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The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has developed these guidelines to explain how the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) applies to transfers of personal information to a third party, including a third party operating outside of Canada, for processing. As the legislation itself states, PIPEDA is intended to "support and promote Electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances…" This acknowledges that proper protection of personal information both facilitates and promotes commerce by building consumer confidence. Today's globally interdependent economy relies on international flows of information. These cross-border transfers do raise some legitimate concerns about where personal information is going as well as what happens to it while in transit and after it arrives at some foreign destination. Consumer confidence will be enhanced, and trust will be fostered, if consumers know that transfers of their personal information are governed by clear and transparent rules. There are different approaches to protecting personal information that is being transferred for processing. European Union member states have passed laws prohibiting the transfer of personal information to another jurisdiction unless the European Commission has determined that the other jurisdiction offers "adequate" protection for personal information.

Enterprise employees frequently use social networking tools, most notably Web-based applications. It's no surprise more organizations are wondering what happens if social networking data becomes relevant to an e-discovery investigation. How does an enterprise go about discovering and assessing Web 2.0 data? How responsible is an organization, legally speaking, for the information that's out there in the Web 2.0 world? What risks arise from e-discovery as it relates to Web 2.0 data, and how can you mitigate them? In this tip, we will look at e-discovery as it relates to Web 2.0 and consider the strongest options for minimizing risks to the organization. E-discovery basics We begin with a quick look at what e-discovery is and how it can create risk. Essentially, e-discovery is the electronic extension of the legal process of discovery, which Wikipedia defines as "the pre-trial phase in a lawsuit in which each party through the law of civil procedure can request documents and other evidence from other parties or can compel the production of evidence by using a subpoena or through other discovery devices, such as requests for production and depositions." If you're an IT person, not a lawyer, it's important to note that the rules governing the discovery process now require plaintiffs to address all electronically stored information or ESI. In other words, if your organization faces litigation, it will have to deal with the issue of e-discovery, which will entail a whole lot more than turning over some old emails. Depending upon your role in the organization, the first you may hear of this is a "notice of litigation" with perhaps a "litigation hold directive" containing a "preservation directive." Here is a generic e-discovery request below. Apart from a few limiting factors, such as subject matter, named persons and a specified time period, the scope of such a notice is likely to be broad; blame standard procedure, not some high-powered attorney pushing his or her lu

In New Jersey, and around the country, most doctors still rely on paper records for everything from writing prescriptions to keeping track of their patients' allergies. Only about 1.5 percent of U.S. hospitals have switched to an electronic records systems, and less than 8 percent have even a basic system, according to a recent study by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Maryland is poised to jump ahead of the rest of the nation in health information technology on Tuesday when Gov. Martin O'Malley signs a bill intended to coax doctors into using electronic medical records. The computerized files are seen as the foundation of a national health information network that proponents say will improve care, advance medical knowledge and save the country tens of billions of dollars annually. But with the startup costs to individual doctors in the tens of thousands of dollars, many smaller practices have been slow to move from clipboard to computer screen. With today's bill signing, Maryland will become the first state requiring private insurance companies to offer doctors financial incentives to adopt the technology, state officials say. Doctors who do not bring an electronic medical records system on line by 2015 could face penalties. "This is where government and private health care providers can come together to really improve not only the quality of care but also, hopefully, create some costs savings as well," O'Malley said. "Health IT is the future of health care in our country, and we want Maryland to lead the way."

The problem with securing data and insuring its safety is that there is simply so much more stored electronically these days that opportunities for outside hackers or insiders to steal valuable, confidential information off a company's computer systems are growing exponentially, according to those in the insurance industry who make it their business to cover this expanding exposure. Indeed, "you can take out more data in a thumb drive now than people could take out in a super-computer 10 years ago," according to Kevin Kalinich, co-national managing director for Professional Risk Solutions at Aon. The risk of a data breach is very real for companies large and small across almost any industry, noted Mr. Kalinich. He cited a report from the University of California, Berkeley, that more data has been aggregated and stored in the last three years than in the entire history of mankind. He also noted that between 75 and 85 percent of Fortune 2000 companies have suffered a "material data breach," meaning there is a growing market for those selling insurance coverage for liability and repair costs, as well as loss control services. Companies that take an "it won't happen to me" approach to securing data need only look at news headlines to see that organizations are often hit by breaches, and as more data is being stored electronically, the potential for, and impact of possible breaches increase. Princeton, N.J.-based credit and debit processing company Heartland Payment Systems reported that it had been compromised in 2008 in a breach that involved up to 100 million records, which would be tops for number of records accessed in a breach. The Heartland incident would displace the 2007 breach of TJX, in which over 45.6 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen. The TJX breach, in turn, took the record set by a breach of CardSystems Solutions in 2005.

Do you know where your electronic health information is tonight? Here's a reader challenge: I'll pay $10 to the first adult who has had at least five encounters with the private-sector healthcare system in the past 10 years to come up with a complete map of where all his or her electronic health records have traveled, who has seen them and where they are now.

"If you live in Texas, your medical records are definitely up for sale by the state. If you live anywhere else in the United States, they probably are for sale there, too. Medical health records provide key information to researchers, who have lobbied hard to keep them accessible, despite government concerns about the privacy of patient data. The controversy dates back to 1996, when Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to protect patients. "Researchers have very broad access rights to health care records under HIPAA," says Pam Dixon, director of a non-profit called the World Privacy Forum "The rules are pretty loose, and there are a lot of ways to get around them." That's especially true since the act wasn't designed to cover common scenarios today: records stored online in a vast, hackable cloud. In the rush to digitize all electronic health records, Dixon says not everyone is taking the proper steps to de-personalize the data and protect patients."

"Can personal medical data that has been stripped of its identifiers to protect privacy later be used to identify a specific person? That is the question that the Health and Human Services Department is hoping a research contractor can answer. HHS intends to hire a contractor to demonstrate either the "ability or inability" to re-identify data from a data set that has been de-identified under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule, according to a Jan. 4 notice on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site. De-identification and re-identification of patient data have become hot issues in the discussion about how to protect patient privacy while advancing adoption of electronic health records. The Obama administration is distributing at least $17 billion in incentive payments to doctors and hospitals who buy and use digital systems for medical data."

In a study that is unlikely to find favor among privacy advocates, researchers from two academic institutions warned that increased efforts to protect the privacy of health data will hamper the adoption of electronic medical records systems. The study, conducted by researchers at MIT and the University of Virginia, said EMR adoption is often slowest in states with strong regulations for safeguarding the privacy of medical records. On average, the number of hospitals deploying EMR systems was up to 30% lower in states where health care providers are forced to comply with strong privacy laws than it was in states with less stringent privacy requirements. That's because privacy rules often made it harder and more expensive for hospitals to exchange and transfer patient information, thereby reducing the value of an EMR system, the study found.

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Patients' advocates claimed victory in a battle over the privacy of health records as the U.S. Congress approved the economic stimulus bill, which contains $19 billion for health-care information. U.S. House and Senate negotiators' compromise reflects stricter standards that privacy advocates wanted for marketing, selling and disclosing health data. Both houses approved the $787 billion stimulus plan today and sent it to President Barack Obama for his signature. The legislation contains $2 billion in grants to create a national system of computerized health records and $17 billion in higher Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements for doctors and hospitals to adopt the technology. Electronic records will improve care and reduce costs, Obama said. The legislation also will boost the health-records industry, led by Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions Inc., Quality Systems Inc. and Athenahealth Inc. "We've dramatically improved on the status-quo, wholly unregulated system where private patient data was bought and sold like any commodity," Caroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office, said in an interview today.

Bring up the subject of digitizing medical records and you're likely to get a paradox of a discussion. Everyone thinks it will help save money and improve health care, and everyone has grave reservations. Get ready to hear more as a massive economic stimulus bill works its way through Congress, which includes IT health care spending measures. Although lawmakers are close to pulling the trigger. ensuring the privacy of patients' electronic health records (EHR) remains a top concern. "I very firmly believe that the Achilles heel of health IT is privacy," said Sen. Jim Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who chaired a hearing this morning examining the appropriate safeguards government should insist on before it doles out billions of dollars to help providers computerize patients' records. Champions of health IT argue that EHRs and interoperable systems to integrate data among providers would drive down healthcare costs while greatly reducing medical errors. Just 17 percent of physicians currently have even basic EHRs. The Center for Disease Control has estimated that as many as 98,000 preventable deaths occur in U.S. hospitals each year, many of which could presumably been avoided with more accessible patient data. "If 100,000 Americans were being killed by anything else, we'd be at war," Whitehouse said.

Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) admitted in a state hearing Tuesday that the audit logs produced by its tabulation software miss significant events, including the act of someone deleting votes on election day. The company acknowledged that the problem exists with every version of its tabulation software. The revelation confirmed that a problem uncovered by Threat Level in January, and reiterated in a report released two weeks ago by the California secretary of state's office, has widespread implications for election jurisdictions around the country that use any version of the company's Global Election Management System (GEMS) software to tabulate votes. "Today's hearing confirmed one of my worst fears," said Kim Alexander, founder and president of the non-profit California Voter Foundation. "The audit logs have been the top selling point for vendors hawking paperless voting systems. They and the jurisdictions that have used paperless voting machines have repeatedly pointed to the audit logs as the primary security mechanism and 'fail-safe' for any glitch that might occur on machines. To discover that the fail-safe itself is unreliable eliminates one of the key selling points for electronic voting security."

"We all know that Internet and communications technology is changing rapidly, creating huge opportunities for business innovation and individual self-expression. Most people are probably not aware, however, that privacy law is not evolving nearly as quickly. It is time to update legal protections to reflect the impact the digital revolution is having on modern life. Cloud computing -- a bit of tech-jargon meaning the use of remote servers to store and process data -- is a great example. The movement of personal and proprietary data off desktop computers and into "the cloud", which is made up of server farms and broadband connections, is a major disruptive trend in computing. Unless our laws change to account for cloud computing and other equally momentous technology developments, the Constitution's protection against unreasonable search and seizure will become a relic of the past. The federal law setting standards for government access to personal communications -- the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) -- was written more than two decades ago, before the Internet took off. "

"The United States House of Representatives took a major step this week toward enacting a national data breach notification law. H.R. 2221, the Data Accountability and Trust Act (DATA), cleared the House with a voice vote. In its current form, DATA requires businesses to notify customers and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) if sensitive information has been exposed to a security breach. If the U.S. Senate can reconcile its own approach to data breach notification legislation with DATA, a new federal standard will emerge. If signed into law by President Barack Obama, a federal data breach ¬law would pre-empt the jumbled mass of dozens of state laws. "You'd be better served by federal legislation if the federal legislation has teeth and doesn't pre-empt the state's law," said California state senator Joe Simitian, speaking to executive editor Scot Petersen in September. "If there was a meaningful standard at the national level, I think many states would be happy to accept it." Aside from the data breach notification required by the HITECH Act, DATA would put into place the first national law of its kind. H.R. 2221 was sponsored by House Subcommittee Chair Rep. Bobby L. Rush of Illinois. The bill specifically states that: "Any person engaged in interstate commerce that owns or possesses data in electronic form containing personal information shall, following the discovery of a breach of security of the system maintained by such person that contains such data -- 1. notify each individual who is a citizen or resident of the United States whose personal information was acquired by an unauthorized person as a result of such a breach of security; and 2. notify the Federal Trade Commission."

"A privacy watchdog's criticisms of Facebook appear to have captured the attention of the Federal Trade Commission. In a letter dated Jan. 14, David Vladeck, head of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, told the Electronic Privacy Information Center that its complaint about recent privacy changes at Facebook "raises issues of particular interest for us at this time." Vladeck added that he has asked an official to arrange a followup meeting with EPIC, but also said he can't currently confirm or deny whether the FTC has opened an investigation. FTC investigations are not public until the agency either issues a complaint or closes the matter. The FTC's consumer protection chief also said in his letter to EPIC that the commission plans to focus on privacy issues raised by social networks at the next roundtable, scheduled to be held in Berkeley, Calif. on Jan. 28. "

FTC may investigate privacy issues on FaceBook? Equal bang for the buck by identifying and educating users who post way too much personal information.

"Medical records for about 15,500 Northern California Kaiser patients - about 9,000 of them in the Bay Area - were compromised after thieves stole an external drive from a Kaiser employee's car last month, Kaiser officials said Tuesday." Kaiser officials said the electronic device contained patients' names, medical record numbers and possibly ages, genders, telephone numbers, addresses and general information related to their care and treatment. No Social Security numbers or financial information was contained on the drive, and Kaiser officials said there's no evidence that the information has been used inappropriately. The device was not encrypted, but some of the information was password protected. Kaiser has sent letters to the 15,500 members and the employee, who Kaiser would not identify, has been fired.

Another hospital employee fired for inappropraite access of medical records. More damage to a medical group reputation because someone failed to get the message.

"The last quarter of 2009 should be partly remembered in the advertising community as a juncture when big agencies -- namely Omnicom Media Group, The Nielsen Company, and WPP -- announced consumer data mergers. The deals entailed the marriages of offline and online data and appeared to reveal a potentially major stepping stone in the evolution of "hyper-targeting." Some of the agencies have trumpeted their newfound ability to create consumer segments related to behavioral elements such as "passion points" (e.g., shown interest in electronics, photography, fantasy football, etc.), as well as geographic location, beverage preferences, favorite social media sites, activity levels at the sites, and so on. Augustine Fou, group chief digital officer for Omnicom's Healthcare Consultancy Group and a ClickZ columnist, said that while increased hyper-targeting would likely result from the data marriages, unresolved issues remain before the use of combined online/offline data is widely adopted by brands. "For example, as diverse data sets begin to be integrated, it will become painfully apparent what data can be integrated -- or not -- and specific tradeoffs will have to be made to move forward," he explained. "In particular, privacy policies of sites and ad networks will need to be revisited." The growing ability for marketers to target online ads using data gathered offline has generally raised concern among consumer privacy advocates. To that end, Fou suggested that brands are cautiously optimistic about hyper-targeting and slightly wary of public/consumer perception. "

Marriage of offline and online data sources to target advertising may make tracking more interesting for consumers and advertisers alike.

""So many people in America think this does not affect them. They've been convinced that these programs are only targeted at suspected terrorists. … I think that's wrong. … Our programs are not perfect, and it is inevitable that totally innocent Americans are going to be affected by these programs," former CIA Assistant General Counsel Suzanne Spaulding tells FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith in Spying on the Home Front. 9/11 has indelibly altered America in ways that people are now starting to earnestly question: not only perpetual orange alerts, barricades and body frisks at the airport, but greater government scrutiny of people's records and electronic surveillance of their communications. The watershed, officials tell FRONTLINE, was the government's shift after 9/11 to a strategy of pre-emption at home -- not just prosecuting terrorists for breaking the law, but trying to find and stop them before they strike. President Bush described his anti-terrorist measures as narrow and targeted, but a FRONTLINE investigation has found that the National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in wiretapping and sifting Internet communications of millions of Americans; the FBI conducted a data sweep on 250,000 Las Vegas vacationers, and along with more than 50 other agencies, they are mining commercial-sector data banks to an unprecedented degree."

It affects each & every US citizen in one way or another. Good video on privacy & security.

Ultimately, your first line of defense rests with your doctor, though, says Peel. To thwart breaches, pepper your doctor with questions. How will my data be transmitted? Will it be encrypted? For assistance, you can also download a question form at Patientprivacyrights.org.

"This presentation contains statements of a forward-looking nature which represent our management's beliefs and assumptions concerning future events. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions and are based on information currently available to us. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements due to many factors, including without limitation, the impact that the significantly unfavorable economic conditions confronting the United States may have on our business, the results and effects the security breach of our processing system may have on us, including the costs and damages we may incur in connection with the claims arising from such breach that have been made and may in the future be made against us, the extent of cardholder information compromised and the possibility that such security breach could cause us to lose customers or make it difficult for us to obtain new customers, the possibility that we may not be successful in developing and implementing an end to end encryption solution, the possibility that if we are successful in developing and implementing an end to end encryption solution it may not prevent future security breaches of our payment processing system, and additional factors that are contained in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including but not limited to, the Company's annual report on Form 10- K for the year ended December 31, 2008. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this presentation. Topics / Agenda - The Future of Electronic Payments * What Is The Problem? The Cybercrimes Arms Race * Who Is Heartland Payment Systems? * What Happened and What Has/Will It Cost? * What Did We Do About It and What Are We Doing Now? * Massive Quantity/Quality of Breaches Call for Enhanced Solutions * Our New Solution Called E3 -