The National Institute of Standards and Technology scheduled its first virtual meeting with its Privacy Workforce Public Working Group for May 12, announced the agency last week. The group will develop a set of task, knowledge and skill statements based on NIST’s Privacy Framework and the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education's Workforce Framework to assist with workforce recruitment.
Satisfaction runs high among U.S. adults who participated in at least one telehealth visit during the pandemic between March 2020 and Jan. 30, said a COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition survey published Tuesday. The group canvassed 2,000 patients December through February, finding that 79% of respondents were happy with their telehealth visits and 73% expected to continue to receive healthcare services virtually beyond the pandemic, it said. “It’s really encouraging to see that the high satisfaction scores are consistent across age ranges, insurance type, and regardless of whether the patient lives in an urban, suburban, or rural location,” said Steve Ommen, medical director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Connected Care, who supervised the study. “Years from now, we will point to 2020 as the year that the potential of digital care delivery became a reality.”
Washington state privacy and municipal broadband bills head to the House floor after getting fiscal OKs Thursday. The House Appropriations Committee voted 19-14 for the Senate’s privacy bill (SB-5062), including last week’s Judiciary Committee changes, opposed by industry (see 2104010049), to add a private right of action and sunsetting companies’ right to cure. The committee voted 21-12 for the municipal bill (SB-5383) after adopting an amendment by unanimous voice vote. Rep. Drew Hansen (D), sponsor of a House muni bill (HB-1336), said at the webcast meeting that SB-5383 sponsor Sen. Lisa Wellman (D) suggested the amendment to her bill. Rep. Matt Boehnke said he and other Republicans are mixed on the bill because it “reduces barriers to access” but may not sufficiently target unserved areas.
Washington state House appropriators were expected to vote Thursday afternoon on state privacy and municipal broadband bills. Earlier at the livestreamed hearing, the tech industry and other businesses told the Appropriations Committee that it’s too hard to comply with last week’s Judiciary Committee changes to SB-5062, which included adding a private right of action and sunsetting companies’ right to cure (see 2103260034). The American Civil Liberties Union said the bill lacks teeth to ensure compliance. Such disagreement shows the bill is “actually a good compromise,” testified Common Sense Media Director-State Advocacy Joseph Jerome. The Internet Association wants the privacy bill restored to the measure that passed the Senate, said Rose Feliciano, director-state government affairs, Northwest. She complained about “zero public input” on the Judiciary Committee’s changes, echoing comments by Washington Technology Industry Association and Association of Washington Business witnesses. Funding for attorney general enforcement of the privacy bill is “grossly inadequate to address the scope of the problem," said ACLU-Washington attorney Bill Block, citing a fiscal note saying the AG would get support for 1.2 attorneys and 3.6 full-time equivalents (FTEs). “It assumes only three full investigations and no litigation a year.” The private right is toothless because Block doubts individuals will sue if they can’t seek damages, he said. The Washington Independent Telecommunications Association will take a “leap of faith” and support SB-5383 to loosen municipal restrictions if appropriators adopted the committee amendment, said Executive Director Betty Buckley. The Washington Public Utility Districts Association also supported the bill with those changes.
The FCC Wireline Bureau denied UScellular and Verizon petitions for an extension on the deadline to implement a Stir/Shaken caller ID authentication framework, said an order Tuesday. Voice service providers must, under the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, implement by June 30 secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) and signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) in the IP portions of their networks and implement caller ID authentication framework in the non-IP portions (see 2012290052).
Billions of dollars in potential value is being lost in the smart home market because data isn’t being used fully, ABI Research reported. The market must support more “standardized and straightforward data sharing” between smart home players, OEMs and service providers to capture untapped revenue streams, said analyst Jonathan Collins. Data is leveraged in silos, typically by the largest smart home platform providers to support their own core business revenue streams, either advertising, hardware or retail, he said Thursday. “The industry has started to address proprietary data’s limitations,” said Collins, citing initiatives such as Project Chip (Connected Home over IP), which has support from the largest players in the industry to drive data interoperability between smart home device and smart home management platforms. To realize wider value, “the industry will have to address similar strategies for making smart home data available from smart home platforms to third-party applications,” he said. The analyst recognized Vivint for discussing the potential value of data. Consumer privacy and data regulation remain hurdles in the market, which won’t begin to scale until mid-decade, he said. By 2030, ABI forecasts smart home data access will be a $2.7 billion market.
The U.S. and EU should forge a "pragmatic" digital alliance for data transfers because fully harmonized policies are unrealistic, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said Thursday. ITIF noted the "crisis" in digital relations and a "serious risk" of de facto data localization. It urged policymakers to create a successor to the Privacy Shield, annulled by the European Court of Justice in July 2020 (see 2007160002), as part of a broader framework that also includes new general data protection regulation-compliant personal data transfer mechanisms and better law enforcement cooperation on accessing electronic evidence. Such a cooperative agenda based on shared values would be a "strategic counterweight to authoritarian digital powers" like Russia and China, the group said: An alliance based on "digital realpolitik” is needed "now more than ever." The U.S. and EU are talking about PS (see 2103250023).
Fight for the Future, Public Citizen and 20 other groups urged six publications to “rescind” recommendations of Amazon’s Ring products. The “cameras surveil millions of Americans” and amid “the massive growth of this private network of cameras, the tech giant is aggressively expanding their police partnerships,” said Wednesday's letter to CNET, Consumer Reports, Digital Trends, TechRadar, Tom’s Guide and Wirecutter. “Putting Black lives in danger is part of Amazon Ring’s business model. The tech giant weaponizes racist, fear-mongering culture by using racially-coded language and dog whistles to promote Ring products and partnerships. ... Amazon marketed Rekognition to police with the full awareness of two damning facts: first, that police misuse facial recognition, and second, that Rekognition disproportionately misidentifies Black and brown people, transgender people, and women.” Ring surveils, intimidates and punishes Black Lives Matter protesters, the groups said, citing Electronic Frontier Foundation-released records showing Los Angeles Police Department detectives requested such footage of BLM protests. Amazon didn’t comment.
A Florida Senate committee rejected an attempt to remove a private right of action from a comprehensive privacy bill (SB-1734). The committee killed that proposed amendment by Sen. Annette Taddeo (D) in a voice vote at a livestreamed Monday hearing. The committee then cleared the bill. Taddeo said the provision is overbroad; sponsor Sen. Jennifer Bradley (R) said it's critical to enforcement. Companies are making money on consumers’ lack of information about how their data is being used, Bradley said. The bill "pulls the curtain back on that industry” and shifts power back to consumers, she said.
Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, reintroduced legislation Wednesday that would amend Communications Decency Act Section 230 and require online platforms to remove illegal content within days, as expected (see 2102030060). Under the Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency (Pact) Act, platforms would need a “defined complaint system that processes reports and notifies users of moderation decisions within twenty-one days, and allows consumers to appeal.” The bill would make platforms “more accountable for their content moderation policies and providing more tools to protect consumers,” said Schatz. Thune called it a “common-sense legislative approach to preserve user-generated content and free speech on the internet, while increasing consumer transparency and the accountability of big internet platforms.” Public Knowledge said it's “a serious, bipartisan effort to consider content-neutral requirements to provide greater transparency and accountability.” Access Now supports the requirements for platforms to have “content moderation policies, explain their moderation decisions, and have an appeal process.” BSA|The Software Alliance welcomed the effort and wants to “avoid unintended consequences and account for the broader universe of technology companies.” The serious proposal contains a “fatal flaw: by subjecting websites to federal civil liability, the bill is far more radical than it appears and would lead to legitimate speech being removed from the internet as websites take a better-safe-than-sorry approach,” said NetChoice Vice President Carl Szabo.