Economic Espionage Act of 1996

The malicious act of gathering proprietary, secret, private, sensitive, or confidential information about an organization for the express purpose of disclosing and often selling that data to a competitor or other interested organization (such as a foreign government). The practice or employment of spies; the practice of watching the words and conduct of others, to make discoveries, as spies or secret emissaries; secret watching. This category of computer crime includes international spies and their contractors who steal secrets from defense, academic, and laboratory research facility computer systems. It includes criminals who steal information and intelligence from law enforcement computers, and industrial espionage agents who operate for competitive companies or for foreign governments who are willing to pay for the information. What has generally been known as industrial espionage is now being called competitive intelligence. A lot of information can be gained through “open source” collection and analysis without ever having to break into a competitor’s computer. This information gathering is also competitive intelligence, although it is not as ethically questionable as other techniques.
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Failure to exercise the degree of care considered reasonable under the circumstances, resulting in an unintended injury to another party. Failure to use such care as a reasonably prudent and careful person would use under similar circumstances; the doing of some act which a person of ordinary prudence would not have done under similar circumstances or failure to do what a person of ordinary prudence would have done under similar circumstances; conduct that falls below the norm for the protection of others against unreasonable risk of harm. It is characterized by inadvertence, thoughtlessness, inattention, recklessness, etc.
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A person, organization, or technical means that provides foreign intelligence or foreign counterintelligence and that, if its identity or capability is disclosed, is vulnerable to counteraction that could nullify or significantly reduce its effectiveness in providing foreign intelligence or foreign counterintelligence to the United States. An intelligence source also means a person or organization that provides foreign intelligence or foreign counterintelligence to the United States only on the condition that its identity remains undisclosed.
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A law that mandates that government agencies maintain only records that are necessary to conduct their business and destroy those records when they are no longer needed for a legitimate function of government. It provides a formal procedure for individuals to gain access to records the government maintains about them and to request that incorrect records be amended. The Privacy Act also restricts the way the federal government can deal with private information about individual citizens. The federal law that allows individuals to know what information about them is on file and how it is used by all government agencies and their contractors. The 1986 Electronic Communication Act is an extension of the Privacy Act.
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In 2009, Congress amended HIPAA by passing the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. This law updated many of HIPAA’s privacy and security requirements and was implemented through the HIPAA Omnibus Rule in 2013. One of the changes mandated by the new regulations is a change in the way the law treats business associates (BAs), organizations that handle protected health information (PHI) on behalf of a HIPAA-covered entity. HITECH also introduced new data breach notification requirements.
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