Data Brokers

Jun 11 2019

WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon to testify before US Senate on privacy, predictive analytics, and data brokers

Pam Dixon, WPF Executive Director, is testifying before the US Senate Banking Committee today on the topic of privacy, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, data brokers, and predictive analytics. “I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss our research and what we have documented about the privacy of Americans in a predictive analytics era,”

Dec 29 2018

WPF advises FTC regarding privacy frameworks and knowledge governance; files key comments

The World Privacy Forum has submitted a set of key comments to the US Federal Trade Commission regarding privacy frameworks and governance. The comments introduce the idea of knowledge governance and propose frameworks that will work to solve the serious privacy challenges we face in complex data ecosystems.

Dec 19 2018

WPF Statement on NYT revelations of Facebook data practices

WPF is issuing this statement in response to the New York Times article dated 18 December, 2018 regarding Facebook’s data practices. The article provides meaningful new information about the data management and privacy practices of Facebook.

Oct 10 2018

World Privacy Forum statement on federal privacy regulation & data brokers

The current debate over federal privacy regulation must be inclusive of secondary and tertiary uses of consumer data. WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon says: “Through our longstanding work regarding data brokers and related harms to consumers, it is abundantly clear that if Congress enacts privacy legislation that fails to effectively regulate data brokers and stop the consumer harms they directly cause, any legislation enacted will be a failure.”

May 24 2018

Privacy News: Historic Data Broker Regulation in the US Welcomed by World Privacy Forum

PDF Version of Release here 24 May 2018 For Immediate Release Historic Data Broker Regulation in the United States Welcomed by World Privacy Forum Vermont: First state to adopt modern rules for unregulated data brokers WPF call for data broker protections to be elevated to national level and provided for consumers in all states in

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.
COVID-19 and HIPAA: HHS’s Troubled Approach to Waiving Privacy and Security Rules for the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic strained the U.S. health ecosystem in numerous ways, including putting pressure on the HIPAA privacy and security rules. The Department of Health and Human Services adjusted the privacy and security rules for the pandemic through the use of statutory and administrative HIPAA waivers. While some of the adjustments are appropriate for the emergency circumstances, there are also some meaningful and potentially unwelcome privacy and security consequences. At an appropriate time, the use of HIPAA waivers as a response to health care emergencies needs a thorough review. This report sets out the facts, identifies the issues, and proposes a roadmap for change.