A couple of items I noticed on the legislative front.
First, Protocol reporting on the FTC’s movement on health data – is much faster than their typical speed. The FTC is suing data broker Kochava for allegedly selling location data that could track movements to domestic violence centers, reproductive health clinics, and other sensitive places. The FTC had already been looking into Kochava, and compared to previous cases against Meta and Walmart, the speed is months instead of years.
Health Data seems quite topical, with Protocol doing a different piece about Big Tech and health data – and finding the limits of HIPAA. With all the interest from Big Tech, it may be problematic. More than 67% of patients in the U.S. said they weren’t comfortable with big technology companies having access to their private medical information, according to a 2022 survey from the American Medical Association. Patients were much more likely to trust their doctor’s office or a hospital/health system with that data.
Anti-Hacking Copyright law is being fought in Court this week – with oral arguments in a case of security researchers pushing back against restrictions on hacking digital security measures from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Matthew Green, a computer security researcher at Johns Hopkins University, and Andrew Huang, an electrical engineer, and hacker, sued the Justice Department and the US Copyright Office in 2016. They argued that the circumvention ban, contained in Section 1201 of the DMCA, is an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.
And all within the context of the White House outlining six principles for reforming big tech. Those ideals:
- Promote competition in the technology sector.
- Provide robust federal protections for Americans’ privacy.
- Protect our kids by putting in place even stronger privacy and online protections for them, including prioritizing safety by design standards and practices for online platforms, products, and services.
- Remove special legal protections for large tech platforms.
- Increase transparency about platform’s algorithms and content moderation decisions.
- Stop discriminatory algorithmic decision-making.
I’ve linked to the White House statement in the article.
There might be movement here, too – the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, which I’ve mentioned before, is still considered in play.
Data governance is the area to focus on. More than compliance, the idea is managing customers’ data sets and ensuring deliberate choices rather than accidental errors. This movement is all an indication of the maturity of the technology market. I view it as a positive development.