This summer, the World Privacy Forum served as a member of the World Health Organization’s External Expert Group on Data Principles. We are pleased to announce that WHO has now published its updated data principles and data sharing policy, as of October 2020. While there are additional items that WPF would like to address in
Executive Director Pam Dixon to present a featured lecture at National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine at its Colloquium: The Future of Data Science Pam Dixon’s lecture will be Wednesday October 28 from 12:00-12:45 am Eastern. The lecture focuses on forthcoming and converging trends, and is titled Looking Ten Years Ahead: Key Converging Technologies in Computing, Data, and
The World Privacy Forum filed comments with DHS regarding its proposed new rules regarding biometric collection, and asked DHS to reconsider the rule and to apply the science, ethics, and international conventions regarding the protection of victims of human trafficking to the rule prior to moving forward. WPF found that the proposed rule avoided discussion of
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges to the nation’s K-12 education system. These challenges certainly include the impacts of school closures, and the range of multi-layered, complex questions of whether to reopen school buildings and how to operate them safely if they do reopen. The pandemic has also highlighted significant fault lines in the
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.
