Information Privacy Law Spring 2013

By: Hannah Baker Link: http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/tumblr-is-not-what-you-think/ Discussion: This post by Adam Rifkin on techcrunch.com discusses Tumblr, one of the newer social networking/blogging websites. According to a quoted survey, Tumblr is now the most-used social networking site among both the 13-18 and the 19-25 age groups.…

By: Katrina Henderson President Obama’s 2009 stimulus plan set forth billions of dollars worth of incentives for medical health providers in order to urge them to begin using electronic medical records (EMR). The plan hoped to encourage health care providers to streamline medical care, due to the fact that EMR systems are both more efficient and accurate than paper records.…

By: Carey Shenkman In Florida it is now harder for surviving spouses to obtain health records of diseased loved ones, a victory for more uniform federal healthcare privacy. Indeed, this case is particularly significant given the historical context of HIPAA, which broke significant ground when it was passed.…

By: Michael Lucien Information privacy in the healthcare context is a very tricky issue.  On one hand, individuals stand to benefit greatly from a more efficient system of storing and transmitting medical information.  On the other hand, health information is among the information that we are the most concerned about falling into the wrong hands. …

By Siranya Rhuvattana After the mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut, President Barack Obama has attempted to curb the gun violence by, among other ways, improving the Federal government’s background check system for the sale or transfer of firearms by licensed dealers, called the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). …

By: Albert Lin As part of a reaction to the mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado and particularly Sandy Hook Elementary School, there has been strong push in recent weeks for stronger and stricter gun control laws to hopefully reduce the risk of future mass shootings.…

Anonymous The use of drones on American soil came to the fore in March, when Sen. Rand Paul “talking filibuster[ed]”of the confirmation of John Brennan as Director of Central Intelligence. Mindful of the killing of al-Qaeda activist and U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki by weaponized drone—after an Article II-only deliberative process—in Yemen, Sen.…

By Scott B. Trying to make employees work more efficiently isn’t a new project – from Taylorism to 360-degree reviews, an entire industry has emerged to analyze and optimize workforce productivity. However, never before has the sheer amount of data, and immense processing power, been available in a way that allow companies to analyze employee performance in real-time, and without human intervention.…

By: Felipe Burgos   On April 9, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the district court decision that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) preempted a Florida law regarding the disclosure of patient records by nursing homes.…

The FISA Amendments Act (FAA) enacted in 2008 and extended in 2012, has been the subject of much controversy as of late. The Act authorizes the Attorney General or the Director of National Intelligence to gather intelligence information on individuals who are “reasonably believed to be out of the United States.”…