Privacy

The Michigan Senate gave approval Tuesday to a bill that would ban the use on state-issued phones of text messaging encryption apps that can be used to evade the Michigan Freedom of Information Act.

Hackers exploited a vulnerability in out-of-date Atlassian software used by the University of Colorado Boulder and compromised the data of about 30,000 people. No financial info or Social Security numbers were leaked.

Earlier this month, UMass Memorial Health, a health-care system in Worchester, Mass., informed 209,048 patients that their private information may have been compromised due to an email-related data breach.

The bill, which passed the Ohio Senate earlier this year, passed the Ohio House Criminal Justice Committee yesterday. The legislation would make telecommunications fraud a fourth-degree felony.

How should schools prepare digital natives — children who have never known a world without social media and personal digital devices — for the world wide web? Half a dozen principles can help guide the conversation.

Some of the unemployment system’s challenges include processing large numbers of claims, protecting people’s personal information and state lawmakers not knowing the extent of the system’s operational problems.

The U.S. Treasury Department has estimated the first six months of 2021 saw a total of $590 million connected to ransomware. In 2020, the number for the entire year was only $410 million.

The idea behind killware, a new type of cyber attack, is to disable or manipulate the electronic or computer equipment that humans depend on, resulting in potential harm or death to individuals.

A new report says schools are making more use of programs that monitor student devices for clues of suicidal ideation and self-harm, despite concerns about student privacy and the efficacy of such programs.

Digital privacy moves beyond protecting the data we have to ensuring that constituents have knowledge of and a say in how their data is used. So where do state and local governments go from here?

On Wednesday, the Kentucky Supreme Court was asked to decide whether police should be allowed to track people in the community by pinging their cellphones without a court-issued search warrant.

Under the bill, private entities would pay hefty fines if they share residents' biometric data without consent. Such data would include fingerprints; voiceprints; facial geometry; and retina, iris and hand scans.

Police and city officials on Tuesday unveiled the department’s $3 million Real Time Crime Center, which features all-seeing live technology nestled in a hub on the fourth floor of police headquarters.

The external relations director of the Oregon Department of Administrative Services accidentally emailed the private vaccination statuses of about 40,000 state employees to different news outlets.

Vera Eidelman, staff attorney for the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said people need to think about the wealth of information they're giving up when they use genetic testing kits for fun.

Privacy advocates have filed a lawsuit against Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle for sharing license plate information with out-of-state agencies. The sheriff's actions appear to break California's sanctuary laws.

Gov. Mike Parson intends to prosecute the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after the newspaper published a report detailing how Social Security numbers could be easily accessed through a state agency website.

To safeguard schools in the state from cyber threats, a recently enacted law will allow the California Military Department to conduct independent security assessments to identify any weaknesses.