Gautham Nagesh of Nextgov reports on testimony to Congress concerning two bills in the current session: H.R.2221 (Data Accountability and Trust Act) and H.R. 1319 (Informed P2P User Act). Some of the concerns raised about H.R. 2221: According to David Sohn, senior policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, most states have already…
Category: Federal
FTC Will Grant Three-Month Delay of Enforcement of ‘Red Flags’ Rule Requiring Creditors and Financial Institutions to Adopt Identity Theft Prevention Programs
From the FTC’s press release: The Federal Trade Commission will delay enforcement of the new “Red Flags Rule” until August 1, 2009, to give creditors and financial institutions more time to develop and implement written identity theft prevention programs. For entities that have a low risk of identity theft, such as businesses that know their…
Rush introduces breach notification bill in House
Yesterday in Congress, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) introduced H.R. 2221, co-sponsored by Reps. Stearns (R-FL), Barton (R-TX), Schakowsky (D-IL), and Radanovich (R-CA). The text of the bill is not yet available online, but it was introduced as “A bill to protect consumers by requiring reasonable security policies and procedures to protect computerized data containing personal…
HHS offers health IT privacy guidelines
Brian Robinson reports in Government Health IT: The Health and Human Services Department has begun overhauling the privacy and security rules that govern personal health information, which is considered vital to attempts by Congress and the Obama administration to broaden the adoption of electronic health records. HHS published guidance on April 17 that outlines the…
FTC Publishes Proposed Breach Notification Rule for Electronic Health Information
From the FTC: The Federal Trade Commission today announced that it has approved a Federal Register notice seeking public comment on a proposed rule that would require entities to notify consumers when the security of their electronic health information is breached. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Recovery Act) includes provisions to…
Congress heard us! (commentary)
I’m first working my way through the provisions in the stimulus bill that relate to breaches and notifications. One of the recommendations that I and other privacy advocates had made was central notification and disclosure on a publicly available web site. They heard us. Here’s part of the new law: (3) NOTICE TO SECRETARY- Notice…