The State Legislature approved State Senator Joe Simitian´s (D-Palo Alto) SB 20, a bill to strengthen and update California´s landmark privacy protection law. The bill now goes to the Governor, who has until October 11th to sign or veto the legislation. SB 20 builds on previous legislation authored by Simitian, AB 700 (2002), which required…
Author: Dissent
Employees: Sensitive info stolen during break-in; clients not being told
Mike Bowersock of NBC4i reports that although a burglary at NCO Financial Systems, a collection agency in Dublin Ohio, was reported to the police, what was not reported was that client data, including Social Security numbers, was stolen. The allegation comes from two employees who reportedly told the news reporter that they do not want…
Judge considers giving final approval to TD Ameritrade settlement
Josh Funk of Associated Press reports: The settlement over contact information stolen from online brokerage TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. is nearing approval, but the more than 6 million current and former customers affected will have to wait a little while longer. A hearing on the settlement was held Thursday, but U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker…
Unlearned Lessons of ChoicePoint, Four Years Later
Bill Brenner writes: It’s been four years since data broker ChoicePoint acknowledged the data security breach that put it in the middle of a media firestorm and pushed data protection to the top of the infosecurity community’s priority list. Since then, the business world has made plenty of progress hardening its data defenses — thanks…
Chase notifies customers of lost storage tape
A reader emailed me yesterday asking about an incident involving Chase. When I looked into it, I found that there was an incident first reported early last month involving a backup tape stored at an unnamed secure off-site facility that could not be located. On digging some more, I found that the incident had local…
The Promise of Personal Health Records
Resolution of Canada’s Privacy Commissioners and Privacy Enforcement Officials CONTEXT Personal health records (PHRs) have started to attract attention in Canada with recently announced services from the public and private sectors that will offer online health records for consumers. This has major implications for the development of the pan-Canadian electronic health infostructure. In this context,…