Privacy Law

Apr 02 2024

WPF Comments to OMB regarding AI and Privacy Impact Assessments

The World Privacy Forum has filed detailed comments to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in response to its Request for Information on Privacy Impact Assessments. Specifically, OMB requested information about how the U.S. Federal government should update or adjust its requirements for Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) in regards to changes to data ecosystems brought about by Artificial Intelligence (AI). WPF provided substantive recommendations regarding administrative provisions of the Privacy Act, scalable automated AI governance tools for privacy and trustworthy AI, ensuring nimble processes for privacy and AI assessments, and ensuring balanced, skillful socio-legal-technical decisionmaking.

Oct 27 2023

Another reminder that student privacy matters: Student doxing through FERPA loopholes

Today Inside Higher Ed wrote an excellent article about the relationship of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the recent doxing of Harvard students. In short, it was easy to dox the students based on information the college published — legally — about them. FERPA was supposed to be the US federal

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 22 2019

Expert Commentary: Kenya follows the path of European-style Data Protection

Guest Post by Dr. Isaac Rutenberg, Director and Senior Lecturer, Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law, Strathmore University, Nairobi, Kenya. On the 8th of November, the President of Kenya signed into law the Data Protection Act 2019. This action completed a process that spanned more than a decade, and allows Kenya to enter a new phase with respect to the evolving centricity and treatment of data in society. This article looks at the content of the Act, highlights important and interesting provisions, and concludes with predictions as to the implementation.

Apr 09 2019

WPF Discussion Draft: Consumer Privacy and Data Security Standards Act of 2019

The World Privacy Forum has published its discussion draft privacy bill that provides rules of the road for standards setting in the area of data privacy and security. The discussion draft sets forth a pathway to creating voluntary consensus standards to facilitate granular and contextual standard-setting focused on privacy and security issue areas. Voluntary consensus standards

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.