The latest CDTPolicy Post discusses the importance Privacy by Design. They extensively reference Anne Cavoukian (Ontario’s kickass Privacy Commissioner and author of Who Knows).
The seven principles of Privacy by Design are:
Proactive, not Reactive; Preventative, not Remedial
Privacy as the Default
Privacy Embedded into Design
Full Functionality – Positive-Sum, not Zero-Sum
End-to-End Lifecycle Protection
Visibility and Transparency
Respect for User Privacy
Any system you build should take these in to account.
Senator Bill Nelson (D-NB) introduced the companion Senate bill, S. 1431, on July 9th, which was referred to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.
NB is New Brunswick, Canada. Last time I checked, Canada was a sovereign country. Bill Nelson is the senator from Florida.
As part of a letter-writing campaign, I recently asked Senator Diane Feinstein to support health care (health insurance?) reform.
The form letter I got back is simply wrong. She wrote “However, neither the Senate nor the House has adopted a single, comprehensive bill for consideration.”
The House passed “a single comprehensive bill” (HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act) on Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 11:15 PM eastern time — over a week before this letter was sent.
Here’s Feinstein’s reply in full:
From: senator@feinstein.senate.gov
Subject: U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein responding to your message
Date: November 16, 2009 8:37:42 AM PST
Dear Mr. Schreiber:
I received your letter regarding healthcare reform, and I appreciate hearing your concerns about citizenship verification.
At this time, there is still no single healthcare reform proposal or plan. The Senate Finance Committee and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions have each passed separate bills on healthcare reform. There are also three bills that have been approved by separate committees in the House of Representatives. However, neither the Senate nor the House has adopted a single, comprehensive bill for consideration.
Both the Congress and President Obama have been explicit that health care reform should not expand coverage to undocumented immigrants. As such, all of the healthcare reform bills currently contain provisions to prohibit the undocumented from accessing the proposed subsidized or public benefits-which is consistent with current laws that do not allow undocumented immigrants to access federal healthcare programs such as Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Like you, I believe that- whatever the final bill- the verification measures in these bills should not have an adverse impact on U.S. citizens or legal immigrants in this country. It is my hope the Senate bills can be merged to achieve the goal of expanded, affordable coverage for Americans, and I will certainly be mindful of the points you raised in your letter as this process continues.
If you are interested in accessing additional information on my views on healthcare reform, I encourage you to visit the “In the Spotlight” link on the front page of my website at http://feinstein.senate.gov/. I hope you will continue to keep me informed of your opinions, and I invite you to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841 if you have any questions.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the Nation are available at my website http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/. You can also receive electronic e-mail updates by subscribing to my e-mail list at http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ENewsletterSignup.Signup.
A while ago, I wrote about Stories of Health, our project to document how America’s broken health care system affects us all.
On the eve of Congress’ historic health care vote, I have some more stories to share.
Since that time, we’ve continued to travel. We spent a week in Los Angeles, where we heard from folks like Nina, whose parents had to sell their house to pay their health care bills.
Thanks to the Angela and Nancy at Health Access, we had the good fortune to meet Carla and Susan, two amazing doctors at LA County hospital. If you heard what Carla told us after the camera was turned off, you’d have been as inspired as I was to know there are such amazing doctors out there. It’s incredible what they get done with such limited resources. Carla’s a primary care physician, not a specialist, and the wait to see her is three months.
Three months.
On the way back, we stopped in Bakersfield, where we met the amazing Matthew Cruise. Matthew’s a Vietnam war veteran who went on to start a microfinance NGO, Pull Up from Poverty.
Despite having insurance, Matthew’s wife is going to go to India to have her hip replacement surgery performed. Why? Because the trip to India and the cost of surgery is still cheaper than their 20% patient responsibility.
We have had the good fortune to work with Meghan Newell, a fantastic video editor who put these together:
If you haven’t heard of MAPLight.org before, here’s what they do (which is fantastic):
MAPLight.org, a groundbreaking public database, illuminates the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes in unprecedented ways. Elected officials collect large sums of money to run their campaigns, and they often pay back campaign contributors with special access and favorable laws.
They’re a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, non-partisan organization.
MAPLight recently announced Money Near Votes, which shows you how campaign contributions closely mirror voting records:
…combines information on campaign finance and congressional votes. Journalists, citizen activists and bloggers can easily track campaign contributions from special-interest groups given within a month, a week, or a day of each vote in Congress.
Apparently no one explained to her (despite representing Internet central), that scanning your letterhead and pasting it in to your email is a bad idea. It looks worse when it’s on a funny angle.
Having text as images this must be some sort of ADA violation.
Finally, the message lacks an unsubscribe link.
Of course, Speaker Pelosi isn’t the only one with problems. Anna Eshoo, who represents the only slightly gerrymandered California 14th, home to none other than Google and Yahoo, can’t get her web presence together, either.
First, her mailing list is woefully out of date. I left her district almost three years ago, yet I still get emails from her. As with Pelosi, there’s no unsubscribe link. I’ve left her district office staff numerous emails and voicemails, but they won’t remove me from her list.
Second, when you visit her web site, you get an SSL error:
…this certainly doesn’t instill confidence her ability to keep constituent communications secure and private.
Once you submit the form, you get obtuse error messages like this one:
…1996 called, they want their form validation code back.
For those wondering what required-prefix means — that’s the formal prefix that precedes your name, such as “Ms” or “Mr.” Which, of course, shouldn’t be required in the first place.
Writing for The Guardian, Cory Doctorow explains why net neutrality is essential and dispells myths about billing to show us we need a free and open Internet to allow for innovation:
Take filtering: by allowing ISPs to silently block access to sites that displease them, we invite all the ills that accompany censorship – Telus, a Canadian telcom that blocked access to a site established by its striking workers where they were airing their grievances. Around the world, ISPs co-operate with censorious governments in their mission to keep their citizens in the dark: for example, ISPs in the United Arab Emirates are blocking access to stories about a UAE royal family member who was video-recorded torturing a merchant with whom he had a business dispute. As a matter of policy, Transport for London isn’t allowed to block us from riding the tube to a rally in support of striking transit workers; British Gas doesn’t turn our heat off if they suspect we’re housing a benefits cheat; and BT doesn’t divert our phone calls if we’re ringing up a competitor to change carriers. Giving an ISP censorship powers — and then layering censorship in secrecy and arbitrariness — we make the internet a less trustworthy and less useful place to be.
