Thursday, October 30, 2008

Privacy Foundation Seminar 10/24

Privacy & Legal Ethics: Ethical Concerns for Lawyers Counseling Privacy Data Breaches

www.privacyfoundation.org

On Friday October 24, 2008, Professor John Soma, Executive Director of the Privacy Foundation, hosted an enlightening seminar addressing the topic of ethical concerns for lawyers counseling clients and employers on privacy data breaches. The highly qualified panelists included Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Dan Vigil; Andy Holleman, Chief Privacy Officer for Qwest in Denver; Al Maslowski-Yerges of Novacoast; attorney Cecil Morris; and Chief Deputy District Attorney and General Counsel for Denver, Dick Reeve. The written materials compared the statutory approaches to security breach notification in California and Colorado. The Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct, Rules 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.6, and 1.13 were included, as well as recommended preparations for notification of security breaches for use by corporate counsel.

C.R.S. §6-1-716(1)(d)(I) defines “ personal information” as a Colorado resident’s first name or first initial and last name in combination with any one or more of the following data elements that relate to the resident, when the data elements are not encrypted, redacted, or secured by any other method rendering the name or the element unreadable or unusable:
(A) Social security number;
(B)Driver’s license number or identification card number;
(C) Account number or credit or debit card number, in combination with any required security code, access code, or password that would permit access to a resident’s financial account.
(II) “Personal information” does not include publicly available information that is lawfully made available to the general public from federal, state, or local government records or widely distributed media.

As technology continues to evolve, the protection of personal information becomes more difficult and more important than ever. Please consider attending the next Privacy Foundation Seminar, and learn what issues are arising in the context of our ever expanding information based world.

by Catharine Cott, Reference Librarian