WPF Newsletter: August 8, 2014

Recent privacy stories:

CalINDEX: A California state-wide health information exchange called CalINDEX is set to launch in November. Two major insurance companies are funding this effort, which is unusual in the HIE world because insurance claims data will be housed in the database, among eventually additional data, for example, from hospitals.

Big Data: The US Department of Commerce requested comments on privacy implications of Big Data, and many organizations and individuals responded, including WPF.

WPF’s Big Data comments
US Department of Commerce Big Data comment request

Big data breach/hack (Cybervore Breach): A significant and apparently global hack originating from Russia grabbed over 1 billion passwords and affected more than 420,000 web sites large and small worldwide. US firm Hold Security has uncovered what many are describing as the largest data breach that has been discovered to date. The Washington Post, NYT, and many other papers are coming out with articles about the impact. Here’s a link to the original source, meanwhile, if you haven’t updated your passwords to web sites you visit recently, it is important to do so as soon as practicable.

HoldSecurity discussion of the Cybervor Breach

WPF happenings:

Workshops: WPF presented two workshops to the National Network to End Domestic Violence in San Jose, California (late July). The workshops taught NNEDV experts how to work with data broker privacy and health care privacy in the NNEDV context. NNEDV is one of our favorite groups to work with, it is an honor and we always learn so much from them.

San Diego: This week, Executive Director Pam Dixon went to ClearChannel’s San Diego studio and talked to Mark Zegan in studio for an upcoming broadcast. It is so rare to do radio interviews in-studio anymore, it was a treat to meet a long-time San Diego “voice!”

Upcoming: WPF has been invited to speak on behalf of consumers at the FTC Big Data Workshop September 15, 2014.

Update: See our Summer News update for recent WPF news stories.

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Posted August 8, 2014 in News, Press, and Media

New Report: Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new WPF report, “Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools.” This report sets out a definition of AI governance tools, documents why and how these tools are critically important for trustworthy AI, and where these tools are around the world. The report also documents problems in some AI governance tools themselves, and suggests pathways to improve AI governance tools and create an evaluative environment to measure their effectiveness. AI systems should not be deployed without simultaneously evaluating the potential adverse impacts of such systems and mitigating their risks, and most of the world agrees about the need to take precautions against the threats posed. The specific tools and techniques that exist to evaluate and measure AI systems for their inclusiveness, fairness, explainability, privacy, safety and other trustworthiness issues — called in the report collectively AI governance tools – can improve such issues. While some AI governance tools provide reassurance to the public and to regulators, the tools too often lack meaningful oversight and quality assessments. Incomplete or ineffective AI governance tools can create a false sense of confidence, cause unintended problems, and generally undermine the promise of AI systems. The report contains rich background details, use cases, potential solutions to the problems discussed in the report, and a global index of AI Governance Tools.
National IDs Around the World — Interactive map

About this Data Visualization: This interactive map displays the presence...
Report: From the Filing Cabinet to the Cloud: Updating the Privacy Act of 1974

This comprehensive report and proposed bill text is focused on the Privacy Act of 1974, an important and early Federal privacy law that applies to the government sector and some contractors. The Privacy Act was written for the 1970s information era -- an era that was characterized by the use of mainframe computers and filing cabinets. Today's digital information era looks much different than the '70s: smart phones are smarter than the old mainframes, and documents are now routinely digitized and stored and perhaps even analyzed in the cloud, among many other changes. The report focuses on why the Privacy Act needs an update that will bring it into this century, and how that could look and work. This work was written by Robert Gellman, and informed by a two-year multi-stakeholder process.