We’re big fans of January around here, enjoying, as we do, the prospect of starting the new year off the right way and looking at things afresh. There’s something special about the focus that comes with new beginnings and the excitement of starting new projects after the whirlwind of the holiday season. The one thing… Read More
After a whirlwind start to this year (let’s leave the decade debates aside please), we’re finally ready to start making our 2020 predictions for privacy, data partnerships, and data strategy. This is where we lay out our view for how businesses, regulators, government, and internet users will shift the rules and change the way we… Read More
It’s been a week, folks. Not even a week. And we’ve already got a looming hot war, an active cyberwar, three major data breaches, and the promise of a major fight over GDPR on the very near horizon. Apparently, 2020 is going to be like 2019, just more so. Normally, this is the time of… Read More
To me, the most meaningful meme of this year was “OK, Boomer” (Baby Yoda was a non-event, don’t @ me). It not only perfectly captures the very real, politically potent generational conflict going on right now, but it also reflects how completely ignored Generation X is in our current culture wars. (I feel no guilt… Read More
You may recall that we made some predictions way back in January about what would happen in privacy, privacy law, and data partnerships over the course of 2019. Well, we believe in accountability, and so it’s time to check out how well we did. There’s a reason that most people don’t reflect on their New… Read More
Very often, we hear clients or businesses express the idea that “we want to give our customers control over the privacy of their data, and that sounds good, but making it a reality is much more complicated.” That’s a fair assessment — operationalizing privacy is something that companies in the U.S. have a difficult time… Read More
One of the questions I hear most frequently is “will the GDPR be as big a deal as everyone promised?” Of course, the real question is “will the GDPR be as big a deal as you, Jay, promised,” and it is a fair one. Privacy commentators spent a great deal of time in 2018 talking… Read More
The Internet is a risky place for “expertise.” Because it is both a platform and a megaphone, it creates its own multiplier effect for whatever you put into it. If the arguments of the last few years have proven anything, it’s that even a poorly concocted lie spreads far faster than a well-explained truth, largely… Read More
We spend an enormous amount of time talking about the benefits of data partnerships but, of course, they aren’t without their risks. No one enters into a business relationship assuming that everything will go exactly as planned (without serious problems later, anyway). But how do you identify ways to protect your business, your data, and… Read More
The Internet went into full “give me a Drudge Report siren” mode last week about Facebook’s announcement that it anticipates a fine of three to five billion dollars from the FTC in the coming months. The fine, a result of Facebook’s violation of a 2011 consent decree with the Commission related to privacy practices, tracking,… Read More
Biometric data is information at its most sensitive. Not only do health and physical characteristics carry with them the very concept of our personhood and humanity, they are also often immutable and, therefore, permanently identify us. I can change my email address or my password, and I can even get a new legal name if… Read More
The longer you spend in data-oriented businesses, the more you notice a funny thing about the language used to describe data sets and their uses. While, early on, the language sounds a lot like what you’d use to describe currency (“valuable,” “fungible,” “velocity,”), eventually it all starts to sound like you’re talking about food (“organic,”… Read More
Although we consistently discuss the importance of managing data about customers or partners, it’s crucial to pay attention to a key demographic of your intrinsic datasets – employees. Your team generates an enormous volume of data simply by showing up to the office (HR data, payment information, personal login details and passwords, etc), and the… Read More
We’re starting something new, a weekly collection of some of the stories that we saw or found interesting but, for some reason, didn’t have time to address meaningfully (by which we mean throw as many gifs at as possible). This week is heavy on government action, which is a good indication of the trends we’re… Read More
Let’s talk about values. We sometimes talk about “use cases” for data, which is a shorthand for “how do you intend to make this particular information set perform a new category of work or combine with other information sets to perform a new category of work.” It’s important, as we discuss in Data Leverage, to… Read More
It’s that time of year again – the FTC has released its report on enforcement activity in 2018, including its efforts at enforcing privacy promises. It was, as you might expect, a busy year, with major proceedings instituted against a number of high-profile entities like Uber, Paypal, and Facebook. Although the total amount in fines… Read More
We don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but every once in a while we’ll write a blog post about GDPR or CCPA or American data law. Yes, we do spend an awful lot of time talking about the law in Europe and the United States. That’s probably not a big surprise, given that this is… Read More
Transparency is one of the principles driving recent developments in data privacy and data security. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing how important it is to be open with consumers and data subjects, to give them a clear idea of how their data is used, and why. The primary reason for this is to… Read More
It’s Data Protection Day, the happiest day of the year! A year ago, we were talking about the changes that GDPR would bring, and how to gear up operations to ensure that you didn’t violate the law or mislead your customers. The premise was simple: transparency is a fundamental precept under GDPR (and US law),… Read More
Now that it’s January and everyone is finally returning to the reality where things don’t always taste like peppermint or eggnog (or both, which is just….no), it’s a good time to think about how you’re going to approach 2019. This time of year is rife with predictions and, more often, guesses about what privacy, tech,… Read More