Data Ecosystems

Aug 28 2023

WPF participates in White House Roundtable on Data Brokers

The World Privacy Forum was honored to participate in a White House Roundtable on the topic of Data Brokers, a topic WPF has spent decades researching and working on. In its readout of the roundtable, the White House noted that “Participants underscored how the data broker economy enables discriminatory practices in credit underwriting, insurance, housing,

Aug 07 2023

WPF advises FTC regarding health data breach notification rule

The World Privacy Forum filed comments regarding the US Federal Trade Commission’s 2023 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding Health Breach Notification. This marks the second set of comments WPF has filed, our first being in 2009 regarding the first iteration of the Health Breach Rule. The comments are technical, and focus on the fundamental challenges

Apr 27 2023

WPF Executive Director to serve as Senior Rapporteur for ID4Africa workshops regarding policy and regulatory challenges for digital identity and privacy and data protection in ID systems

The World Privacy Forum is pleased to announce Executive Director Pam Dixon has been invited to serve as the Senior Special Rapporteur for two workshops at the 2023 ID4Africa Annual General Meeting which will take place in Nairobi, Kenya 23-25 May. ID4Africa is regarded as the single most important gathering of identity experts and authorities in the world. The focus of Dixon’s rapporteur work will include policy and regulatory challenges for digital identity: the African perspective (Workshop 2), and privacy and data protection in identity systems (Workshop 4)…

Dec 12 2022

WPF and ADC Launch joint report on the Twin Transition at the OECD Ministerial

13 December, 2022 Gran Canarias, Spain The World Privacy Forum and the Argentina-based Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) today launched the first report in a project on the Twin Transition, green and digital. WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will present the report, which is global in scope, to at the OECD Ministerial meeting today

Nov 18 2022

India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT has opened a consultation on its freshly proposed comprehensive privacy legislation, DPDP 2022

After many study commissions and multiple serious attempts at a comprehensive data privacy bill, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has proposed a new draft privacy bill, and has opened a public consultation regarding the draft until 17 December 2022. The Ministry states that the proposed bill, the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022

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.