Reports

Frequently accessed WPF reports:

Analysis & Report: Redress Revisited: Has the Privacy Shield Agreement Between the U.S. and the EU Been Fatally Undermined by President Trump’s Executive Order 13768?

Report: EU-US Privacy Shield Analysis: Winners and Losers

Report: Privacy, the Precision Medicine Initiative, & the All of Us Research Program: Will Any Legal Protections Apply?

Report: The Scoring of America

Report: Data Brokers and the Federal Government

Report: Paying Out of Pocket to Protect Health Privacy – A New but Complicated HIPAA Option

Report: One Way Mirror Society

Report: Medical Identity Theft – The Information Crime that Can Kill You

Report: Many Failures – A Brief History of Privacy Self-Regulation

Report: One Way Mirror Society

Report: The US Department of Commerce and International Privacy Activities — Indifference and Neglect

Report: Personal Health Records – Why Many PHRs Threaten Privacy

Report: Privacy in the Clouds

A complete list of WPF reports is available here.

Report: The Geography of Medical Identity Theft

This new WPF report finds that medical identity theft is still a crime that causes great harms to its victims, and that it is growing overall in the United States; however, there’s a catch. The national consumer complaint data suggests that the crime is growing at different rates in different states and regions of the US, creating medical identity theft “hotspots.” These hotspots are important for patients, policymakers, and healthcare stakeholders to know about so as to address potential risks.

A Failure to Do No Harm: India’s Aadhaar biometric ID program

WPF has conducted original research on India’s Aadhaar, a national biometric ID system, including field research in India during 2010-2014. WPF has published the original research in a peer-reviewed journal, Nature-Springer, and in Harvard-based Journal of Technology Science. The research found that systemic challenges to data protection and privacy exist in the Aadhaar system, challenges which do have potential remedies. Key lessons can be learned for both the US and the EU as biometric systems grow in popularity.

National IDs Around the World — Interactive map

About this Data Visualization: This interactive map displays the presence of National IDs and electronic IDs, including biometric IDs, in countries globally. The raw dataset used to create the map data originates from the World Bank (See data sourcing below). This dataset covers high, middle and lower income countries. How to use this map: There are

WPF Report – Privacy, the Precision Medicine Initiative, & the All of Us Research Program: Will Any Legal Protections Apply?

Medical treatments tailored to each individual’s physiology and genetic history have long been a dream, but this dream is data-intensive. The most current effort to turn personalized medicine into a reality is the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), which will collect and share biospecimens and health data from over a million volunteers for research — this report analyzes the privacy protections for this initiative.

Analysis & Report | Redress Revisited: Has the Privacy Shield Agreement Between the U.S. and the EU Been Fatally Undermined by President Trump’s Executive Order 13768?

This analysis is an in-depth look at the January 2017 Executive Order 13768, Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States, and its interaction with two laws, the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Judicial Redress Act of 2015. Regardless of the reasons underlying why the order was written, a key question this analysis considers is if the order damages the EU-US Privacy Shield agreement, and what that means.