The Supreme Court on May 6, 2020 heard oral argument on a widely-watched First Amendment case that may have broad ramifications for the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and, potentially, government restrictions on telecommunications more broadly. Originally passed in 1991, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act is enforced by the Federal Communications Commission and contains various restrictions on telemarketing, including the use of auto-dialers (sometimes called “robocallers”).  The FCC has strengthened the law’s restrictions over time and…

What do businesses need to do to comply with privacy and data security laws?  The first place to look is to relevant statutes.  If you store or process the personal information of Massachusetts residents, then you will at least be subject to the Massachusetts Data Breach Notification Statute and related security regulations.  These are important guides that require certain operational activities, such as maintaining a written information security program, or WISP, an often-overlooked…

Very interesting discussion in the most recent Journal of the American Medical Association, “Information Technology–Based Tracing Strategy in Response to COVID-19 in South Korea—Privacy Controversies.” The sources of information are staggering in their breadth:  mobile phone carriers, immigration services, law enforcement, credit card companies, public transit companies, government agencies, health insurers and health care providers.  It is difficult to imagine this type of tracing in the United States. The social ramifications of such close tracing…

Colin Zick, co-chair of Foley Hoag’s Health Care Practice and Chair of the Privacy and Data Security Practice, spoke with Bloomberg Law’s Ayanna Alexander regarding the Department of Health and Human Services’ decision to hold off on enforcing new health information data-sharing rules. His recommendation: prepare now, as the new requirements aren’t going away. “They will go easy on you if you are trying to comply, but the pandemic makes it difficult or impossible,”…

Businesses scrambling to move their workforces into remote environments are rightly concerned about the smooth and productive flow of information, including question about whether there will be any government support for building out a remote infrastructure, and what limitations are there on the kinds of information employers may obtain or share to minimize the health impacts on their employees (both questions, among many others, that Foley Hoag’s COVID-19 Task Force was built to help answer). …