In honor of Data Privacy Day and its spirit of education, I thought it might be appropriate (and fun) to celebrate some (but certainly not all) of the A, B, Cs of Data Privacy.  Would love to see your contributions, too!

A is for Advance Encryption Standard or AES, approved by NIST.  Are you encrypting transmissions of sensitive data and portable storage devices?  See more below.

B is for Breach Notification Laws, including the 45 state laws, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, HITECH Act, and international regulations.  (Also Behavioral Advertising.)

C is for . . . what to Choose? -- Contracts? Cloud Computing?  How about  California - the first state to enact a breach notification law, California Civil Code sections 1798.29, 1798.82 et seq. (SB 1386), and the first state Office of Privacy Protection

D is for Data Protection Authorities in the European Union

E is for the EU Data Protection Directive.  Oh, and Encryption, of course.  See above and below.

F is for Financial Institutions, regulated by (wait for it . . . after the jump . . .)

 

G is for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the new model privacy notice form

H is for HIPAA and the HITECH Act, which impose privacy and data security obligations on health care providers and their business associates

I is for the International Association of Privacy Professionals, IAPP

J is for John and Jane Doe, anonymity - is there any such thing?

K is for Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney Inc, California Supreme Court (2006), requiring two-party consent for recording or eavesdropping on telephone conversations, even if only one of the participants is in a two-party consent state

L is for Legislation -- will there be a federal breach notification law in 2010 (other than HITECH) that will preempt the state data breach notification laws?

M is for Massachusetts and its new data security regulations, 201 CMR 17.00 et seq., effective March 1, 2010

N is for Nevada and its new encryption law, SB 227, effective January 1, 2010

O is for Outsourcing, and the need for due diligence and contractual provisions to safeguard personally identifiable information (and other kinds of sensitive information) shared with third parties.  See, e.g., Massachusetts 201 CMR 17.00 et seq. and California Civil Code section 1798.81.5.  Oh yes, and don't forget the Cloud in this context - are you putting data in the cloud?  Have you done your due diligence?

P is Personally Identifiable Information or PII -- what IS it anyway?  Depends where you live.

Q is for Questions, Q & A, and the Q in FAQ:  ASK QUESTIONS early and often about how your organization will use personal information of customers and/or employees in its business operations.

R is for Radio Frequency Identification or RFID and locational privacy issues - should organizations be able to use RFID to track customers/products?

S is for SO many things -- Social Networking, Social Security numbers, Surveillance, Spam, . . .

T is for Telemarketing, Text Messages, and the TCPA -- do you have opt-in for your mobile marketing campaigns?

U is for the UK ICO, which will order companies to pay up to £500,000 as a penalty for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act

V is for the Video Privacy Protection Act or VPPA, the basis for a recent privacy class action filed against Netflix in the Northern District of California

W is for Website Privacy Policies, required under California law for any website that collects information from California residents, Cal. Bus & Prof. Code section 22575 et seq.  When was the last time you updated yours?  Is it accurate?

X is for XXXXX -- Redact the information!

Y is for Yes, You can implement a successful data protection program in Your organization

Z is for Zango, the adware distributor that settled FTC charges that it used unfair and deceptive methods (FTC Act Section 5)  to download adware and block consumer efforts to remove it

Happy Data Privacy Day!