What if your next idea—which could be the next big idea—involves a web-based collection, compilation, or a sliver of “big data” that is so ingenious that customers and investors will line up to get their hands on it? The idea most likely comes with an e-commerce angle, such as a unique feature complete with pricing…

US relations with the European Union took another hit last week, when the European Parliament voted to suspend Privacy Shield, the agreement between the US and the EU that allows companies to transfer the personal information of EU citizens out of the EU to US companies that have promised to adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). Between the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, the passage of the CLOUD Act and the Russian hack (sorry – alleged Russian hack) of the 2016 election, the EP felt that Privacy Shield did not provide an adequate level of protection for EU citizens. The US has until September 1 to become compliant.

Colorado’s Protections for Consumer Data Privacy law (“new law”) takes effect on September 1, 2018 and requires that businesses holding personal information for Colorado residents destroy the data they don’t need, protect the data they decide to keep, and disclose any security breaches involving that data within 30 days of its occurrence. The new law amends existing obligations and adds new obligations applicable to businesses holding information about Colorado residents.

Blockchain technology is seeing increasingly wide use internationally, but security issues are becoming a major problem.

Blockchain is a public electronic ledger that can be openly shared among users and that creates an unchangeable record of their transactions. Each transaction, or “block”, is time-stamped and linked to the previous one. Each block is then linked to a specific participant. Blockchain can only be updated by consensus between users in the system, and when new data is entered, it can never be erased, edited, adjusted, or changed.

For over twenty years, my father was a wholesale seafood supplier. One day over dinner (probably lobster, because that’s just how we rolled), my father tells us that he has hired an off-duty US Department of Agriculture inspector to inspect the fish that his company will be sending out to its grocery store clients. When I asked him if this was a legal requirement, he said it was not (the Department of Health and Human Services, via the FDA, apparently regulates fish, not the USDA). When I then asked him why he was doing it, he said, “If you were in the grocery store and you saw one piece of fish labelled ‘USDA Government Inspected’ and one piece of fish without that label, which one would you buy?” An informal “seal” program had been born!

On March 17, the New York Times covered a new item on the growing list of high-profile data breaches with its article detailing how a British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, obtained personal information from millions of Facebook users by way of a low-profile researcher. The revelation sent shock waves through the online community, and the public outcry was swift and resounding. As more details emerge, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica will continue to face political and legal repercussions from all angles—with one possible legal instrument being the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Earlier this month, Uber released its new program, Uber Health. In a nutshell, Uber Health is a program that facilitates patient transportation to and from appointments with healthcare providers. According to Uber, Uber Health works like this:

Recently, I counseled an employer regarding the termination of a high level HR employee. The termination wasn’t fun but the company’s termination process was followed. Unfortunately, that was the problem. The employer collected and turned off the exiting employee’s company badge. The employer took the same actions for the corporate credit card. The exiting employee’s laptop was collected and IT was informed to shut down the individual’s access to all systems immediately.