The Federal Trade Commission and the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Dedman School of Law will host a half-day public workshop in Dallas on Thursday, November 13, 2008, on how businesses can better secure personal information and protect the privacy of consumers and employees.

The workshop, “Protecting Personal Information: Best Practices for Business,” is presented in partnership with the International Association of Privacy Professionals. It features business people, attorneys, government officials, privacy officers, and other experts who will provide practical guidance for businesses of all sizes on data security, privacy, best practices for developing an appropriate data-security program, and responding to data breaches and other privacy and security problems.

The workshop follows a recommendation from the President’s Identity Theft Task Force, co-chaired by the chairman of the FTC, which called on federal agencies to improve their efforts to educate the private sector on safeguarding consumers. A report issued by the Task Force recommended regional seminars to help small businesses and others in the business community understand the importance of safeguarding information, preventing and reporting data breaches, and assisting identity theft victims. The report is available at available at www.idtheft.gov/reports/StrategicPlan.pdf. (more…)

The First Amendment Center is holding an event entitled “Liberty in Terrorist Times” on the book The Constitution and 9/11: Recurring Threats to America’s Freedoms (2008).

How has 9/11 affected our constitutional culture and its values? How have it affected our civil liberties, including our First Amendment freedoms? In times of such crisis, how effective has our system of checks and balances actually been? How much information can be kept secret before the ideal of “open government” vanishes? Following 9/11, how are the government’s needs for surveillance to be balanced against the protection of our citizenry’s rights? What constitutional limits does the Constitution impose on the powers of a war-time Executive? And what does our own history tell us about such questions?

RSVP to ahampton [at] freedomforum.org

Author: Louis Fisher, Congressional Research Service
Moderator: Meredith Fuchs, general counsel, National Security Archive
Commentator: Judge James E. Baker, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces

Date: October 14, 2008 at 6 p.m.
Location: Knight Conference Center at the Newseum; 555 Pennsylvania Ave., 8th Floor (6th Street entrance, Rooms 802-806); Washington, DC
For more information: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/about.aspx?item=events

A one-day Town Hall meeting to enable health care experts to share knowledge and experience of medical identity theft and how health IT can be utilized to prevent and detect medical identity theft.

Medical Identity Theft Town Hall
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

RSVP: MedIDTheftTownHall@hhs.gov and indicate that you are planning to attend in person or by webcast.

The Town Hall’s focus will consider how medical identity theft should be addressed in a health information technology (health IT) environment. Health care stakeholders from the public and private sectors will share their knowledge and experience and gain insights into trends and future developments.

As part of ONC’s mission to assure that electronic health information exchange is secure, this Town hall is designed to increase understanding of the medical identity theft landscape. Public discussion during the Town Hall will feed into and support potential recommendations for the prevention, detection, and remediation of this form of identity theft, leveraging health IT and best practices, and to foster ongoing collaboration and communication.

Date: October 15th, 2008
Location: Federal Trade Commission, Conference Center; 601 New Jersey Avenue, NW; Washington, DC
For more information: http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/privacy/identytheft.html#II

SILVERDOCS Presents SECRECY
Screening followed by panel discussion with the following special guests:

Robb Moss - Director, SECRECY
Peter Galison - Director, SECRECY
Mike Levin - formerly with the National Security Agency
Tom Blanton - Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Ben Wizner - Attorney, ACLU

The “classification universe” is invisible to most of us, yet the government’s production of classified secret documents involves millions of people. And government secrecy is growing, vastly outpacing the circulation of open information. In a single recent year, the US government classified five times the number of pages added to the Library of Congress; the cost is eight billion dollars a year–just to keep secrets secret. SECRECY explores the hidden world of national security policy by examining the many implications of secrecy, both for government and individuals. (note courtesy Sundance Film Festival)

DIR Peter Galison, Robb Moss. US, color, 85 min. NOT RATED

Date: October 14, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Location: AFI Silver Theatre, 8633 Colesville Road; Silver Spring, Maryland
For more information: http://www.afi.com/silver/new/nowplaying/events.aspx#secre

On October 7, 2008, the National Research Council will release a new report entitled PROTECTING INDIVIDUAL PRIVACY IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST TERRORISM: A FRAMEWORK FOR PROGRAM ASSESSMENT. Sponsored by the
Department of Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation, this report examines data mining and behavioral surveillance and the privacy issues that these technologies raise, and provides policy makers with a systematic framework for assessing any information-based government program according to its utility, its compliance with existing law and American values, and its impact on privacy.

The report will be released at a one-hour public briefing starting at 12:30 p.m. in the Lecture Room of the National Academy of Sciences building, 2100 C St., N.W.; a light lunch will be served beforehand starting at 11:30 a.m.

PARTICIPATING FROM THE COMMITTEE THAT WROTE THE REPORT:
– William Perry (co-chair), former U.S. secretary of defense and Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.
– Charles Vest (co-chair), president, National Academy of Engineering, Washington, D.C.
– Fred Cate, distinguished professor of law, adjunct professor of informatics, and director, Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, Indiana University, Bloomington (more…)

TPRC is a non-profit organization that hosts an annual forum for scholars and decision-makers in the fields of telecommunications and information policy. The purpose of the conference is to acquaint policy-makers with the best of recent research, and to familiarize researchers with the knowledge needs of policy makers.

The 36th Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy will be held September 26 - September 28, 2008 at The National Center for Technology & Law, George Mason University School of Law, Arlington, VA.

Date: September 26-28, 2008
Location: George Mason University School of Law; Arlington, VA
For more information: http://www.tprcweb.com/