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Brian Wheelin is a member of the firm's Business Litigation Group, where he focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation, including privacy and cybersecurity matters.

Brian has first-chaired cases to verdict as well as argued appeals before the United States Second Circuit and state appellate courts in Connecticut and New York. He represents both individuals and companies in commercial litigation matters encompassing business torts, contract breaches, and disputes related to employment, real estate, and intellectual property.

Brian serves on the firm's Electronic Discovery Committee. Read his full rc.com bio here.

Last week, a D.C. federal judge ruled that an investigative reporter was not entitled to a 2014 cybersecurity study performed by an outside vendor detailing vulnerabilities in the Federal Election Commission’s information technology infrastructure.

David Levinthal made a Freedom of Information Act request in July 2015 contending that the study was essential to aid the public’s understanding of the FEC’s operations during the upcoming election season.  The study was designed to determine the extent of weaknesses in the FEC’s systems and whether the agency should adopt guidelines recently published by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. While the FEC produced 1,450 pages of records in response to the FOIA request that referenced the study, it refused to release the full study.Continue Reading Federal Court Rules that FEC Cybersecurity Study is Exempt from FOIA Disclosure

IMDb.com Inc., the creator of the popular online database of movies and industry professionals, has filed suit in federal court challenging the recently enacted California Assembly Bill 1687 that requires the deletion of an individual’s age from its online profile upon request of that person. IMDb contends that the requirement violates free speech and unfairly

An Illinois federal judge dismissed a proposed class action of lawyers whose business information was published by the online attorney database Avvo without their permission. The lead plaintiff, a Chicago-based personal injury lawyer, claimed that Avvo’s service violates the Illinois Right of Publicity Act.

Avvo is designated to permit users to search for attorneys by location, practice area and other criteria. The company generates revenues by offering attorneys the opportunity to purchase advertising space on competitors’ profiles or to ensure that others lawyers cannot promote on their profile.

In granting Avvo’s motion to dismiss, the Court relied on the First Amendment protection of publishing truthful newsworthy information. The decision compared Avvo’s business model to traditional newspapers that advertise space or a yellow pages directory where businesses can pay for a more prominent listing.Continue Reading Attorneys Cannot Sue Avvo for Unauthorized Profiles According to Illinois Federal Court

Federal regulators announced last week that Illinois’ largest hospital chain would pay $5.5 million, a record payment under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), in connection with three 2013 data breaches that affected the protected health information of millions of its patients. The Advocate Health Care Network, which manages twelve hospitals and hundreds

According to a government report publicly released last week, the IRS failed to adequately respond to a May 2015 cyber-attack on its “Get Transcript” application that potentially compromised at least 621,000 taxpayer accounts. The United States Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (“TIGTA”) found that, while the IRS timely disabled the affected application, it failed

On March 1, 2016, the Internal Revenue Service alerted the business community of an e-mail phishing scheme designed to convince employees to provide company-wide W-2 tax forms containing social security numbers and other personally identifiable information [view related post].  While the scam has taken different forms, the most prevalent approach is a purported internal

The username/password method of authentication is dying, albeit slower than many of us would like. In 2016, we should see a continued trend of replacing password authentication as the primary method for navigating through cyberspace.

We all know the challenges of password authentication. The number of access points that require passwords is growing making it

Google has recently asked a California federal court to dismiss a proposed class action alleging that the company’s practice of scanning Gmail users e-mail for marketing data violates federal and state privacy laws, primarily the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

The crux of Google’s motion is that users of the company’s highly popular Gmail consent

An Illinois man recently filed a proposed federal class action alleging that Facebook violates state law protecting the privacy of biometric data through its alleged collection of facial recognition data from over a billion faces on uploaded photos.

As many Facebook users are aware, the social networking service automatically matches persons in uploaded photos.  According