sensitive personal information

Legal Issues in Ad Tech: De-Identified vs. Anonymized in a World of Big Data

Posted May 31, 2017 by Andrew Mirsky 0

In the booming world of Big Data, consumers, governments, and even companies are rightfully concerned about the protection and security of their data and how to keep one’s personal and potentially embarrassing details of life from falling into nefarious hands. At the same time, most would recognize that Big Data can serve a valuable purpose, such as being used for lifesaving medical research and to improve commercial products. A question therefore at the center of this discussion is how, and if, data can be effectively “de-identified” or even “anonymized” to limit privacy concerns – and if the distinction between the two terms is more theoretical than practical. (As I mentioned in a prior post, “de-identified” data is data that has the possibility to be re-identified; while, at least in theory, anonymized data cannot be re-identified.)

Privacy of health data is particularly important and so the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) includes strict rules on the use and disclosure of protected health information. These privacy constraints do not apply if the health data has been de-identified – either through a safe harbor-blessed process that removes 18 key identifiers or through a formal determination by a qualified expert, in either case presumably because these mechanisms are seen as a reasonable way to make it difficult to re-identify the data.

Private Metadata is Doublethink

Posted October 21, 2016 by Andrew Mirsky 0

It is commonly said that if you do not want digital information found, then you should not create any. A challenge however is that there is a class of digital information, called metadata, that often is not created by you but is nonetheless associated with you. While content is any information that can be published or posted online, such as tweets, photos, videos, ebooks, Facebook posts and games, to name a few, metadata is something entirely different.

At first metadata was used to help describe content. It was automatically assigned by the software or app developer to help make the content easier to sort, index and later find. Location tags for example, are a common form of metadata. When content is posted online, the location of the sender may be attached to the content. A person posting a picture of a beach to his Facebook account will reveal to his network that he is in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and that the picture was taken two days ago at 3:30 PM.

Metadata is expressive now, meaning it reveals information about the individual’s behavior and ultimately identity, regardless of whether the individual wants to be known or the behavior identified, based on the content the individual creates, and what the individual searches or buys online. Thus a user who posts a picture of a positive pregnancy test, shops for prenatal vitamins and performs an online search for baby furniture can be inferred to be female and pregnant.

What’s Behind the Decline in Internet Privacy Litigation?

Posted September 8, 2015 by Roman Vayner 0

The number of privacy lawsuits filed against big tech companies has significantly dropped in recent years, according to a review of court filings conducted by The Recorder, a California business journal.

According to The Recorder, the period 2010-2012 saw a dramatic spike in cases filed against Google, Apple, or Facebook (as measured by filings in the Northern District of California naming one of the three as defendants). The peak year was 2012, with 30 cases filed against the three tech giants, followed by a dramatic drop-off in 2014 and 2015, with only five privacy cases filed between the two years naming one of the three as defendants. So what explains the sudden drop off in privacy lawsuits?

One theory, according to privacy litigators interviewed for The Recorder article, is that the decline reflects the difficulty in applying federal privacy statutes to prosecute modern methods of monetizing, collecting, or disclosing online data. Many privacy class action claims are based on statutes passed in the 1980s like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the Stored Communications Act (SCA), both passed in 1986, and the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), passed in 1988. These statutes were originally written to address specific privacy intrusions like government wire taps or disclosures of video rental history.

License Plate Numbers: a valuable data-point in big-data retention

Posted August 6, 2015 by Rob Ellis 0

What can you get from a license plate number?

At first glance, a person’s license plate number may not be considered that valuable a piece of information. When tied to a formal Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) request it can yield the owner’s name, address, type of vehicle, vehicle identification number, and any lienholders associated with the vehicle. While this does reveal some sensitive information, such as a likely home address, there are generally easier ways to go about gathering that information. Furthermore, states have made efforts to protect such data, revealing owner information only to law enforcement officials or certified private investigators. The increasing use of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), however, is proving to reveal a treasure trove of historical location information that is being used by law enforcement and private companies alike. Also, unlike historical MVA data, policies and regulations surrounding ALPRs are in their infancy and provide much lesser safeguards for protecting personal information.

ALPR – what is it?

Consisting of either a stationary or mobile-mounted camera, ALPRs use pattern recognition software to scan up to 1,800 license plates per minute, recording the time, date and location a particular car was encountered.

Privacy: Consent to Collecting Personal Information

Posted April 4, 2012 by Andrew Mirsky 0

Gonzalo Mon writes in Mashable that “Although various bills pending in Congress would require companies to get consent before collecting certain types of information, outside of COPPA, getting consent is not a uniformly applicable legal requirement yet. Nevertheless, there are some types of information (such as location-based data) for which getting consent may be a good idea. Moreover, it may be advisable to get consent at the point of collection when sensitive personal data is in play.”

First, what current requirements – laws, agency regulations and quasi-laws – require obtaining consent, even if not “uniformly applicable”?

1. Government Enforcement. The Federal Trade Commission’s November 2011 consent decree with Facebook user express consent to sharing of nonpublic user information that “materially exceeds” user’s privacy settings. The FTC was acting under its authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act against an “unfair and deceptive trade practice”, an authority the FTC has liberally used in enforcement actions involving not just claimed breaches of privacy policies but also data security cases involving managing of personal data without providing adequate security.

2. User Expectations Established by Actual Practice. The mobile space offers some of the most progressive (and aggressive) examples of privacy rights seemingly established by practice rather than stated policy. For example, on the PrivacyChoice blog, the CEO of PlaceIQ explained that “Apple and Android have already established user expectations about [obtaining] consent. Location-based services in the operating system provide very precise location information, but only through a user-consent framework built-in to the OS. This creates a baseline user expectation about consent for precise location targeting.” (emphasis added)

MediaTech Law

By MIRSKY & COMPANY, PLLC

Legal Issues in Ad Tech: De-Identified vs. Anonymized in a World of Big Data