Esme Murphy reports: Congress began a series of hearings Monday before a Senate banking subcommittee into the massive data breach at Target and other retailers. Lawmakers grilled the Secret Service about when Target told them about the breach, and another hearing is slated for Tuesday. That’s when Target CFO John Mulligan will be in the…
Category: Legislation
FTC wants to be enforcer of data security
Jaikumar Vijayan Despite growing pushback from companies and powerful industry groups, the Federal Trade Commission continues to insist that it wants to be the nation’s enforcer of data security standards. The FTC, over the past years, has gone after companies that have suffered data breaches, citing the authority granted to it under a section of…
Mandatory Data Breach Notice Bill Stalls As Canadian Parliament Session Closed
Peter Menyasz reports: The Canadian government’s Sept. 13 decision to end the Parliament’s legislative session has at least temporarily blocked passage of proposed amendments (Bill C-12) to Canada’s framework federal privacy law that would have introduced a limited mandatory data breach notification requirement. A new parliamentary session is scheduled to start Oct. 16, and the…
District Court Holds That Intentionally Circumventing IP Address Block Is “Unauthorized Access” Under the CFAA
Orin Kerr writes: During the debate over the Aaron Swartz case, one of the legal issues was whether Swartz had committed an unauthorized access under the CFAA when he changed his IP address to circumvent IP address blocking imposed by system administrators trying to keep Swartz off the network. There was significantly more to the…
AT&T Hacker ‘weev’ Tests Limits of U.S. Crime Law on Website Use
Dune Lawrence and David Voreacos report: He is a red-headed hacker who hails from Arkansas, goes by the name “weev,” and seems to delight in being annoying. For years, he broke into computer systems, disrupted blog sites and riled people with personal attacks. Now his case has become a flashpoint in the debate over where…
FTC Fires Back In Lawsuit Against Wyndham
Brent Kendall reports: The Federal Trade Commission is offering a strong defense of its powers to police cybersecurity practices against a challenge by Wyndham Worldwide Corp. We wrote about Wyndham’s challenge earlier this month in a case involving attacks by hackers on the hotel chain’s computer systems between 2008 and 2010. The FTC sued Wyndham last year…