Digital Privacy

Jan 19 2023

Statement of Pam Dixon at the FTC Open Commission Meeting regarding health privacy statements and consumer confusion

Thank you Chair and Commissioners. The profusion of health apps, websites and digital tools that provide consumers with assistance and insights about their health is a positive development. However, it has come at the cost of increasing privacy risks. One of these risks is that consumers are confused about when and where federal health privacy protections apply to their health information.

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

Dec 10 2021

WPF executive director voted in as member of OECD civil society steering committee

After many years of participating as a civil society delegate at OECD, WPF’s executive director Pam Dixon has been voted onto the steering committee for OECD’s civil society arm, CSISAC. “It is an honor to be voted in by my fellow members of civil society to the CSISAC steering committee, and I am looking forward

Dec 03 2020

New Zealand’s New Privacy Law 2020 is Now in Force

New Zealand has meaningfully updated its privacy law, The Privacy Act 2020, which took force December 1. The new Privacy Act 2020 is a significant advancement of New Zealand’s privacy law, and encompasses numerous changes, including: Data Breach Reporting Obligations: There are new reporting obligations for data breaches. Companies are required to notify the Office

Nov 12 2020

Governing Data for Development: Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities

The World Privacy Forum is pleased to announce its work on a new project with the Center for Global Development (CGD). This project, Governing Data for Development, is led by CGD, with WPF’s Executive Director Pam Dixon as co-chair of the project working group with co-chair and Oxford professor Benno Ndulu, who is also the former Governor of the Central Bank of Tanzania. The project, which has been underway for a year, has produced its first report, which is a scoping report based on interviews with key stakeholders. This blog post, which provides background on the project and links to the first project report, is being jointly posted at WPF and CGD.

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.