Public Comments

Public Comments: January 2012 – Regarding Disclosure of Certain Credit Card Complaint Data

The World Privacy Forum appreciates the opportunity to submit comments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) proposed policy statement about the CFPB’s proactive disclosure of credit card complaint data. The proposed statement appeared in the Federal Register on December 8, 2011 at 76 Federal Register 76628, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR- 2011-12-08/pdf/2011-31153.pdf and at https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2011/12/08/2011-31153/disclosure-of-certain-credit- card-complaint-data.

WPF urges more consumer protection and redress in the Facebook FTC settlement

Facebook — In response to the FTC’s proposed settlement with Facebook over the company’s multiple privacy violations, the World Privacy Forum has asked the FTC to make key changes. “We applaud the FTC for its work on the Facebook case,” said executive director Pam Dixon. “We support many parts of the settlement. However, we urge the FTC to provide full redress for affected consumers by rolling back the privacy controls to the 2009 defaults, and we also urge the FTC to follow the 2004 Gateway Learning, Corp. precedent and require Facebook to disgorge profits they made from violating their privacy policy retroactively.” The comment period is open to the public until December 30.

Public Comments: December 2011 – WPF urges more consumer protection and redress in the Facebook FTC settlement

In response to the FTC’s proposed settlement with Facebook over the company’s multiple privacy violations, the World Privacy Forum has asked the FTC to make key changes. “We applaud the FTC for its work on the Facebook case,” said executive director Pam Dixon. “We support many parts of the settlement. However, we urge the FTC to provide full redress for affected consumers by rolling back the privacy controls to the 2009 defaults, and we also urge the FTC to follow the 2004 Gateway Learning, Corp. precedent and require Facebook to disgorge profits they made from violating their privacy policy retroactively.” The comment period is open to the public until December 30.

Public Comments: October 2011 – WPF urges HHS to do more to protect the privacy of medical research subjects

The World Privacy Forum filed extensive comments with the US Department of Health and Human Services about its proposed changes regarding the rules governing human subject medical research. In the comments, WPF noted that the HHS approach to privacy for research subjects was incomplete and did not use all Fair Information Practices. WPF strongly urged HHS to revise its proposal on a number of issues, including consent and the use of biospecimens in research. The World Privacy Forum is urging HHS to acknowledge that the realm of health data that is truly non-identifiable has shrunken remarkably, for example, biospecimens with DNA cannot be considered non-identifiable anymore. “In our comments, we are requesting that HHS give individuals the opportunity to make choices about the use of their own health data and specimens,” said Executive director Pam Dixon. WPF also stated in its comments that “A central database with identifiable information about participants in human subjects research is a terrible idea.” (See p. 21 of WPF comments.)

Public Comments: August 2011 – Proposed changes to the HIPAA Privacy Rule regarding Accounting of Disclosures under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act

The World Privacy Forum today filed its comments on the proposed changes to the HIPAA privacy rule, supporting some proposed changes and suggesting additional changes to enhance patient choice. In particular, the WPF supports the new patient right to an access report that has been added (p. 4), and has requested that Health Information Exchanges also be required to provide accountings of disclosures to patients (p. 18). The WPF generally argued that HHS needs to look forward and allow changes in information technology to fully benefit patients by providing the facility for more accounting rather than less (pp. 2-3). If the HIPAA rule gives patients a greater ability to monitor how their information is used and disclosed, patients will pay attention and requests for accounting of disclosures will become more common.