LTN: The Golden Rule of Data Privacy

LTN: The Golden Rule of Data Privacy by Kathryn Hume:
ARMA panel identifies principles that are changing law firm practices.

At last week’s ARMA session, “Data Privacy—Emerging Information Governance Challenges” Brian McCauley, director of information governance at McDermott, Will & Emery, and had an agenda—to remind our audience that strong data privacy programs are worth the effort, because data breaches aren’t just dramatic headlines on the evening news—they are events that effect and inconvenience individuals across the globe.

The long history of data privacy in the U.S. dates back to the passing of the Fourth Amendment in 1792. The notion that “each man’s home is his castle”—that individuals have the right to be protected from searches and seizures of property by the government— is the metaphorical backbone behind most data privacy laws. New technologies have simply (or perhaps not so simply) modified what constitutes our identities, homes and castles. In turn, the right to privacy has evolved to protect the ability of individuals to determine what sort of information about themselves is collected and how that information is used.