Today, health insurers Blue Shield of California and Anthem Blue Cross announced the creation of a statewide database of patient medical records in California called Cal INDEX. When it launches later this year, it will be the country’s largest health information exchange, or HIE. The exchange is set to disseminate patient’s longitudinal medical files, and

If you are a Facebook user and you would like to opt out of having Nielsen Online tracking and measuring your online moves and habits, here’s how to do that ….

First, we heard about consumers saddled with unauthorized in-app purchases made by children via Apple’s iTunes store apps. Now we are learning that Amazon account holders were also burdened with unauthorized in-app purchases by children, in this case, also to the tune of millions of dollars. It is worth taking the time to ensure children cannot ring up unlimited charges via apps. Using parental controls wisely can be a big help with this…. (Consumer tips)

An important report came out today from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the board that was appointed to be a privacy watchdog for the US government surveillance programs. The newly released report covers PRISM and other Section 702 surveillance programs conducted under the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The report is complex, and provides important benchmarking on how PRISM and “upstream” surveillance programs work. The report’s recommendations, however, are what have proven to be more controversial.

At the end of its 2013-14 session, the Supreme Court stood up for privacy in a case involving cell phones. In Riley v. California, the Court held that the police cannot search a cell phone’s contents incident to an arrest without a search warrant. As a result of this ruling, when the police arrest someone, perhaps for a traffic violation, a misdemeanor, or even a serious crime, all information in a cell phone should not be automatically accessible to the police without any further review. Police must obtain a search warrant.