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LurkersWillLurk's comments

LurkersWillLurk | 6 years ago | on: Dear Bureaucrat, my job wants me to lie

Each violation of HIPAA can carry a fine between $100 and $50,000 per violation. The hard part is that many people don't know what their privacy rights are, or to whom they go when their rights are violated (in this case, the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services).

LurkersWillLurk | 6 years ago | on: Prosecutors Are Shaping Privacy Law

I'm surprised, but glad, that a federal magistrate judge would take the time to write out an article like this. It feels odd to me that a judge - someone who is supposed to be neutral - would openly take a stance that prosecutors are overstepping their boundaries within matters of policy. (Of course, one of the functions of a judge is to say when a prosecutor has crossed the line as a matter of law.)

I saw a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXAkXyysfFU) discussing one of this judge's recent opinions regarding a series of copyright infringement lawsuits. Orenstein dismissed 13 suits from one single copyright holder against numerous "John Doe" defendants, in which the rights holder conflated people who subscribed to internet service as being the same people who actually committed copyright infringement. Since the plaintiff had no evidence to show that the subscriber and infringer were the same person, Orenstein dismissed the suit without the defendant even knowing he or she was being sued - but Orenstein's basic knowledge, allowing him to make such a ruling unprompted, is the exception, not the rule.

We can't depend on having judges like Orenstein or William Alsup or even the Supreme Court to enact good privacy policy. Policymaking is the job of Congress, and while I am happy to see recent Congressional oversight hearings regarding facial recognition, TSA, and the like, I wish that Congress would take bolder stances against police and prosecutorial overreach.

LurkersWillLurk | 6 years ago | on: Dear Bureaucrat, my job wants me to lie

I'd speculate that the certification of hours might be an effort to deny unemployment benefits. The company can fire you for cause and claim that you lied about your hours. If everyone breaks some minor rule all of the time, then prosecution and punishment becomes entirely discretionary, used only when furthering the goals of the authority.

I'm not sure if this theory would actually prevail in an unemployment hearing - it varies significantly by state - but the business loses nothing by trying.

LurkersWillLurk | 6 years ago | on: Should the police be able to investigate your genetic family tree for any crime?

I'm reminded of parallels between cell phone location privacy and genetic tracking. The average person does not understand that they are creating a record of everywhere they go when they have their cell phone on. The same is true with your DNA - while it's true that you do in fact leave a literal trace of your genes, you don't expect that you could be identified later on simply by the fact that you had lunch.

What we really need is a legislative solution, but unfortunately I have low expectations for Congress, seeing that Carpenter v. United States even had to happen.

LurkersWillLurk | 6 years ago | on: Hertz bug leads to people being erroneously arrested and jailed

The asymmetry with the criminal penalties individuals face versus the civil penalties private organizations face feels like a rejection of the idea of the rule of law.

The worst part, for me at least, is I'm not even sure how you would sue Hertz for something like this. It's negligence resulting in false imprisonment, but not all false imprisonment tort statutes have negligence as a valid cause of action. There's also malicious prosecution and defamation, but that typically also requires intent, rather than just negligence or recklessness. I suppose that it could fall under the blanket "unfair business practices" tort, but the damages would probably be limited. In PA for example, you couldn't get more than $1,000 out of that claim.

This is an absurd set of factual circumstances, and there are almost no accountability structures in place to fight it. It's incredibly disheartening.

LurkersWillLurk | 8 years ago | on: Google Will Retool User Security in Wake of Political Hack

I hope this purported initiative will be accessible to all users, not just to those on a whitelist. As it currently stands, I can use a security key as my second factor, but I can also receive a text message, which defeats the whole point of the key. I would love to see an option to not use SMS as my second factor.
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