WPF submitted comments to the National Institute of Standards and Technology regarding its Draft Guidelines for Evaluating Differential Privacy Guarantees . The comments approach the NIST Draft Guidance from a policy perspective, and urged changes to some parts of the definitional language in the Draft Guidance. Key areas of the ...
WPF is presenting a keynote speech to the Consumer Action National Conference. The speech, entitled Modern Privacy and the Digital Ecosystem , will cover a wide range of topics, including top-line topics in privacy, key areas to work on going forward, and privacy myths and realities. The Consumer Action event ...
This week a judge ordered that the approximately 10 million records of California students held by the California Department of Education will not be turned entirely over to a group of community nonprofits in the Morgan Hill case. Instead, the judge ordered that several smaller databases may be turned over ...
WPF's Executive Director Pam Dixon has been in Beijing, China this week giving a seminar and keynote on predictive analytics and scoring to the CCRC and other institutions, as well as journalists. In her keynote, Dixon discussed WPF's Scoring of America report and ongoing research in the area. "Scoring in ...
WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will testify before the Senate Judiciary this Tuesday, Nov. 3. The hearing is on data broker security, with Chairman Flake presiding. Hearing details: Data Brokers – Is Consumers’ Information Secure? Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law Date: Tuesday, November 3, 2015 Time: 2:30 pm ...
The World Privacy Forum submitted comments today to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in response to its publication, Draft Report on De-Identification of Personally Identifiable Information (NISTIR 8053). The WPF welcomes the draft NIST report, as the area of de-identification and re-identification of personal data swirls with controversy ...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 5, 2015 Berlin, Germany -- WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon is presenting today at Euroforum to a distinguished audience of European Data Protection Commissioners and other privacy experts. She will be discussing the Scoring of America report and key solutions for the issues predictive analytics and ...
Executive Director Pam Dixon will be speaking this Friday at the National Association of Healthcare Journalists about electronic records, and the risk of medical identity theft and other risks that arise from data breaches of medical records. Dixon's talk will cover new research, as well as discuss potential solutions to ...
This coming Thursday, Pam Dixon will be presenting new research on collections scoring, privacy, and impacts on low and middle income consumers. The Dixon/Gellman report, The Scoring of America , sparked a national conversation about analytics and fairness in the realm of consumer scores. This talk focuses on one particular ...
The Healthy Cities Project in China is one where mobile devices, mobile health mini-hubs, and sensors are the key way that patients, doctors, government, and enterprises can input, monitor, and access vital health statistics and other information in the cloud. Twenty million people already use this system. Healthy Cities is important for study, because it is a fully established infrastructure in those cities in China where it has been deployed. In the US, the Healthy Cities project is being studied by academics to see how it could be replicated in the US marketplace.
Pam Dixon will be speaking at the IAPP-FTC Practical Privacy Conference in Washington DC this week. The conference is from Dec. 2-3. Her panel talk will focus on privacy issues relating to identifiable large datasets and vulnerable populations. She will also be discussing the role of data brokers in compiling ...
WPF urges FTC to focus on consumers' ability to control their digital exhaust and statistical parity for big data era At the FTC workshop on Big Data September 15, Big Data: Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion?, panelists including the World Privacy Forum discussed legal and ethical frameworks that are applicable ...
Big Data and its potential for inclusion and exclusion was on center stage this past September as the FTC held a day-long workshop with experts from industry, technology, privacy, civil liberties, and academia. World Privacy Forum's Executive Director Pam Dixon, a panelist at the event, spoke about Big Data and privacy, emphasizing several key points, including the need for statistical parity, fairness, and the need for keeping existing consumer protection regulation.
The Federal Trade Commission has announced its panelist roster and final agenda for its upcoming workshop, “ Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion? . ” The workshop is going to be an important and thoughtful discussion about big data and privacy issues, and will be taking place on ...
The World Privacy Forum filed comments with the U.S. Department of Commerce in response to its Request for Comments about big data, privacy, and the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. The White House Big Data report recognized that Big Data “raises considerable questions about how our framework for privacy protection applies in a big data ecosystem” and has the potential to “eclipse longstanding civil rights protections in how personal information is used in housing, credit, employment, health, education, and the marketplace.” This is among our concerns as well, and our comments focused on understanding big data's benefits while drawing attention to where there are significant privacy risks that need to be addressed.
Two key recent reports published by the World Privacy Forum, The Scoring of America and Data Brokers and the Federal Government, were cited in the White House's new report on Big Data. WPF is supportive of the report. "We are pleased that the White House report has correctly recognized critically important issues that impact individuals' privacy in the area of big data. We commend the report for clearly recognizing that information originally intended for marketing purposes can also be used to impact individuals' marketplace opportunities in substantive ways that impact peoples' daily lives, and that creating meaningful protections is important," said WPF executive director Pam Dixon.
The World Privacy Forum's recent public comments to the White House regarding Big Data focus on using a foundation of Fair Information Principles to address issues connected to bias, error, and privacy regarding big data as applied to vulnerable populations. The comments also discuss large medical research data sets, and ...
WPF Blog Post Forbes has published a thoughtful article about Big Data, reeling the hype attached to the catchy term back to reality. The article, written by Forbes contributors Woodrow Hartzog and Evan Selinger, outlines why the term Big Data isn't used by people who actually work in Big Data. ...
Privacy in India and Developing Economies -- World Privacy Forum Executive Director Pam Dixon will present WPF's research and India privacy videos at the FTC - IAPP Global Privacy Conference workshop Wednesday, March 7. The session, Global Perspectives on Consumer Privacy, is the first session of its kind at IAPP or the FTC focused on privacy in developing economies. WPF has researched privacy extensively in India, and has documented a number of key privacy issues in a video series. So far, 5 videos in the series have been released. All of the videos were shot on location in India and feature Pam Dixon, with videographer Blake Hamilton. These videos offer a rare and early glimpse into privacy interactions and issues in India. WPF will be releasing one more video on biometric ID cards in India.
Arizona School of Law -- Pam Dixon participated as a discussant and contributor to the Arizona School of Law's private workshop on the topic of the future of privacy. Key areas of discussion included the European Union's Right to be Forgotten proposal, consent and health privacy, and Do Not Track.
Webinar -- This Thursday, Pam Dixon will be presenting the consumer privacy perspective for a DMA Webinar on data innovation. While marketers are interested in innovating to use consumer data, consumers have real privacy concerns that need to be addressed. Dixon will present some of the key implications.
Facial recognition -- Pam Dixon spoke at a CES panel on privacy issues in facial recognition technologies as part of the Leaders in Technology program at CES. The panel was moderated by Tony Romm of Politico and included FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen and Harley Geiger, legislative counsel for Representative Zoe Lofgren. Dixon spoke on the need for increased work on consumer options in a "sensor rich environment where there is no option to opt out by walking out." Referenced in the panel was WPF's report on digital signage and facial recognition, The One-Way Mirror Society.
Online privacy -- The FTC sent a letter to Google today expressing concern about the company's privacy practices, but at the same time, the FTC informed Google that it was dropping its investigation of the Street View WiFi case. The FTC wrote: "FTC staff has concerns about the internal policies and procedures that gave rise to this data collection. ... the company did not discover that it had been collecting payload data until it responded to a request for information from a data protection authority." The FTC told Google it should develop and implement procedures to properly collect, dispose of, and maintain information.
Resource | case file -- Amazon.com filed a lawsuit in April to fight the North Carolina Department of Revenue's request for detailed information on Amazon.com customers. The North Carolina tax department requested Amazon.com to hand over "all information for all sales to customers with a North Carolina shipping address" between 2003 to 2010. In the decision, Seattle, Washington U.S. District Court Judge Marsha J. Pechman wrote, "Citizens are entitled to receive information and ideas through books, films, and other expressive materials anonymously." She also stated that "The fear of government tracking and censoring one\'s reading, listening, and viewing choices chills the exercise of First Amendment rights." This is an important decision for privacy rights, and online privacy in particular.
Online privacy -- A press release issued by Connecticut's AG Richard Blumenthal revelaed that 38 states have joined a mulitstate investigation of Google's Street View wi fi sniffing program. Blumenthal stated in the release: “We are asking Google to identify specific individuals responsible for the snooping code and how Google was unaware that this code allowed the Street View cars to collect data broadcast over WiFi networks. Information we are awaiting includes how the spy software was included in Google’s Street View network and specific locations where unauthorized data collection occurred. We will take all appropriate steps -- including potential legal action if warranted -- to obtain complete, comprehensive answers.”
