Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On May 24, 2012, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley announced that South Shore Hospital agreed to a consent judgment and $750,000 payment to settle a lawsuit stemming from a data breach that occurred in February 2010. At that time, South Shore Hospital shipped several boxes of unencrypted back-up tapes to a service provider in Texas to erase them. The tapes contained the personal and protected health information of approximately 800,000 individuals, including names, Social Security numbers, financial account numbers and medical diagnoses. Several of the boxes went missing and have yet to be recovered, though there is no evidence that the information on the missing tapes has been misused.

On June 7, 2012, at the annual Safeguarding Health Information: Building Assurance through HIPAA Security Conference hosted in Washington, D.C. by the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”), OCR Director Leon Rodriguez said that, given HIPAA’s 15-year history and the substantial technical assistance OCR and NIST have provided covered entities, tolerance for HIPAA non-compliance is “much, much lower” than it has been in the past.

On June 1, 2012, the Attorney General of Vermont announced a series of recent legislative moves to enhance the state’s consumer protection laws, including amendments to Vermont’s security breach notification law. The changes, which were signed into law by Governor Peter Shumlin in early May, include a revised definition of “security breach,” the addition of a 45-day timing requirement for notifying affected consumers, and a requirement to notify the state Attorney General within 14 days of discovering the breach (or when notifying consumers, if sooner).

On May 24, 2012, the German Federal Government submitted to the Parliament (Bundestag) a proposal to amend the Geodatenzugangsgesetz, a federal law concerning access to geographical data that has been in force since 2009.

The current law implements Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2007 establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (“INSPIRE”). In addition to establishing a national geographical data infrastructure, the law aims to provide a legal framework for (1) accessing geographical data, geographical data services and metadata of organizations that maintain such data, and (2) using such data and services, in particular with regard to measures that may affect the environment. The law applies to federal agencies and corporations under public law.

In recent months, two high-profile cases involving Hulu and Netflix have raised questions regarding the scope and application of the Video Privacy Protection Act (“VPPA”), a federal privacy law that has been the focus of increasing attention over the past few years. In the Hulu case, Hulu users claimed that the subscription-based video streaming service disclosed their viewing history to third parties. 

On May 26, 2012, the United States government submitted its request to participate in the APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules (“CBPRs”) system. The CBPRs system was endorsed by APEC leaders in November 2011. The protocol requires a participating economy to submit:

• A letter of intent to participate;
• Confirmation that a privacy enforcement agency in the economy is a participant in the Cross-Border Privacy Enforcement Arrangement;
• Notice that the economy intends to make use of at least one APEC-recognized accountability agency; and
• A description of the domestic laws and other legal mechanisms to give effect to the enforcement activities related to the activities of the accountability agent, which also must include an enforcement map.

On May 16, 2012, the PCI Security Standards Council’s (“PCI SSC’s”) Mobile Working Group published its “At a Glance: Mobile Payment Acceptance Security” fact sheet (the “Guidance”), which outlines best practices for securely accepting payments via mobile devices. The Guidance offers merchants practical advice for partnering with a Point-to-Point Encryption (“P2PE”) solution provider and satisfying their PCI Data Security Standard compliance requirements in the context of mobile payment acceptance. The Guidance includes recommendations for maintaining data security throughout the payment lifecycle, including securing account data at the point of capture and using an approved hardware accessory in combination with a validated P2PE solution.

On May 25, 2012, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office posted updated guidance on how to comply with amendments to EU data protection law requiring businesses to obtain consent from website visitors to store information on their computers and retrieve that information in the form of cookies. Last year, the ICO gave organizations a grace period expiring on May 26, 2012, to comply with the new cookie rules.

On May 24, 2012, Hunton & Williams LLP and Jordan Lawrence Group are pleased to present a 45-minute webcast on “Preparing for a New U.S. Privacy Landscape: An Overview of the FTC and White House Frameworks.” Presenters Lisa J. Sotto, partner and head of the Global Privacy and Data Security practice at Hunton & Williams, Aaron P. Simpson, partner at Hunton & Williams, and Rebecca Perry, Executive Vice President of Professional Services of Jordan Lawrence Group, will highlight the key privacy and information security issues contained in these new frameworks and the impact they will ...

On May 4, 2012, Marty Abrams, President of the Centre for Information Policy Leadership at Hunton & Williams LLP (“the Centre”), interviewed British Columbia’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham during the Centre’s First Friday call. Commissioner Denham discussed the April 2012 release of “Getting Accountability Right with a Privacy Management Program,” new guidance issued by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Alberta and British Columbia. The guidance addresses the Commissioners’ expectations for accountable privacy programs as required by Canadian law. Commissioner Denham described the guidance as “a tool to help organizations comply with the law,” providing “a roadmap to sound data governance,” with clear, practical terms for organizations to achieve accountability.