Dealing with the Aftermath of  Yet Another Data Breach . . . Bring in the Lawyers

A couple weeks ago someone asked me what “area of law” is currently a big litigation area in civil law. My immediate response was data breach / data privacy. And within a couple days we all learned that Equifax had suffered a data breach and hackers had accessed up to 143 million customer account details, including names, Social Security numbers, driver licenses, and credit card numbers. Just take a look at the Identity Theft Resource Center’s website and you’ll see that data breaches are growing rapidly year in and year out. Just take a look at the list put out by WIRED of data breaches in 2017 and you’ll see names like Verizon and Chipotle. And, as the Equifax breach shows, no company appears safe.

Data breaches, like the Equifax breach, create numerous legal issues that produce a fair amount of litigation. First, if the hackers can be tracked down, you have companies suing the hackers.  Second, you have class actions by the customers or consumers whose information was taken against the companies who were hacked. Those typical class-action lawsuits involve questions such as, what policies did the company have in place to prevent the hack and to detect the hack, did the company follow those policies, and how quickly did the company act upon learning of the hack. From what we know regarding the Equifax breach, the breached lasted for two and a half months and Equifax was aware of the potential breach point before it was hacked. So Equifax will be litigating whether its policies and actions were “reasonable” in light of industry standards and what it knew and when. Third, you may have a litigation fight between Equifax and its insurers if Equifax believes its insurance covered data breaches resulting from negligence. There the insurers will argue that language does not cover the breach while Equifax will argue the language does cover the breaches. 

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Experts Describe Trump’s Big, But Not Unlimited, Foreign Policy Changes

“Wow.”

Over more than a decade of “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” programs at Marquette Law School, has that ever previously been the first word spoken by someone Gousha was interviewing? But has there ever been a president like Donald Trump before?

So when Gousha opened an “On the Issues” program Thursday by asking Ingrid Wuerth, director of the International Legal Studies Program at Vanderbilt University, for thoughts on  the Trump administration’s foreign policy, her first words were: “Wow, the differences between the Trump administration and the Obama administration.”

Wuerth, a leading scholar of foreign affairs and public international law, listed treaties and other international agreements where Trump has shifted directions substantially from what President Barack Obama did. She said there has been “a significant step back from international law and international organizations.”

But, Wuerth noted, Trump “has not been an international law violator,” and that should be kept in mind. For example, Trump said the United States will withdraw from the Paris Accord on climate change, but he is following the five-year process for doing that rather than simply shutting down American involvement. And he has sought to renegotiate trade agreements, but he has not advocated violating existing ones, Wuerth said.

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Jiang Tianyong, Subversion, and the Seductive Rule of Law

Chinese lawyer Jiang Tianyong sits in front of a microphone during his trial.As the Chinese lawyer Jiang Tianyong painfully realized, a belief in the rule of law is commendable in one context but deplorable in another.  While a belief in the rule of law has traditionally been honored in the dominant American ideology, the same belief is suspect given the dominant Chinese ideology.

Jiang had been a prominent human rights lawyer in Beijing and represented a large number of Chinese dissidents, often with surprising success.  His most famous client was perhaps Chen Guangcheng, an activist who fled house arrest and received asylum in the American Embassy.  Most recently, Jiang represented a group of other human rights lawyers, who were being prosecuted for criticizing the government.

In late August, 2017, Jiang himself was convicted of inciting subversion and attempting to undermine the Chinese Communist Party.  His trial as broadcast live on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media network, and highlights of the trial appeared daily on Chinese network television.

Jiang’s conviction was hardly surprising since, late in the trial, Jiang confessed.  In his confession, Jiang apologized for the harm he had done and, indeed, admitted he was part of a conspiracy to topple the Chinese Communist Party.  His confession ended with an emotional plea for mercy and for “a chance to become a new person.”

What’s surprising, at least for an American, is that Jiang said he had stumbled into subversion because of a misguided belief in the rule of law.  Jiang pointed at “the bourgeois Western constitutional system” and claimed that it had a “subliminal influence on him.”  Because of his belief in the rule of law, Jiang said, he rejected China’s political system and worked to replace it with the type of system that reigns in the United States.

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