Half a million dollars awarded for healthcare privacy research in US

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $538,595 to the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research to support a two-year project titled “Protecting Privacy in Health Research.”

The group specifically intends to address the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s (HIPAA) “Privacy Rule,” which they contend falls short of adequately protecting privacy, yet impedes medical research by placing unreasonable burdens upon life scientists. Full article here.

Check out Google’s new privacy controls!

Looks as though Google is taking a significant initiative in enabling transparency in what they are collecting on you and how it is used. Check out this for the full article.

“It has created a window into part of its database, so users can see that Google has deduced that they are interested in “Anime & Manga” comics, or “Alternative-Punk-Metal” music or travel to Afghanistan. (Yes, those are on its list of 600 interest categories.)

It also built technology to allow your browser to remember that you don’t want Google (or its DoubleClick unit) to remember anything about you. It is more robust than the opt-out system used by many companies that rely on cookies in browsers. These are technical feats that other ad companies said would be too hard.”