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Daily Archives: December 12, 2013

Report – Federal Contractors Frequently Put Workers’ Lives and Livelihoods at Risk

Acting Responsibly? Federal Contractors Frequently Put  Workers’ Lives and Livelihoods at Risk – Senator Harkin Unveils HELP Committee Investigation on Labor Law Violations Among Major Government Contractors, December 11, 2013.

“Each year, the United States pays out over $500 billion in taxpayer dollars to private companies for goods and services, much of which is used to pay the salaries of millions of workers. Taken together, companies that receive government contracts employ an estimated 22 percent of the American workforce, approximately 26 million workers. In recent years, the federal government has increasingly used the contracting process to procure employee-based service work such as cleaning, security, and construction. However, a new analysis shows that taxpayer dollars are routinely being paid to companies that are putting the livelihoods and the lives of workers at risk. Many of the most flagrant violators of federal workplace safety and wage laws are also recipients of large federal contracts. Some of the nation’s largest federal contractors fail to pay their workers the wages they have earned or provide their employees with safe and healthy working conditions. The analysis found that almost 30 percent of the top violators of federal wage and safety laws are also current federal contractors.”

 

Brookings – Cyber-enabled Competitive Data Theft

Cyber-enabled Competitive Data Theft: A Framework for Modeling Long-Run Cybersecurity Consequences by Allan A. Friedman, Austen Mack-Crane and Ross A. Hammond “Cybersecurity has become a pressing policy issue, and has drawn the attention of the national security community. Yet there is an emerging consensus among experts that one of the largest policy problems faced in cyberspace may… Continue Reading

Financial Regulators Issue Final Guidance on Social Media

“The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), on behalf of its members, today released final guidance on the applicability of consumer protection and compliance laws, regulations, and policies to activities conducted via social media by banks, savings associations, and credit unions, as well as nonbank entities supervised by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The guidance… Continue Reading

Victims Of Identity Theft, 2012

“An estimated 16.6 million people, representing 7 percent of all persons age 16 or older in the United States, experienced at least one incident of identity theft in 2012, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today – in Victims of Identity Theft, 2012 (NCJ 243779), written by BJS statisticians Erika Harrell and Lynn Langton.… Continue Reading

Escaping Entity-Centrism in Financial Services Regulation

Escaping Entity-Centrism in Financial Services Regulation – Anita K. Krug. Columbia Law Review. VOL. 113 DECEMBER 2013 NO. 8 Anita K. Krug ‘In the ongoing discussions about financial services regulation, one critically important topic has not been recognized, let alone addressed. That topic is what this Article calls the “entity-centrism” of financial services regulation. Laws and rules are entity-centric… Continue Reading

Regulating Ex Post: How Law Can Address the Inevitability of Financial Failure

Regulating Ex Post: How Law Can Address  the Inevitability of Financial Failure – Iman Anabtawi & Steven L. Schwarcz, Texas Law Review Vol. 92:75 “Unlike many other areas of regulation, financial regulation operates in the context of a complex interdependent system. The interconnections among firms, markets, and legal rules have implications for financial regulatory policy, especially the choice between… Continue Reading

How to Modernize and Improve the System of Insurance Regulation in the United States

How to Modernize and Improve the System of Insurance Regulation in the United States “The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO) today submitted to Congress and released a report on how to modernize and improve the system of insurance regulation in the United States.  Given the significance of the insurance sector in… Continue Reading

Pew – What happens to your digital life after death?

What happens to your digital life after you die? by Maeve Duggan – “It’s a question not many consider given how embedded the internet is in their lives. The typical web user has 25 online accounts, ranging from email to social media profiles and bank accounts, according to a 2007 study from Microsoft. But families, companies and legislators are… Continue Reading

President’s Bioethics Commission Releases Report on Incidental Findings

“Researchers conduct a memory study, scan a participant’s brain, and find more than they bargain for:  a tumor.  What do the researchers owe the participant? What does the participant want to know?  This is an increasingly common scenario for practitioners across contexts and for recipients of unexpected results that can be discovered through a variety… Continue Reading