used datasets of 30 genetic markers.

Although these findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may assist wildlife researchers or archaeologists dealing with incomplete sets of DNA, Rosenberg told Stanford News that the results also have consequences for laws and practices surrounding genetic privacy."

Can You Copyright Your Dumb Joke? And How Can You Prove It's Yours?; NPR, May 17. 2017

Laurel Wamsley, NPR; 

Can You Copyright Your Dumb Joke? And How Can You Prove It's Yours?

"In 2008, law professors Dotan Oliar and Christopher Sprigman published a paper that explored the norms comics had established to protect their intellectual property: their jokes...

Can you really copyright a dumb joke?

"The question really focuses on originality, and there is no freestanding barrier to copyright extending to a joke on any topic ... so long as that joke meets the fairly minimal requirements for originality," says Perzanowski. "That means it has to demonstrate some low level of creativity and importantly that it not be copied from some other source."

"Copyright will give you protection for this specific arrangement of words," he says, but not for a whole subject matter.

When it comes to topical comedy, he says, the question is whether one can separate an idea (which can't be copyrighted) from its expression (which can).

Judge Sammartino agrees. "[T]here is little doubt that the jokes at issue merit copyright protection," she writes, citing the relevant case law, "noting originality requires only independent creation of a work that 'possess[es] some creative spark, "no matter how crude, humble or obvious" it might be.'"

However, she adds, the jokes here "are similarly constrained by their subject matter and the conventions of the two-line, setup-and-delivery paradigm."

The result is that for O'Brien's jokes to infringe on Kaseberg's copyright, they must be "virtually identical," one step below verbatim."

Americans Want More Say in the Privacy of Personal Data; Consumer Reports, May 18, 2017

Bree Fowler, Consumer Reports; Americans Want More Say in the Privacy of Personal Data

[Kip Currier: Take a look at Consumer Reports' latest survey data on U.S. consumers' concerns about privacy and their personal data: significant majorities want more control over what data is collected and more transparency (not less!) regarding what Internet service providers can and can't do with that personal data.

Then consider this May 18, 2017 disconnect: "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), led by chairman Ajit Pai, voted two to one to start the formal process of dismantling “net neutrality” rules put in place in 2015."]

"The latest CR Consumer Voices survey reveals that people have been increasingly worried about the issue in 2017. Seventy percent of Americans lack confidence that their personal data is private and safe from distribution without their knowledge, according to the nationally representative survey of 1,007 adults conducted in April.

That number climbed from 65 percent since we first asked about the topic in January.

Respondents to the April survey also said they want more control over what data is collected. Ninety-two percent said that internet service providers, such as Comcast and Verizon, should be required to secure permission from users before selling or sharing their data. [Bold and larger font added for emphasis]

The same proportion thinks consumers should have the right to request a complete list of the data an internet service provider or website has collected about them.

Finally, respondents spoke out about how such data may be used to charge online shoppers different prices for the same goods and services—without consumers knowing about it. This kind of dynamic pricing can be based on factors from age to browsing history to home address. Sixty-five percent of respondents oppose the practice.

Though consumers say they want stronger privacy protections, federal actions are moving the rules in the opposite direction."

"Modern Life"; Bizarro, May 19, 2017

Dan Piraro, Bizarro; "Modern Life"

Deputy attorney general appoints special counsel to oversee probe of Russian interference in election; Washington Post, May 17, 2017

Devlin Barrett, Sari Horwitz and Matt Zapotosky, Washington Post; Deputy attorney general appoints special counsel to oversee probe of Russian interference in election

"The Justice Department has decided to appoint a special counsel to investigate possible coordination between Trump associates and Russian officials seeking to meddle in last year’s election, according to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

Robert Mueller, a former prosecutor who served as the FBI director from 2001 to 2013, has agreed to serve in the role, Rosenstein said."