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On August 21, 2015, the 11th Circuit upheld the dismissal of a class action against DCI Biologicals, Inc. (DCI) for its alleged violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). DCI is a blood plasma collection center, and a blood plasma donor, Joseph Murphy, alleged that DCI sent him unsolicited text messages using an…

Yesterday, the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence issued its NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guide, Draft Special Publication 1800-2 “Identity and Access Management for Electric Utilities.”

The Guide is a result of collaboration between NIST and utilities stakeholders, including the energy sector and technology vendors, to design an example solution to help energy companies manage…

Samsung recently announced that more than 600 million Samsung mobile devices contained a factory installed third party software produced by SwiftKey that predicts the words you will type  on your keyboards. The issue with the SwiftKey software is its contains a flaw that permits hackers to access the device when the Keychain software is applying…

On March 30, 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published a proposed rule (Proposed Rule) setting forth meaningful use criteria for Stage 3 of the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs (EHR Incentive Programs). CMS intends for Stage 3 to be the final stage of the EHR Incentive Programs, and…

Contributed by Winthrop Smith, Milford, Connecticut, 3L Roger Williams University Law School

State-sponsored hacking occurs when a country funds cyber hacking organizations or groups in order to infiltrate a company’s or government’s cyber system for the sole purpose of stealing personal/sensitive information in the hope of turning a profit, gaining intelligence, or destroying mainframes. Since…

Contributed by Lena Thomas, 3L Roger Williams University Law School

Whenever a large data breach occurs in the healthcare industry, such as the Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield breach this past winter, some news stories always seem to focus on the strange medical catastrophes that could result—like going to an emergency room with acute appendicitis…

Contributed by Evan D’Abrosca, West Warwick, Rhode Island, 3L Roger Williams University Law School

In the standards set by the California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA) to developers of websites and mobile applications, websites and apps have to have their privacy policy clearly labeled, properly displayed, easy to read, and transparent for the user. All…

Contributed by Jackson Raymond Schipke, Connecticut, 3L Roger Williams University Law School

Connecticut’s data breach statute is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That statute’s definition of “breach of security” is overbroad, encourages over-notification, and undermines the goal of protecting consumers from identity theft. In Connecticut, notification is triggered by mere access of personal information, a…

Contributed by William C. Burnham, Monmouth County, New Jersey, 2L Roger Williams University Law School

A common motif in privacy law is the overarching concern for “consumer protection.” Curiously, these laws offer extremely limited avenues of recovery for individual consumer-victims of a data breach. Generally, most state data breach laws (and overlapping sector-specific federal laws)…