WPF supports proposed changes to drop SSNs from some appellate forms

The World Privacy Forum commented in support of a proposed change to the federal rules of practice and procedure. The change would eliminate the requirement to include the last four digits of a litigant’s Social Security Number on Appellate Form 4, which is used by petitioners seeking to proceed in forma pauperis. “When we can reduce reliance on Social Security Numbers for authentication, that is a positive step. We support the Judicial Conference’s proposal to modernize some of their appellate forms,” said Pam Dixon, Executive Director. SSNs generally do a poor job of identification and authentication in this kind of context. SSNs are widely available from governmental or commercial sources, and it is not difficult to find or even predict the SSN for any given individual.

You can see WPF’s comments in support here (PDF), and the entire proposal from the Judicial Conference is available here.

Related Resources:

Comments of the WPF (PDF).

Text of Proposed amendments from the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

Posted January 3, 2017 in Identity, Identity Theft, News, Press, and Media, Personal Identity Verification, Public Comments

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.