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Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz announced that Willard K. “Will” Tom, the agency’s General Counsel, has left the agency to return to the private sector, and that David Shonka, the FTC’s Principal Deputy General Counsel, will serve as Acting General Counsel. Chairman Leibowitz also announced the appointment of Peter Miller as the FTC’s Chief Privacy Officer (CPO).

Shonka has served as the FTC’s Principal Deputy General Counsel since April 2008. He joined the office in 1977 as a staff attorney and later became Assistant General Counsel for Litigation. Shonka oversees OGC’s Litigation, Legal Counsel, and Policy Studies units. He also oversees the agency’s FOIA, employment counsel, and Energy Counsel functions, and chairs the FTC’s e-Discovery Steering Committee for government law enforcement investigations. He graduated from the University of Maine School of Law and earned his B.A. from the University of Nebraska, where he majored in English and economics.

As Chief Privacy Officer, Miller coordinates efforts to implement and review the agency’s policies and procedures for safeguarding all sensitive information. He also chairs the FTC’s Privacy Steering Committee and the Breach Notification Response Team. Miller has served as Acting CPO since the former Chief Privacy Officer left the FTC. He has worked at the FTC for nine years, previously serving as Assistant Director for Regional Operations in the Bureau of Consumer Protection and as a staff attorney in the Division of Advertising Practices. Before coming to the FTC he was an attorney in the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Department of Justice’s Civil Division and an associate with Miller & Chevalier. Miller received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Texas and his B.A. from Rice University.

Linking patient data to the wrong electronic health record is one of the top 10 health technology hazards for 2013, the ECRI Institute says in a new report. EHRs can “multiply the effects of such errors” far more than when similar data mismatches occur in paper records, the report contends. “The result is that such errors can have far-reaching consequences, leading to a host of downstream effects that can be both difficult to identify and difficult to correct once they have been identified.” Mismatched patient data in EHRs is fourth on the list, followed by interoperability failures between medical devices and health IT systems.

The other eight health technology hazards identified by ECRI Institute are, in order:

1. Alarm hazards
2. Medication administration errors with infusion pumps
3. Unnecessary exposure and radiation burns from diagnostic radiology procedures.
4. Air embolism hazards
5. Inattention to the needs of pediatric patients when using technologies designed for adults
6. Inadequate reprocessing of endoscopic devices and surgical instruments
7. Caregivers being distracted by smartphones and other mobile devices
8. Surgical fires

"Four more years." Three simple words that could have been written by any Democratic supporter but in this case they came from the President of the United States himself to announce his second term. This tweet is notable for several reasons, not the least of which is that it has now entered the history books as the most re-tweeted tweet of all time. In fact, as of this writing, it has been re-tweeted almost 900,000 times and "favorited" by almost 300,000 people. But what it reveals about social branding is far more telling.

A social brand is an organization that engages in a real-time dialogue with its community using social, mobile, and gaming technologies to build its reputation, profits, or social impact. In this case, the brand was the president and the message he chose to send was three short words that gave expression to his supporters' voices rather than congratulating himself. And by being so succinct, it was readily shareable (given Twitter's 140-character limit), even leaving room for people to add their own comments as they re-tweeted the message. As such, this seemingly simple message was a powerful example of using social media in a community facing rather than self-centered way to leverage the powerful emotions sweeping the country to amplify the message.

Shortly after 11 p.m. (Eastern) on Election Night—with the polls still open only in Alaska—Mitt Romney aides were pleading with Fox News not to call Ohio for Barack Obama. That delicious detail, buried in a New York magazine article by Gabriel Sherman about Karl Rove’s on-air meltdown, tells you all you need to know about how spin is embedded in the psyches of major political operatives.

Not a single relevant vote was still up for grabs, but Romney insiders believed in their mind-clouding powers to bend reality to fit their preconceptions. The entire episode might be titled: “King Canute Calls Fox News.” That night, of course, Republicans accepted the indisputable nature of Obama’s victory and recognized that the only way they would ever experience a Romney administration would be on a conservative remake of West Wing. That didn’t stop the spin, however, although its purpose dramatically changed. As we wait for detailed post-election analysis by political scientists and reflective reporters, a tentative case can be made that one set of Super PAC ads (maybe the only ones in the entire 2012 cycle) did do the job. The early anti-Bain TV commercials by the pro-Obama Super PAC, Priorities USA Action did help create a persuasive anti-Romney narrative.