October 2010

Civil liberties and national security are at the core of the White House's cybersecurity agenda, a senior administration official said amid concerns the FBI's desire to wiretap the Internet conflicts with protecting personal information on the Internet.

"We don't take the position that this is an either-or situation," the official said during the first week of the 7th annual National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. "Hardening our cybersecurity defenses around critical infrastructure and protecting classified and sensitive information go hand in hand and are easy examples to point to."

The FBI wants Web services providers to enable law enforcement officials to retrieve the digital communications of suspected criminals, according to recent media reports. Privacy advocates said such a policy would contradict the government's effort to teach Americans how to secure digital devices. The Obama administration on Monday initiated a public awareness campaign that will provide organizations, neighborhoods and interested users with instructional materials on steps to ward off online intruders. "Protecting civil liberties and privacy is a fundamental part of this administration's cyber policy and efforts," the senior official said. A privacy and civil liberties official now sits on the National Security Council, following a 2009 cyberspace policy review that recommended the White House designate a dedicated officer to engage with civil liberties groups, he added.

Wireless coverage is the biggest problem facing some companies that rely on wireless-enabled devices and applications, speakers at the CTIA keynote presentation in San Francisco said. UPS, which has 100,000 mobile devices in use by drivers and 45,000 wireless scanning devices at hubs, has found some ways to address the issue of poor coverage but still finds it to be the biggest challenge it faces, said Jackie Woods, systems manager at UPS.

Two landmark reports by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) changed Americans' perception of their health care system and launched today's drive to improve the quality and safety of medical care in America.

The reports were To Err Is Human, published in 1999, and Crossing the Quality Chasm, released in 2001. Both these reports highlighted the important potential role that health information technology (HIT) could play in improving health care quality and reducing medical errors. In fact, Recommendation #9 in Crossing the Quality Chasm called for "renewed national commitment to building an information infrastructure" and said: "This commitment should lead to the elimination of most handwritten clinical data by the end of the decade." The end of that decade is now just three months away, and not to mince words, we're behind the ambitious schedule that the IOM report envisioned. Nonetheless, we have at last made the substantial commitment that was called for in the report. Last year in the HITECH Act, Congress and the President authorized $27 billion in Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments for providers who adopt and make meaningful use of certified electronic health records (EHRs). At the same time, the Act created $2 billion in new programs to support the transition to HIT-assisted care. And this summer, the regulatory framework was completed for Stage 1 of the Meaningful Use path toward an EHR-based future in health care.

Intel, Microsoft and eBay wrote to House Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush (D-IL) in support of his privacy legislation while advocating for the removal of one of its provisions.

The bill would allow websites and other firms covered by the bill to use online information collected about users but they must provide clear notice about what information is being collected and how it is used and an opportunity for consumers to opt out. The measure also would require that consumers opt-in to having their information disclosed to a third party. The bill would exempt firms from this opt-in provision if they participate in a "universal opt-out program" operated by self-regulatory groups and monitored by the Federal Trade Commission. The companies said they "support the bill's overall framework" and commended it for striking "the appropriate balance by providing businesses with the opportunity to enter into a robust self-regulatory choice program." They also said lawmakers should remove the provision allowing consumers to take legal action against companies. They said that would create "unnecessary litigation costs and uncertainty for businesses" without "a corresponding benefit to consumer privacy." They said they look forward to working on refining the bill and want legislation that "will provide consumers with robust protections."