1. Monthly archive
  2. May 2016

May 2016

Clinton’s e-mail scandal another case of the entitled executive syndrome

[Commentary] The inspector general of the Department of State recently issued a scathing report on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server during her tenure there, further securing the episode's legacy as perhaps the most historic case of "shadow IT" ever. Paying a State Department employee on the side to set up and administer her personal e-mail server, Clinton claims she just was doing what her predecessors did—but you'd be hard-pressed to find any government executive who ignored rules, regulations, and federal law so audaciously just to get mobile e-mail access. If you've worked in IT for any amount of time, you've run across the shadow IT syndrome—employees using outside services to fix a problem rather than using internally supported tools. Sometimes (but rarely), using a work-around is actually mission-essential.

Mystery donors pumped millions into liberal ‘dark money’ group

A liberal "dark money" group that leads national and state-based Democratic coalitions and dubs itself the “hub of the progressive community” raised $13.4 million in its most recent fiscal year, spending about 43 percent of the total on “direct or indirect campaign activities,” according to a recently released tax document, a copy of which was obtained by the Center for Public Integrity. America Votes swapped cash with other politically active nonprofits — including a handful with ties to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Clinton has railed against a campaign finance system that allows such organizations to exist, even as her presidential candidacy benefits from it. Little is known about who exactly funds America Votes. About 60 percent of the nonprofit's haul between July 2014 and June 2015 was provided by 11 anonymous donors who all gave at least $500,000. One undisclosed donor gave $1.3 million, according to the new tax document.

FCC Quadrennial Review Pulls a Sisyphus...Again

[Commentary] We once described the Federal Communications Commission’s quadrennial ownership review process as Sisyphean in nature. Keeping with that analogy, we can report that the rock has now rolled back down the hill … again. But this time the judicial gods appear ready to step in to make sure the job finally gets done.

In the meantime, the media ownership limits that have been on the books for years remain in place except for the Commission’s 2014 decision making certain joint sales agreements (JSAs) between TV stations “attributable” interests for purposes of the ownership rules. That decision has now been vacated, although perhaps not for long. And now the Third Circuit has issued its third case entitled Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC. The decision is not a good one for the FCC. With respect to the broadcasters’ appeal of the JSA decision, the Court has concluded that the Commission could not permissibly expand its ownership limitations (by making JSAs attributable) before it had first determined that the underlying ownership rules are in the public interest. Since the Commission has yet to make such a determination, the FCC’s JSA ruling has been tossed, at least for the time being.

Doctors fire back at bad Yelp reviews — and reveal patients’ information online

Burned by negative reviews, some health providers are casting their patients’ privacy aside and sharing intimate details online as they try to rebut criticism. In the course of these arguments -- which have spilled out publicly on ratings sites like Yelp — doctors, dentists, chiropractors and massage therapists, among others, have divulged details of patients’ diagnoses, treatments and idiosyncrasies. Health professionals are adapting to a harsh reality in which consumers rate them on sites like Yelp, Vitals and RateMDs much as they do restaurants, hotels and spas. The vast majority of reviews are positive. But in trying to respond to negative ones, some providers appear to be violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal patient privacy law known as HIPAA. The law forbids them from disclosing any patient health information without permission.

Is America's Strongest Biometric Privacy Law About To Be Gutted?

One way to avoid difficult legislation is to change the law altogether. At least, that might be what is about to happen in Illinois. One of the strongest state digital privacy statutes may soon be gutted. Known as the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), this Illinois state law expressly forbids companies from collecting personal identifiers from people without informed consent. A new amendment is being pushed through that could dramatically change the meaning of the law.

When it was first enacted in 2008, BIPA was meant to prevent people’s personal biological information from being collected by technology companies. This meant that if an online service was collecting your physical data, it had to explicitly let you know. Over the last year, Facebook has been fighting a class action lawsuit that alleges that its photo tagging program–-which scans digital photos, and uses facial recognition to automatically identify people–-is in direct violation of the Illinois law. Facebook has been vigorously fighting this suit, claiming on multiple occasions that it is without merit. Earlier in May, a judge ruled against Facebook’s motion to dismiss the case, meaning it would be brought to trial. This latest amendment might change all that. Chris Dore, a partner at the law firm Edelson PC (which represents the class action suit being brought against Facebook) explained that this change would essentially "carve out a huge chunk of it." In his estimation, the change would make it possible for companies to collect digital biometric data-–like facial templates-–without any consent at all. As Dore put it, this amendment would take the teeth out of the privacy act.

© 1994-2024 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved.