Blockchain and Privacy

By Adam Waks on November 29, 2017

Discussions about “blockchain” technology seem to be everywhere these days, with potential applications spanning industries as diverse as banking, healthcare, real estate, law enforcement, entertainment, and even wine and jewelry sales. Different applications of blockchain present different and unique challenges and opportunities for data security and privacy, but there are three general categories currently preoccupying legal privacy experts. The first involves the necessary bridge between the physical-cyberspace boundary; the second involves sensitive information actually…

Privacy Law Blog

Tales from the (Quantum) Crypt

By Adam Waks on August 30, 2016

The dream of hack-proof communication just got a little closer to reality. On August 16, 2016, China launched the world’s first “quantum satellite,” a project the Chinese government hopes will enable it to build a communication system incapable of being hacked. Such a system, if perfected, would allow for encrypted communications between any two devices with absolute certainty that the encryption could not be broken, and with a built-in mechanism for alerting the sender/receiver if…

Privacy Law Blog

NTIA Tells UAS Operators Not to Drone On

By Adam Waks on June 2, 2016

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), more commonly known as “Drones,” are soaring in popularity – the Federal Aviation Administration saw more than 300,000 drones registered in just the first 30 days since they introduced a registration system on December 21, 2015. Drones have the potential to be a truly transformative technology; they are already disrupting business models in economic sectors as diverse as shipping and photography, and their proliferation as consumer devices has barely begun to…

Privacy Law Blog

Baby You Can Drive My Car

By Adam Waks on January 26, 2016

Consumers can expect many benefits from their cars’ increased data collection programs, running the gamut from simple location services like GPS and OnStar to “networked” cars that can communicate their location with other cars on the road to prevent accidents. In the near-future, data collection will even allow cars to care for themselves: technologies currently exist that can spot and diagnose internal mechanical problems long before such problems would have become apparent to a cars’…

Privacy Law Blog

California Gives the Fourth Amendment a 21st Century Makeover

By Adam Waks on November 10, 2015

The average American today generates more media than they did at any other point in history, and the ease with which our communications, photos, and videos are sent and stored digitally means most of us have more media stored in the cloud or on a single digital device than previous generations would have created in an entire lifetime. However, even as the amount of media we create and store has increased, the laws governing its…

Privacy Law Blog

Google Declares “Non!” to French Privacy Regulator’s Demands that Google Apply the “Right to be Forgotten” Worldwide

By Adam Waks on August 24, 2015

In an expected but controversial move, Google has rejected a demand by the French Data Privacy authority CNIL to apply the European “Right to be Forgotten” worldwide. We have covered the E.U.’s Right to be Forgotten before, but here is a quick recap: under the E.U. rule, individuals have the right to require organizations that control personal data about them (“data controllers”) to delete all such data and abstain from further disseminating it. A…

Privacy Law Blog

Department of Education Issues New Guidance Documents Relating to Student Privacy

By Adam Waks on April 9, 2015

The past few years have seen exponential growth in the use of technology in the classroom, with applications ranging from the increased availability and use of e-books to the displacement of physical classrooms through Massive Open Online Courses (also known as MOOCs). One of the fastest growing segments of the education technology market relates to online educational services and applications, which are designed to track individual student progress and use the data gathered to deliver…

Adam Waks

Blockchain and Privacy

Tales from the (Quantum) Crypt

NTIA Tells UAS Operators Not to Drone On

Baby You Can Drive My Car

California Gives the Fourth Amendment a 21st Century Makeover

Google Declares “Non!” to French Privacy Regulator’s Demands that Google Apply the “Right to be Forgotten” Worldwide

Department of Education Issues New Guidance Documents Relating to Student Privacy

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