Apps

• Data Breach 411 for iPhone

Conferences

• CPDP 2014 (Computer, Privacy & Data Protection), January 22,23 & 24, 2014, Brussels, Belgium. (Especially the panel on Privacy by Design, on 1/22/14, which will be moderated by me). 

COPPA

• FTC Approves New Method for Obtaining COPPA Verifiable Parental Consent (VPC): appropriately implemented “knowledge-based authentication”.

Data Breaches

• Too many; here’s a sample 
• ABA Report: 70% of Large Firm Lawyers Don’t Know If Their Firm Has Been Breached
• The Yahoo breach
• Target update: 70 million affected
• GAO Report: Federal Agency Responses to Breaches of Personally Identifiable Information Need to Be More Consistent  (In fiscal year 2012, Federal Agencies reported 22,156 data breaches.)

EU Data Protection

• How a bureaucrat in a struggling country at the edge of Europe found himself safeguarding the world’s data: Excellent overview of the factors that caused Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes to become the “world’s privacy regulator”, and why your company should establish its EU headquarters in Ireland.
• The CNIL’s Sanctions Committee issues a 150 000 € monetary penalty to GOOGLE Inc
  
• EU Parliament draft report on NSA , in which the LIBE Committee declares that the fight against terrorism is but a “fig leaf” for political and economic espionage and in which same committee essentially recommends the Member States to end or suspend  all data flows to the U.S. and other such countries until they repent and mend their ways.
• Holland Privacy Outlook 2014 The Netherlands is expected to have a very busy privacy year.
  
• Ten Years and Two Terms Later, A Look at Peter Hustinx’s Legacy
  

EU Data Protection Reform

• The Proposed EU Data Protection Regulation Two Years Later: In depth analysis of the major legal issues by the Kuner team.
• Google’s Peter Fleischer: “Europe’s much-ballyhooed, and much-flawed, proposal to re-write its privacy laws for the next twenty years collapsed.  The old draft is dead, and something else will eventually be resurrected in its place.”  Yay or Nay?

First Amendment

• Virginia Court Scales Back Right to Online Anonymity: A Virginia company filed a defamation lawsuit against seven anonymous Yelp users who wrote critical reviews about it. After filing the suit, the company subpoenaed Yelp for information that would identify the seven reviewers. A Virginia statute requires a subpoena for the identity of an anonymous Internet users’ identity to identify communications “that are or may be tortious or illegal.”

FCRA

• Background Screening: Top 10 Trends : A very pleasant and informative talk on trends regarding the use by employers of criminal records, credit reports and more.
• Weathering the Sea Change in Fair Credit Reporting Act Litigation in 2014 
  

FTC

• FTC Commissioner @MOhlhausenFTC  hosted a Twitter chat on 1/6/14 about #privacy and #IoT – see #FTCpriv

IoT (Internet of Things)

• The Government Accountability Office (GAO) looked at 10 in-car location services such as  Garmin and Google Maps and says these firms need to do more to inform consumers how they use and share location data.

NSA

• France Enacts Law to Facilitate Real-Time Collection of Metadata.
•  Senator Rand Paul is suing the Obama administration over the NSA

Practical Tips

•  Top 10 Data Privacy Tips for 2014: practical and commonsensical advice from the IAPP

Technology and Lifestyles, New Developments in

• CES (Consumer Electronics Show) The ultimate review of CES related privacy news.
• #Jelly – the newest “it” app. Have you jellied yet? And how about some jellfies?
• #Confide – the new corporate Snapchat app.
•  iBeacons and time-of-purchase power

Year in Review

• International Privacy – 2013 Year In Review

  2014

• Check out the privacy “ins” and  “outs” 2014 predictions by, who else, The Future of Privacy Forum.