On September 15, the Federal Trade Commission held a workshop entitled “Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion?” FTC Commissioner Julie Brill took the opportunity to discuss an industry that she has consistently maintained requires more regulation and scrutiny: data brokers.
Commissioner Brill stressed first that the FTC is very focused on entities regulated…
In July, the European Commission (‘Commission’) published a communication titled “Towards a thriving data-driven economy” (‘Communication’), setting out the conditions that it believes are needed to establish a single market for big data and cloud computing. The Communication recognizes that the current legal environment is overly complex, creating “entry barriers to SMEs and [stifling] innovation.”…
At the end of April, a magistrate judge of the Southern District of New York denied a motion filed by Microsoft for the quashing of a search warrant issued under the Stored Communications Act (the Act). Microsoft had argued that the warrant should be quashed because the data concerned was stored in Ireland, and the…
This post was written by Frederick Lah.
Earlier this week, the ANA submitted its comments in response to a Federal Register Notice by the White House’s Science and Technology Policy Office seeking comments from industry participants on a variety of issues related to Big Data, including the public policy implications surrounding the use, gathering,…
The Dutch data protection authority, the College Bescherming Persoonsgegevens (CBP), has released a report following a seven-month investigation examining Google’s changes to its privacy policy. CBP’s report condemns Google for violating Dutch data protection law, the Wet bescherming persoonsgegevens (Wbp).
Controversially in March 2012, Google made changes to its privacy policy (GPP2012) to allow the…
At Europe’s biggest digital technology event ICT 2013, Vice President of the European Commission Responsible for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, made a speech despairing that Europe is lagging behind the rest of the world in taking advantage of opportunities presented by big data. Kroes recognised it would be beneficial to “put the data together…the…
This post was written by Frederick Lah.
Earlier this summer, FTC Commissioner Julie Brill introduced her “Reclaim Your Name” initiative. Aimed toward the big data industry, the initiative urges data brokers to be more transparent and provide consumers with more control over their personal data. In a follow up, Commissioner Brill released an op-ed piece…
With more and more companies engaging in the field of analytics, companies continue to come up with new and innovative ways to harvest their fields of Big Data. For instance, on Tuesday, the New York Times reported on how a range of start-ups and established tech companies are focusing their analytics efforts on a technology…
While the national conversation on data collection in the United States has been dominated recently by issues of national security, the FTC remains determined to push consumer privacy. In her keynote address at the recent Computers Freedom and Privacy Conference, Commissioner Julie Brill reaffirmed the Commission’s commitment to address so-called data brokers in a systematic…
Refrigerators automatically doing grocery shopping for you on your drive home from work and cell phone attachments measuring glucose levels don’t necessarily seem like bad things. But with the explosion of cutting-edge smart devices and applications comes the mounting data privacy concerns of the so-called “Internet of Things.”
The “Internet of Things” refers to the…
