Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) vetoed a data breach notification bill (SB-1833) that would have extended the types of protected personal information to include medical, health insurance, biometric, consumer marketing and geolocation information. In a letter to the General Assembly dated Aug. 21, Rauner said the bill was too burdensome compared with efforts in other states, requiring breach notification to occur in 30 days instead of 45 days, which Rauner said would hurt the state’s economy. If the legislature removed geolocation information and consumer marketing data from the bill as protected information, and other “duplicative information,” Rauner said he would sign the legislation. Notification should remain at 45 days, he said.

“Strong end-user privacy and security controls, such as device encryption and firmware passwords, not only protect personal information from unwanted access -- they can also make it easier to recover lost or stolen devices,” wrote FTC Chief Technologist Ashkan Soltani in a blog post Thursday. Soltani said that during a family trip to the West Coast last month, his personal laptop was stolen from a rental car. “I backup regularly and always enable disk encryption” to protect the information stored on the hard-disk from “unwanted access” with the exception of that by very sophisticated adversaries, he said. “I had also set a firmware password, which is an end-user control that essentially prevents the machine from being booted up or reset without knowing the password.” A few weeks later, he received an email from Apple reminding him of an upcoming visit to an Apple tech at an Apple Genius Bar and realized the thief likely needed help unlocking the computer. He notified law enforcement and Apple. Soltani received a call from Apple notifying him it was working with law enforcement to return the computer to him. The moral of the story is “strong end-user controls like device encryption and firmware passwords not only protect sensitive info stored on the device, they also prevent criminals from utilizing stolen property,” Soltani said. “The more devices feature strong end-user controls, the less likely thieves can profit from their theft on the open market.”

The debut of Apple Watch catapulted Apple into second place in wearables shipment volume and market share in Q2, said IDC. Apple shipped 3.6 million watches in Q2, 19.9 percent of the worldwide wearables market, said the research firm Thursday. Market leader Fitbit shipped 4.4 million units, losing roughly 6 percentage points in market share, but it had 159 percent growth during the quarter, said IDC. Total wearables shipment volume for the quarter was 18.1 million units, up 223 percent jump from Q2 2014, it said. "Anytime Apple enters a new market, not only does it draw attention to itself, but to the market as a whole," said Ramon Llamas, research manager-wearables at IDC. Apple's arrival in the category had the greatest impact on smart wearables capable of running third-party apps, said Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst.

Global shipments of tablets, including “detachables” sold with 2-in-1 devices, are expected to decline 8 percent this year to 212 million, IDC said Wednesday in a forecast report. The 2-in-1 segment “is starting to gain traction,” the research firm said. IDC expects that segment to grow 86.5 percent year over year in 2015, with 14.7 million units shipped. IDC sees iOS tablet device shipments declining 14.9 percent this year to 54 million units, while Android tablet shipments are expected to decline 10 percent to 139.8 million. Percentage-wise, Windows tablets will be 2015's big winner, rising 59.5 percent to 17.7 million, it said. IDC also sees Windows tablets rising at a 30.3 percent compound annual growth rate through 2019, compared with a 2.7 percent CAGR decline for Android and a 0.5 percent CAGR decline for iOS.

Cisco said it completed the purchase of cybersecurity firm OpenDNS. The $635 million deal, announced in late June (see 1506300068), “will advance Cisco's Security Everywhere approach by adding broad visibility, enforcement, and threat intelligence from the OpenDNS cloud-delivered platform,” Cisco said Thursday. The company began integrating OpenDNS’ platforms Thursday via an application programming interface that will allow customers of both companies’ services to immediately benefit from both the OpenDNS Umbrella service and Cisco’s AMP Threat Grid. “By integrating the OpenDNS platform with Cisco's security solutions, customers will receive greater network visibility and threat intelligence for cloud delivered protection against malicious websites and threats,” David Goeckeler, Cisco general manager-Security Business Group, said in a news release. OpenDNS CEO David Ulevitch is now Cisco Security Business Group vice president, Cisco said.

The Department of Defense issued a proposed interim rule on cyber incidents. It would amend the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) to implement a section of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2013 and a section of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2015, both of which require contractor reporting on network penetrations, said a DOD notice in Wednesday's Federal Register. “This interim rule requires contractors and subcontractors to report cyber incidents that result in an actual or potentially adverse effect on a covered contractor information system or covered defense information residing therein, or on a contractor's ability to provide operationally critical support,” the Pentagon said. “Cyber incidents involving classified information on classified contractor systems will continue to be reported in accordance with the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual.” Comments are due Oct. 26.

Twitter’s decision to no longer allow accountability projects to track deleted tweets (see 1506040057) from politicians and public officials is a “disappointing move,” wrote Electronic Frontier Foundation Director-Copyright Activism Parker Higgins in a blog post Wednesday. “Politicians will frequently use the platform to take a stance or react to an issue, and in many cases news reporters -- who might have previously called for comment, or quoted from a press statement -- will embed the tweet directly,” Higgins said. “Twitter has gone to great lengths to defend free speech in the past.” While no one is arguing that Twitter is legally obligated to make deleted tweets available, the company’s recent compliance with “bogus” Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices (see 1508250054) is disappointing, he said. The new restrictions will be felt more by transparency groups than advertisers and individuals monitoring deleted tweets, because the organizations are “blocked by policy from ‘surfacing’ them,” Higgins said.

The ICANN board is preparing comments on the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability’s (CCWG-Accountability) revised proposal for changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms, ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker said Wednesday in a blog post. CCWG-Accountability released its revised ICANN accountability proposal earlier this month for public comment. Comments are due Sept. 12 (see 1508040058). ICANN board members and staff have been meeting in Washington “to further consider the CCWG proposal and commence a review of an impact analysis from ICANN's external counsel,” Crocker said. The board plans to release its impact analysis on the CCWG-Accountability proposal comments forum and plans a teleconference with the working group next week to “help inform the Board's development of its comments,” he said. CCWG-Accountability should also hold a public meeting in Los Angeles in late September on the proposal “to continue the dialogue” with the ICANN board, Crocker said.

First-ever U.N. Special Rapporteur on Privacy Joseph Cannataci doesn’t use Facebook or Twitter because he believes in privacy, he said in an interview with The Guardian Monday. “We have a number of corporations that have set up a business model that is bringing in hundreds of thousands of millions of euros and dollars every year and they didn’t ask anybody’s permission,” he said. “Unfortunately, the vast bulk of people sign their rights away without knowing or thinking too much about it.” Technology is presented as ever-developing, not as being controlling, but as confirmed in documents released by former NSA-contractor Edward Snowden, technology has ever-developing sinister capabilities that have “gone out of control,” Cannataci said.

Best Buy will expand sales of the Apple Watch to all its 1,050 big-box stores and to 30 of its Best Buy Mobile stores by the end of September, CEO Hubert Joly said on an earnings call. Best Buy has been working with Apple to update the 740 stores-within-a-store that were launched in 2007 to include new and larger Apple displays for iPhones, MacBook computers and iPads, Joly said Tuesday. The Apple Watch went on sale earlier this month at BestBuy.com and in more than 100 brick-and-mortar Best Buy stores, he said. Just as the iPhone 6 launch “was certainly a traffic driver” for Best Buy, the retailer also is “thrilled to have a new traffic driver this year, something very iconic,” Chief Financial Officer Sharon McCollam said of the Apple Watch. It’s “very notable” that 89 percent of the U.S. population lives in states “where one of our online competitors, headquartered in Seattle, now collects the sales tax,” Joly said in obvious reference to Amazon. Three years ago, that proportion was less than half, he said. Joly has been a strong advocate of e-commerce taxation changes on the grounds that online-only retailers that aren't compelled to collect sales tax have, as a consequence, a strong competitive advantage over retailers that run physical stores.