External Resources

WPF is signatory to the Madrid Declaration; global privacy standards for a global world

Madrid Declaration — A significant civil society document with more than 100 signatories worldwide has been published in conjunction with the 31st annual meeting of the International Conference of Privacy and Data Protection Commissioners. The document, known as the Madrid Declaration, affirms support for the complete canon of fair information practices as expressed by the OECD, affirms support of privacy as a fundamental human right, and warns that “the failure to safeguard privacy jeopardizes associated freedoms, including freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of access to information, non-discrimination, and ultimately the stability of constitutional democracies.”

Facebook, MySpace, Xing receive warning letters from EU consumer group

Social networks — In the wake of Europe’s Article 29 Working Party Opinion on Social Network Providers adopted in June, the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV) has sent out warning letters to five social networking providers in Germany, including Facebook and MySpace. The letters focus on the excessive rights the companies allow themselves in their respective Terms of Use agreements, and on shortcomings in the privacy policies. VZBV is comprised of 41 German consumer associations.

California Health Information Identification data base California CHILI database now online

Resource — A substantial new resource for individuals seeking to research California laws and regulations regarding health information has come online. The CHILI database is a project of the California Office of Health Information Integrity, and has interfaced with the California Privacy and Security Advisory Board, which the World Privacy Forum co-chairs. The CHILI database can be searched by HIPAA section, California Code section, California health information law keywords, or by statutory scheme.

GAO’s data breach list from its June 2007 report: FOIA result

Data breach | GAO data breach study — The World Privacy Forum made an information request to the GAO asking for a copy of the single, non-duplicative list of data breaches its June, 2007 data breach report (GAO -07-737) refers to and was based on. The list was not included in the GAO report. The GAO used a figure in its report of “more than 570 data breaches” from January 2005 to December 2006 based on this non-duplicative breach list. The GAO breach list is straightforward, it tallies data breaches chronologically from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2006 from three organizations that maintain data breach lists. If the breach appeared on at least one of the three lists, it was apparently included in the final tally. The GAO states that the list was based on a February 15, 2007 download of the lists.

Note: the WPF scan of the GAO list includes the first page twice. The front page of the scan is of the GAO list as it looks in the original document, and then the list was scanned for maximum readability into PDF format.