Events and Conferences

FTC Privacy Roundtable — The World Privacy Forum filed comments last week for the FTC Privacy Roundtables, the first of which will be held December 7, 2009. The WPF comments urged the FTC to consider the Fair Credit Reporting Act as a key privacy model to apply to additional areas, to use the full version of Fair Information Practices, and discussed how a rights-based framework was the key to advancing consumers’ interests. The comments discussed list brokers at length, and explained how even the most informationally cautious consumer will land on numerous marketing lists and databases. The WPF comments noted that not all marketing lists are used to target ads to consumers; some lists and databases are used to deny consumers goods and services. The comments contain a detailed section on privacy frameworks, a section on direct marketing, and an appendix with supporting information.

This is an annotated timeline documenting the activities of the National Health Information Network. Related documents, when available, are linked. Additional source documents follow the timeline.

IPSC2008 Conference — The World Privacy Forum is co-hosting the first International Privacy and Security Conference 2008 (IPSC2008), to be held in Tokyo, Japan on November 11-12, 2008. Also co-hosting the conference are the Japan-based Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE), Social Implications of Technology and Information Ethics, and the Japan Society of Security Management. This conference brings together Japan’s leading privacy and security experts and scholars as well as experts from the US and the EU.

This conference is convened for the purpose of gaining a deepened mutual understanding of privacy and security approaches cross-culturally, with the conference providing an international forum for discussing and understanding the different concepts of privacy and security in the US, Asia, and the EU. Through sharing of current practices and ideas, the participants will explore possible bridges between what these concepts mean in different countries both now and looking to the future as well.

Genetic privacy — The World Privacy Forum participated in a Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG) conference on genetic databases at New York University. The groundbreaking conference focused on key issues of race and genetic databases, fairness, accuracy, and privacy. The World Privacy Forum discussed a paper by Dr. Harry G. Levine, Drug Arrests and DNA, noting that innocent victims of medical identity theft may be arrested for the “drug seeking behavior” of the criminals impersonating them.