KUCI: Privacy Piracy

Mari Frank Interviews Beth Givens Director of the Privacyrights Clearinghouse

Beth Givens is founder and director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC), a nonprofit advocacy, research, and consumer education program located in San Diego, California. The PRC was established in 1992 with funding from the California Public Utilities Commission's Telecommunications Education Trust. It is an independent program of the Utility Consumers' Action Network, a nonprofit organization that advocates for consumers' interests regarding telecommunications, energy and the Internet.
The PRC maintains a complaint/information hotline on informational privacy issues, the only one of its kind in the country. It publishes a series of guides on informational privacy issues. Topics include Internet privacy, wireless communications, credit reporting, identity theft, telemarketing, medical records, workplace privacy, employment screening, unsolicited mail, government records, children's online privacy, among others. These are available at the PRC's web site, www.privacyrights.org.
Givens frequently speaks and conducts workshops on the issue of privacy. She has participated in many media interviews including: The News Hour with Jim Lehrer (PBS), CBS Evening News, CNN, 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, Good Morning America, Court TV, NBC Evening News, CBS Weekend News, and major U.S. daily newspapers. She has testified on privacy public policy concerns before the U.S. Senate, the California Legislature, the California Public Utilities Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency.
In addition, Givens has been a member of several task forces examining privacy-related public policy issues:: California Office of Privacy Protection Advisory Committee; Truste Wireless Privacy Committee; Justice Management Institute's Electronic Court Records Advisory Committee; Task Force on Criminal Records Identity Theft; California Legislature's Joint Task Force on Personal Information and Privacy; California Judicial Council Subcommittee on Privacy and Access; Internet Policy Committee of the San Diego Public Library; and the Mayor of San Diego's City of the Future Task Force. She has served on the U.S. Census Advisory Committee, California Radio Frequency ID Advisory Committee, and the California REAL ID Task Force,. Many of Givens' speeches and testimony are available on the PRC Web site under "Speeches&Testimony," www.privacyrights.org/ar.
Givens was awarded a Pioneer Award in 2002 from the Electronic Frontier Foundations. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse is a 2000 award recipient from The Foundation for Improvement of Justice for its work in assisting victims of identity theft. Givens is a recipient of the 2000 Privacy International Brandeis Award. Ms. Givens contributed articles on identity theft to two encyclopedias: World Book (2004) and Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment (2002). She also contributed a chapter to the 2006 book, RFID: Applications, Security and Privacy. She is the author of The Privacy Rights Handbook: How to Take Control of Your Personal Information (Avon Books, 1997). She is co-author of Privacy Piracy (with Mari Frank) : A Guide to Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft. Givens is also co-author and editor of the PRC's fact sheets, on the Web at www.privacyrights.org/fs.
Voice: 619-298-3396
Web:www.privacyrights.or

Mari Frank Interviews Byron Achohido, Tech Journalist USA Today and author of Zero Day Threat

Byron Acohido is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who covers Internet security for USA Today. He is the co-author of Zero Day Threat: The Shocking Truth of How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity. While at the Seattle Times earlier in his career, he was awarded the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting, for stories linking a dangerous defect in the rudder controls of Boeing 737 jetliners to a string of crashes that killed hundreds of people. Since joining USA Today, Acohido has led the paper's cutting-edge coverage of Internet security and cyber crime. The New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants recently awarded he and co-author Jon Swartz the 2008 Excellence in Financial Journalism Awards for their newspaper stories about data theft and identity fraud. In 2005, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers awarded Acohido and Swartz the Best in Business Award for Projects by large newspapers; and they were named finalists in both 2005 and 2006 for the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. Acohido has conducted numerous workshops on aviation safety, investigative journalism and technology topics. To hear Acohido discuss the public's rising exposure to data theft and identity fraud please visit http://zerodaythreat.com.

Mari Frank Interviews Yolanda Hammond Auditor and Victim of ID Theft

As an internal auditor Ms. Hammond is trained to identify or improve controls to prevent fraud within her company. She has been able to use some of her skills and training in her personal life. She has always done a great deal to protect her identity, including shredding everything with her name and address, reviewing her social security statement regularly, reviewing her credit report more than once a year, and opting out of telephone and mail marketing.
One afternoon in December 2005, Ms. Hammond was contacted by a credit card company attempting to verify that she had opened an account. She had not opened the account and hadn't authorized anyone else to open an account. She cancelled the credit card and by that evening she discovered there were other fraudulent accounts including a car loan. Ms. Hammond requested a fraud alert be placed on her credit report. From that point on she spent hours disputing fraudulent information, trying to figure out what other fraudulent activities there might be and wondering who got her personal information and how. She now had a second job auditing and analyzing information - almost every day after work she was writing letters, making phone calls, or checking the mail for evidence of other fraudulent activities. Fortunately, her diligent efforts lead to the arrest of the identity thief in early 2006. The thief had outstanding warrants for similar activities and had access to personal information - her information - while employed by Matria. Although the thief is currently in jail you can't help but wonder what happened? How did this person get access to Ms. Hammond's personal information? What could Matria have done to make sure that Ms. Hammond didn't lose control of her life. Hopefully, by sharing her story some companies will make sure they do everything possible to protect customer information and prevent even one person from experiencing the helplessness of identity theft.
Ms. Hammond graduated from the University of Tennessee with a B. S. in Accounting. Immediately following graduation she went to work for a federal contractor as an internal auditor. She has worked at the same place for 24 years and has been married for 23 years. Her job involves performing independent and objective evaluations of the adequacy and effectiveness of management control systems and quality of performance. In this role she performs a variety of audits that ultimately help the company do things right and do the right things. In this interview she will enlighten you to find out what she thinks should be done in companies.

Mari Frank Interviews Jen and David Fountain, Victims of ID theft

David M. Fountain is a professional truck driver for a national transportation company. He is 36 years old, and lives in Essex, Vermont with his wife and two children. He has lived in Vermont for twelve years, and before that he was a resident of New York State. He earned an Associate's degree from Clinton Community College, with a major in criminal justice.
Jennifer Fountain, his wife, graduated from the Fanny Allen School of Practical Nursing, as an LPN and worked as a nurse for 15 years. She is currently working as a Para educator in the Essex Town School System. She is 36 years old as well and has lived in Vermont her whole life. She has spent the past five months learning about Identity theft and its surrounding issues and problems.

Mari Frank Interviews Dr. Deborah Peel, Medical Privacy Expert

Deborah C. Peel, M.D. is Chair and Founder of Patient Privacy Rights, a national consumer medical privacy watchdog organization. Peel is a nationally recognized expert on medical privacy. She has been a proponent of retaining the Hippocratic Oath and medical ethics as the foundation for a patient-centered healthcare system for over a decade. She has testified before Congress and NCVHS on medical privacy, genetic privacy, and pharmacy benefits managers. Peel has practiced Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis for 29 years. For eleven years, she was Chief of Psychiatry at Brackenridge Hospital in Austin, TX, where she ran the section of 100+ psychiatrists. She is a past President of the Texas Society of Psychiatric Physicians and a past President of the National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers. Her experiences as a practicing physician, watching the elimination of medical privacy and the resulting harm to patients convinced her of the need for a strong national consumer advocacy organization dedicated to saving medical privacy rights. As a mother and consumer she could not in good conscience leave the design and control of our national healthcare system and protection of patient privacy to industry.
http://www.patientprivacyrights.org

Mari Frank Interviews UCI Professor Alice Silverberg, Expert on Cryptology

Alice Silverberg Professor of Mathematics and Computer Sciences talks about Encryption technology .

Mari Frank Interviews Chris Hoofnagle, Esq. Privacy Expert

hris Jay Hoofnagle is senior staff attorney to the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic and senior fellow with the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. His focus is consumer privacy law. He is admitted to practice law in California and the District of Columbia.
Mr. Hoofnagle was the former director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's West Coast Office in San Francisco, California. He has testified before Congress on privacy and Social Security Numbers, identity theft, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Security Breaches and before the Judicial Conference of the U.S. on public records and privacy.
Chris' past work has focused on financial services privacy, gender and privacy, commercial profiling and telemarketing, commercial data brokers, and the privacy implications of emerging technologies including invasive advertising and Digital Rights Management.
He participated in the Amy Boyer case, where the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that information brokers and private investigators can be liable for the harms caused by selling personal information. His writings on the First Amendment and privacy have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Knight Ridder News Service, and in law journals at Columbia Law School, Notre Dame Law School, the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill, and at the University of Illinois . Chris is a graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law and is a member of the California, Maryland, and District of Columbia Bars.During Summer 1999, Chris was a law fellow for the American Association of University Professors.
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/clinics/samuelson/

Mari Frank Esq. Interviews Len Bennett , Esq. Consumer Attorney

Leonard A. Bennett. Born Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1965. George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia: B.S. 1989, Business Administration (Finance); George Mason University School of Law and Economics, Arlington, Virginia: J.D. 1994. International Committee on Discussion and Debate (ICDD), United States delegation to Russia, 1994. Admitted to Virginia State Bar 1994. Admitted to North Carolina State Bar 1995. Overman, Cowardin & Martin, P.C. 1994-1998, Newport News, Virginia. Leonard A. Bennett, P.C. 1998-present, Newport News, Virginia. Admitted to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, 1994. Admitted to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 2002. Admitted to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, 2003. Admitted to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 2003. Admitted to the Supreme Court of the United States, 2005. Admitted to multiple other courts pro hac vice.
Member National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), Virginia State Bar Association, Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, Newport News Bar Association.
Speaker, Continuing Legal Education Seminar, Landlord-Tenant Law 2000, Norfolk, Virginia; Speaker, Virginia CLE Legal Aid Hotline 2002, Hampton, Virginia; Speaker and Panelist, NACA Fair Credit Reporting Act National Conference 2003, Orlando, Florida; Speaker, Autofraud CLE, Norfolk Naval Base, Navy Legal Services, January 2004; Speaker, Consumer Law, Naval Justice School, Newport, Rhode Island, March 2004; Speaker, Virginia CLE, Consumer Protection Law, April 2004; Member Steering Committee, Speaker and Panelist, NACA Fair Credit Reporting Act National Conference 2004; Identity Theft CLE, Oklahoma State Bar, May 2004; Speaker, Consumer Law Section, Michigan State Bar, October 2004; Identity Theft CLE, Virginia State Bar, November 2004; Speaker and Panelist, "Changing Faces of Consumer Law" CLE Seminar, American Bar Association, December 2004; Speaker, Consumer Law, Naval Justice School, Newport, Rhode Island, March 2005.
Presented NACA's Congressional Testimony before House Committee on Financial Services, "Fair Credit Reporting Act: How it Functions for Consumers and the Economy", June 4, 2003, Proposed Amendments to the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act,
http://financialservices.house.gov/media/pdf/060403lb.pdf.
Practice is limited to the representation of consumers. Litigated cases throughout the country and am currently involved in cases throughout Virginia and in California, North Carolina, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Arizona. Litigated multiple class actions in South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and California.
www.myfaircredit.com

Mari Frank, Esq. Interviews Joanne McNabb and other experts at the Cyber Safe Summitt

oanne McNabb is Chief of the California Office of Privacy Protection. Created by legislation in 2001, the first-in-the-nation Office is a resource and advocate on identity theft and other privacy issues. In addition to providing information and education for consumers, the Office also publishes privacy practice recommendations for business and other organizations.
McNabb is co-chair of the International Association of Privacy Professionals' Government Working Group and a member of the Privacy Advisory Committee to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Before starting up the Office of Privacy Protection, McNabb had over 20 years experience in public affairs and marketing, in both the public and private sectors, including five years with an international marketing company in France. Her marketing background gives her an understanding of the commercial uses of personal information that have become a significant privacy concern.
McNabb attended Occidental College and holds a master's degree in Medieval Literature from the University of California, Davis.
www.privacy.ca.gov

Mari Frank Interviews Aissa Wayne, Esq. Author of John Wayne My Father, Privacy and Celebrities

Prior to practicing family law, Ms. Wayne was a criminal prosecutor for the City of Los Angeles. As a prosecutor, she handled over 500 criminal cases and was the lead prosecutor in over 50 criminal and domestic violence jury trials in her capacity as a Deputy City Attorney for the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office. Her substantial litigation experience and background places her in the top ranks of the family law field. As a result of her unique background, she brings an understanding of matters dealing with family law to her practice. She attributes her past and current successes to persistence, dedication and strong moral and spiritual conviction.
Ms. Wayne testified before the House of Representatives for the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office on domestic violence bills dealing with domestic violence and family law issues. She has also been a guest speaker and legal analyst on live television shows including CNN-Larry King Live and FOX News. She has also spoken for several reputable professional organizations.
Currently, Ms. Wayne is serving on the Auxiliary Board of the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California. Ms. Wayne is also a member of the Congressional Business Advisory Council in Washington D.C. Her publishing credits include the acclaimed Random House Publication book, "John Wayne, My Father," as a personal memoir to her father, the late actor John Wayne. She has also authored several articles including "Celebrity Divorce", recently published in the Orange County Lawyer Magazine.
Ms. Wayne attended the University of Southern California as an undergraduate. She was admitted to the California Bar in January 1995. Her memberships include Los Angeles and Orange County Bar Associations and Theta Phi Law Fraternity, International.
www.Waynelawgroup.com