May

"California appears to be the latest state to join the criminal-background-restriction bandwagon. A new law enacted last month amends the California Labor Code to prohibit public and private employers from asking job applicants about criminal records that have been expunged, sealed or dismissed. ""The good news is that [the law] doesn 't break entirely new ground, but instead modifies existing law,"" says Brian Inamine, a LeClairRyan labor and employment attorney. ""The bad news is that it represents one more hurdle that businesses have to contend with."" To date, 43 cities, counties and municipalities, and 10 states have passed ""ban the box"" legislation for public-only or public and private employers, making questions about criminal convictions on job applications illegal."

The bill, introduced in the Senate on January 15, 2014 and cited as the Data Security Act of 2014, would require entities such as financial institutions, retailers, and federal agencies to better safeguard sensitive information, investigate security breaches, and notify consumers when there is a substantial risk of identity theft or account fraud. The new requirements would apply to businesses that take credit or debit card information, data brokers that compile private information, and government agencies that possess nonpublic personal information. According to Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who introduced the bill, the Data Security Act of 2014 is modeled after the data security and breach-response regime established under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 and subsequent regulations.

"According to the Federal Trade Commission ( 'the ""FTC"") and media reports, companies are using predictive scoring for a variety of purposes, ranging from identity verification and fraud prevention to marketing and advertising. The scores, are touted to predict, for example, the likelihood that a person has committed identity fraud or that a certain transaction will result in fraud, the credit risk associated with mortgage loan applications, whether contacting a consumer by mail or phone will lead to successful debt collection, or whether sending a catalog to a certain address will result in an in-store or online purchase. Consumers are largely unaware of these scores, and have little or no access to the underlying data. As a result, predictive scoring products raise a variety of privacy concerns and questions that the FTC intends to explore. Among the issues, are what consumer protections exist or should be provided, and whether certain scores are considered eligibility determinants that fall under the ambit of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. "