About 810 residents who had applied for the Massachusetts Commonwealth Solar rebate program had their personal information posted on a government Web site for nearly an hour, according to a notice from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. The quasi-public agency that administers the program said a file containing the names, addresses and Social Security numbers of…
Author: Dissent
Privacy Groups Challenge Calif. Bill
A California bill seeking to create a new regulatory framework for consumer genomics firms that interpret genomic data but do not analyze samples at an in-house laboratory has raised red flags within the personalized medicine community and among privacy advocates. California state Senator Alex Padilla (D-San Fernando Valley) earlier this year introduced SB 482, a…
New Breach Laws in Alaska and SC
On July 1, 2009, new laws will take effect in Alaska and South Carolina that will require entities that have experienced data security breaches involving personal information to notify affected individuals of the breaches. With these additions, a total of 44 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, will…
Stolen CS Stars Hard Drive Still Missing
When CS Stars had the misfortune to have two separate data breaches on the same date but three years apart, it may have created some confusion for the good folks over at the Wisconsin Office of Privacy Protection. Their web site summarized the newest incident by reporting that 722,000 individuals had data stolen in the…
Bits ‘n Pieces
In the justice system: Abdurrahman Cetin was sentenced in federal court in Florida for bank fraud and aggravated identity theft. Evidence presented at trial showed that Cetin collected the personal and financial information of customers at a Toyota dealer in Long Island, NY, while working there as a salesman in 1999 and then used the…
CDT paper on de-identification of personal health data
The Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology today released a major paper advocating the need for stronger standards for “de-identified” personal health information when used for medical research, to promote public health, or other specialized purposes. Stronger standards are needed to ensure that “de-identified†data cannot be re-identified in order to…