Law, Policy, Results
Poblete Tamargo Senior Policy Dr. Advisor Andy Gomez, based in Miami, Florida, was recently interviewed about Russian plans to help Cuba re-open a signals facility in Lourdes, Cuba.
“If the report is true, there’s no question Washington will put Cuba engagement on the back burner,” said Andy Gomez, a retired Cuba specialist at the University of Miami and now senior policy adviser for the Washington law firm Poblete Tamargo.
You can read the entire story at the Sacramento Bee.
Governor Scott recently signed into law the Florida Information Protection Act of 2014 (FIPA). FIPA is effective starting July 1, 2014. The following is a brief overview of FIPA as well as its key sections.
FIPA updates existing data privacy laws for the State of Florida. It requires all entities subject to the law to “take reasonable measures to protect and secure data in electronic form containing personal information.” The following three questions are discussed in this blog post: (1) What is an entity?; (2) What is personal information?; and (3) What are reasonable measures? We will also briefly discuss the consequences of failing to comply with the new law.
What Is An Entity?
Under FIPA, an entity includes any and all organizations, including businesses, trusts, estate, associations, cooperative that acquire and maintain, store, or use personal information. In other words, if you are organization that uses personal information, you are required to use reasonable care to protect that information.
An entity is basically any organization that does business in the State of Florida. FIPA also applies to government entities, and third party contractors, who are contracted to maintain, store, or process personal information on an entity’s behalf.
What is Personal Information?
There are two groups of personal information. The first classification of personal information includes items that include a person’s first name, or first initial, and last name, with combination of the following information:
The second classification of personal information includes all email addresses, in combination with a password or security question, that grant access to an online account. Information deemed a “public record,” (i.e. information found in courthouses, or property records) are not deemed as personal information. Also, information that is encrypted, secured, or modified that removes elements of personal information is exempted from this definition.
What is Reasonable Care and What Are the Reporting Requirements?
FIPA does not define reasonable care; rather reasonable care will be open to a case-by-case analysis. The law is triggered when a data breach impacts a minimum of 500 Floridians has occurred or is suspected to have occurred.
The breach must be notified not only to the police, or the relevant federal agency (if applicable), but also to the Florida Attorney General’s Department of Legal Affairs. Notification must occur within thirty (30) days. If the data breach occurs as a result of a third party contractor, the organization has ten (10) days to notify the Department of Legal Affairs.
If the data breach affects 1,000 Floridians or more, FIPA requires that the organization report the breach to all consumer-reporting agencies, as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, without reasonable delay.
Penalties for Non-Compliance & Other Matters
Failure to obtain reasonable measures as well failures to notify will result in fines of up to $500,000 and remedies included under Florida’s unfair or deceptive trade practice as set forth in Florida Statute § 501.207.
Finally, there is no private cause of action allowed under FIPA. In other words, no individual lawsuits against companies and other entities will be allowed under state court pursuant to FIPA.
Since reasonable measures are not specified, it is imperative to contact your attorney to discuss how we can assist you in protecting data.
Our data privacy compliance attorneys and specialists can assist your company in becoming compliant under the law. We offer the following services:
Through its close proximity to Latin America and the Caribbean, South Florida has evolved into one of Latin America’s top cities for investments and business dealings by offering companies international connections, a highly diverse community, and a large concentration of foreign-born workers. With immigrants at the forefront of entrepreneurial businesses, it is no surprise that South Florida has been nationally and internationally recognized as leading the way into the next revolutionary technological wave.
Just this last month, Miami hosted eMerge Americas, a five-day summit that focused not only on presenting the newest companies and most state-of-the-art trends in technology, but also, on forging relationships between Latin America’s top business executives and technological visionaries and global industry leaders.
Fueling South Florida’s technological growth and development, the international software company Microsoft, announced earlier this year that it chose South Florida as a flagship city for one of its first trademarked innovation centers. The Microsoft centers program will serve as an innovative environment to improve technological training and understanding in local communities.
Accompanying the recent rise in technological advances is the new, heightened concern over the collection of customer personal data by businesses throughout a wide array of industries, including, travel, finance, education, entertainment, healthcare, media, service and commercial.
South Florida businesses face three challenges. The first challenge they face is compliance with both U.S. federal and state laws. The second challenge is compliance with the individual Latin American countries’ data privacy laws. The third and final challenge is the market forces that are requiring companies to address data privacy when the aforementioned regulations are not enough.
To meet these challenges, companies need to recognize and protect against privacy gaps, thoroughly assessing a company’s risk analysis and appropriate breach management, and adopting policies that ensure compliance with ongoing and fast-changing government regulations, companies would build defenses against legal and business-related consequences. The purpose of these safeguards is to protect consumers against a data breach, but also to contain a data breach when it happens.
Failure to appropriately input safeguards may not only result in legal liability and regulatory sanctions, but potential ramifications also lie in damage to one’s business reputation, customer distrust, and reduced revenue, as seen by recent resignation of Target’s CEO as a result of the major data breach earlier this year, among others.
Please contact us should you have any questions or inquiries regarding data privacy policy, U.S. immigration laws, or related business advisory services. Our bilingual attorneys and professional consultants understand these issues and also have a unique perspective of the South Florida marketplace.
(Washington, DC) Commonly referred to as the “Gateway to the Americas,” South Florida has long served as a major business and immigration hub for individuals and companies. With its close proximity to Latin America and the Caribbean, and its highly diverse ethnic population, it is no surprise that South Florida has become the newest region of choice by high-tech entrepreneurs from all over the world.
On March 25, 2014, the Ewing Marion Kaufman Foundation released the findings of its national study, “Lessons for U.S. Metro Areas: Characteristics and Clustering of High-Tech Immigrant Entrepreneurs.” Though the data to this study is limited to 2000-2011, it highlights the significant changes South Florida’s technology sector has undergone since 2000.
The Kaufman Foundation study found that for high tech entrepreneurs distributed throughout the top twenty-five metropolitan statistical areas, Miami and Fort Lauderdale not only have the first and third highest rates of immigrant high-tech entrepreneurs, respectively, but the areas also proved to have the fastest growth rates of foreign-born high-tech entrepreneurs.
The report also explains why South Florida remains an attractive market for high-tech entrepreneurs from all over the world. A positive correlation was discovered between a metropolitan city having a larger share of the foreign-born population and a higher ethnic diversity as key factors in bringing in high-tech business. With a population of 51.2% foreign-born persons, of which 64.3% Hispanics in Miami Dade County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and an existing culture of entrepreneurship, it is easy to understand why South Florida is leading the immigrant high-tech entrepreneurial wave.
This high tech upsurge coincides with a growing area of law-data privacy. With the rapid development of technology, companies are able to obtain a lot more personal information about its customers; this presents new legal opportunities and challenges. As the major Target breach earlier this year has shown, failure to protect consumer’s data will result in damage to a company’s reputation, loss of consumer trust and decreased revenue. This is in addition to any regulatory penalties that will be incurred as well.
When asked about the ongoing changes in data privacy law, Arthur Freyre, an attorney with Poblete Tamargo, stated, “For companies, this wealth of new information allows companies to better serve their clients. The challenge is for companies to protect that sensitive data from hackers. It is critical for companies to take the appropriate measures to protect themselves against anything that threatens customer data and trust.”
Please contact us should you have any questions or inquiries regarding data privacy policy, U.S. immigration laws, as well as potentially related business advisory services, for your matter.
The Boston Globe: “Cuba, you owe us $7 billion”: ” … What’s often forgotten, though, is that the embargo was actually triggered by something concrete: an enormous pile of American assets that Castro seized in the process of nationalizing the Cuban economy. Some of these assets were the vacation homes and bank accounts of wealthy individuals. But the lion’s share of the confiscated property—originally valued at $1.8 billion, which at 6 percent simple interest translates to nearly $7 billion today—was sugar factories, mines, oil refineries, and other business operations belonging to American corporations, among them the Coca-Cola Co., Exxon, and the First National Bank of Boston. A 2009 article in the Inter-American Law Review described Castro’s nationalization of US assets as the “largest uncompensated taking of American property by a foreign government in history.”
Read the entire story here.
