Monthly Archives: March 2011

TripAdvisor Reports Data Breach

If you are like me, you may have received an email from TripAdvisor, alerting you that "an unauthorized third party had stolen part of TripAdvisor’s member email list."  The text of that email was as follows: 

To our travel community:
This past weekend we discovered that an unauthorized third party had stolen part of TripAdvisor’s member email list. We’ve confirmed the source of the vulnerability and shut it down.… More

Obama Administration Seeks “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights”

In March 16, 2011 testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, the Obama Administration formally asked Congress to pass a "consumer privacy bill of rights" enforced by the FTC:

Legislation to provide a stronger statutory framework to protect consumers’ online
privacy interests should contain three key elements. First, the Administration recommends that legislation set forth baseline consumer data privacy protections—that is, a “consumer privacy bill of rights.”… More

Online Advertising Company Chitikia Enters FTC Consent Agreement for Deceptive “Opt-Out” Policy

Targeted online advertising has been the focus of much discussion since the release of the FTC’s “Do Not Track” proposals late last year. User tracking for advertising purposes is also the focus of the FTC’s latest privacy enforcement action, which has resulted in a consent agreement with an online advertising company, Massachusetts-based Chitika, Inc., which creates ads for such major publishers as the Hearst Corporation and Salary.com.… More

Health Net Announces Second Major Breach in Two Years; Creates Potential for Largest Ever Penalty

On March 14, the California-based managed care organization, Health Net, Inc., announced that it cannot account for "several server drives" that contained protected health information.  According to California regulators, these servers appear to contain the data of 1.9 million people nationwide:

The company announced today that nine of its server drives containing personal information for 1.9 million current and past enrollees nationwide are missing, including records for more than 622,000 enrollees in Health Net products regulated by the DMHC,… More

What Is Inside Mass General’s $1 Million HIPAA Settlement?

As we noted earlier this month, Massachusetts General Hospital recently entered into a $1 million Resolution Agreement  and Corrective Action Plan with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights.  This settlement stemmed from an incident on March 9, 2009, when a MGH employee was commuting on the subway, "removed documents containing PHI from her bag and placed them on the seat beside her. The documents were not in an envelope and were bound with a rubber band.… More

Supreme Court Rules Corporations Do Not Have Privacy Rights under FOIA

In a March 1, 2011 decision that has received much publicity (despite stating a fairly obvious conclusion), the Supreme Court ruled that the term "personal privacy" does not apply to corporations, at least in the context of the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"). 

The decision, FCC v. AT&T Inc., reflects the Supreme Court application of a particular exemption to FOIA.  Exemption 7(C) covers law enforcement records the disclosure of which “could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”… More

Compliance Approaches in the Changing HIT Privacy and Security Landscape: How You Can Nurture a Culture of Health Information Security and Privacy

My slides from this presentation, "Compliance Approaches in the Changing HIT Privacy and Security Landscape:  How You Can Nurture a Culture of Health Information Security and Privacy" cover HIPAA and HITECH developments and compliance, with a focus on breaches and OCR settlements/penalties, including: