U.S. Privacy And World Privacy News
UnitedHealth CEO Admits 'No One Would Design a System Like the One We Have'
https://www.commondreams.org/news/unitedhealth-ceo-healthcare-system
TX Attorney General Sues New York Doctor for Illegally Providing Abortion Drugs Across State Lines
HORRIFYING: Location Data Firm Offers to Help Cops Track Targets via Doctor Visits
"A location data company is asking police for the address of specific people’s doctors in case that can be useful in finding their mobile phone in a massive set of peoples’ location data, according to a document provided to U.S. law enforcement. Fog Data Science is a location tracking company that takes data harvested from smartphones and makes it accessible to cops."
https://www.404media.co/location-data-firm-offers-to-help-cops-track-targets-via-doctor-visits/
Public/private partnerships for financial surveillance
"Email from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the US Department of the Treasury to some of its banking industry partners forwarding list prepared by Mitsubishi United Financial Group (MUFG) of vendors at DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia) airports, train stations, and bus stops, to target reporting of purchases at these locations as suspicious."
https://papersplease.org/wp/2024/12/09/public-private-partnerships-for-financial-surveillance/
“People Behavior Metrics” – How Employers Track All that You Do At Work
Tracking Indoor Location, Movement and Desk Occupancy in the Workplace
https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/indoortracking
Employees As Risks: A case study on intrusive surveillance and behavioral profiling
https://crackedlabs.org/dl/CrackedLabs_Christl_SecurityRiskProfiling.pdf
State Department to Shut Down Controversial Censorship Hub but Critics Call It a Rebrand
This Bill Could Put A Stop To Censorship By Lawsuit
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/12/bill-could-put-stop-censorship-lawsuit
State Dept’s. $100M Censorship Network to Close in 2 Weeks
https://headlineusa.com/state-depts-100-million-censorship-network-to-close-in-2-weeks/
This Is How Trump’s Department of Justice Spied on Journalists
https://theintercept.com/2024/12/11/trump-justice-department-spied-journalists-congress/
Trump’s calls to investigate pollster put First Amendment at risk
https://www.thefire.org/news/trumps-calls-investigate-pollster-put-first-amendment-risk
Trump Controls a Publicly Traded Company. Now He Will Pick Its Regulator
Gene by Gene Sued For Sending Genetic Data Sent to Meta, Google
Refugees International urges the NBA to cut ties with UAE
Federal Cuts Threaten Services for Child Abuse Survivors
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/12/child-advocacy-centers-voca/
Privacy Alert: The Brave New World of A.I.-Powered Self-Harm Alerts For Students
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/health/suicide-monitoring-software-schools.html
FIRE statement on X’s support of misguided ‘Kids Online Safety Act’
https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-statement-xs-support-misguided-kids-online-safety-act
Mozilla removes ‘Do Not Track’ from Firefox because it was useless
Researchers uncover Chinese spyware used to target Android devices
Bitcoin ATM Data Breach Exposed Customers Social Security Numbers and Government IDs
https://www.bytefederal.com/files/Consumer%20Breach%20Notification%20Letter.pdf
What Is Happening in Privacy Law?
Yardi Ruling Boosts DOJ's Legal Theory in AI Apartment Rental Price-Fixing Cases
Dr. Oz Had Up to Tens of Millions Invested in Companies Involved With CMS
https://www.commondreams.org/news/dr-oz
Watchdog urges Louisiana to investigate crisis pregnancy center over data breach
Health Privacy Developments to Watch in 2025
https://www.insideprivacy.com/health-privacy/health-privacy-developments-to-watch-in-2025/
Senators want to block data brokers from selling health and location data
https://19thnews.org/2024/12/democrats-data-privacy-people-seeking-abortions/
Heart surgery device maker's security bypassed, data encrypted and stolen
HealthAlliance $1.4M for data breach but only has to pay $550K
The New York Attorney General said the state actually fined HealthAlliance $1.4 million for the incident but suspended $850,000 of the penalty because of the Hudson Valley healthcare provider's "financial condition"
FTC fined GoodRX $25M over HIPPA violations
https://www.hipaajournal.com/goodrx-25-million-settlement-tracking-technology-lawsuit/
Children’s Hospital Colorado Health System Fined $550K for HIPPA violations
Atrium Health notifies 586K people of data breach
Clearinghouse fined $250K for data breach
Anna Jaques Hospital data breach affected 316K people
State & Local Privacy News
NH- Concord City Council approves another round of retention bonuses for police, nearly $1M in last year
"Despite concerns about long-term solutions and requests for a report on spending and staffing, Concord City Council approved $405,000 in retention bonuses for officers. Adding in last year’s allocation, the department has received nearly $1 million on top of its $15.9 million budget, for this purpose."
https://www.concordmonitor.com/Police-retention-bonuses-city-council-58394810
MA- Boston City Council: Debate on anti-terrorism grants erupts, again
https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/12/11/debate-on-anti-terrorism-grants-erupts-again/
MA- Some Boston city councilors want to study how to better keep feds from getting hands on data collected by police
https://www.universalhub.com/2024/some-boston-city-councilors-want-study-how-keep
MA- Lawmakers push to modernize decades-old wiretap law for today’s crimes
MA- Biden tapped a former Worcester public defender as a federal judge
NY- NYC DOT Wants You to Stop Taking Traffic Cam Selfies, But Here's How to Do It Anyway
GA- DeKalb County launches self-service kiosk for driver's license services
LA- Prosecutors charge a pair of law firms for staging automobile accidents
TX- Proposed law would ban drugstores from selling sex toys
https://www.chron.com/culture/article/sex-toy-sales-texas-illegal-19971679.php
TX- Bill Would End Civil Asset Forfeiture
TX- AG adds data broker specializing in driver behavior to list of alleged privacy law violators
https://therecord.media/arity-data-broker-texas-data-privacy-violation-notice
TX- AG Investigates Instagram, Reddit, Others Over Children's Privacy
MO- Bill Would Create Process to Circumvent Qualified Immunity
MO- Sweet Springs police to purchase 3 license plate readers
https://www.kmmo.com/2024/12/12/sweet-springs-board-approves-purchase-of-license-plate-readers/
MT- Missoula police want to use Axon AI to write police reports
CA- San Fransisco police use Axon AI to transcribe bodycam videos. The ACLU has concerns
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/police-body-camera-ai-19934795.php
World Privacy News
EU police access to personal data poses a "substantial privacy threat"
https://tuta.com/blog/open-letter-eu-privacy
Brussels Privacy Symposium Report 2024
https://fpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/FPF-Brussels-Privacy-Symposium-2024.pdf
Coalition Urges EU Council to Reconsider Proposals That Would Undermine Encryption
SIA: The Future of NIST Technical Evaluations of Biometric Technologies
SIA: How Audio Analytics Are Transforming Security
Privacy International's briefing on travelers' surveillance
Doctors in Gaza Say They Have No Doubt Israel Is Targeting Them
https://truthout.org/articles/doctors-in-gaza-say-they-have-no-doubt-israel-is-targeting-them/
UNRWA Employees in Gaza Forced to Eat Animal Feed to Survive
UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
Israel approves plan to expand settlements on occupied Golan Heights
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-833538
China unveils all-terrain spherical facial recognition robocops to chase down, bludgeon & catch criminals using net-launching cannons
https://www.odditycentral.com/news/chinese-police-introduces-autonomous-spherical-patrol-robot.html
https://www.the-sun.com/tech/13058237/china-spherical-robocops-criminals/
Chinese robotics startup Robot Era unveils STAR1, the ‘fastest' humanoid in the world
Controversial EU ad campaign on X broke bloc’s own privacy rules
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/13/controversial-eu-ad-campaign-on-x-broke-blocs-own-privacy-rules/
Azerbaijan- Government arrested six journalists after COP29
https://rsf.org/en/post-cop29-crackdown-azerbaijan-rsf-calls-release-meydan-tv-journalists
Romania- The Cluj Avram Iancu International Airport to use SITA facial recognition to ID passengers
France- Data Privacy regulator warns police have not submitted compliance paperwork on facial recognition usage
UK- Nowhere to hide: the ‘sinister’ facial recognition police cameras coming to a high street near you
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/04/how-uk-met-police-are-using-facial-recognition/
UK- Police unlawfully storing images of innocent people for facial recognition
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/08/police-unlawfully-storing-images-of-innocent-people-for-facial-recognition
UK- Police van ramming boy 13, with water pistol off his bike ‘was reasonable force’
https://metro.co.uk/2024/12/13/boy-rammed-off-bike-police-water-pistol-reasonable-22180930/
UK- Society lauded a police officer who lied and cheated and ruined lives
UK- ICO lowers data breach fines for public organizations including municipal police and the Ministry of Justice
https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/reports/4032016/psa-post-implementation-review-report.pdf
UK- Bank of England’s Fake “Privacy” Push Sparks Fears of Surveillance Currency
https://reclaimthenet.org/bank-of-englands-fake-privacy-push-sparks-fears-of-surveillance-currency
Cyprus- Government launches national digital ID program
Kenya- Police fire tear gas at women protesting gender killings
Ghana- Kotoka International Airport to use facial recognition E-Gates to ID passengers
Afghanistan- UN experts condemn Taliban ban on medical training for women
Iran- Amnesty International condemns mandatory hijab law as escalation in war on women’s rights
AU- Virus Lab Loses Track of Hundreds of Deadly Germs in ‘Major’ Biosecurity Breach
AU- The National Australia Bank to replace customer passwords with facial recognition and/or fingerprint scanners
AU- Personal details of financially distressed people shared in ‘leads list’ of property development course
AU- The Office of the AIC publishes facial recognition guidance for retail stores and organizations
Argentina- Human Rights Watch urges government urged to avoid Supreme Court appointments by presidential decree
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/09/argentina-dont-name-supreme-court-justices-decree
El Salvador- New Laws Threaten Free Expression, Privacy
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/12/el-salvador-new-laws-threaten-free-expression-privacy