Update: Sounds like the arguments of a
six year old...
By Dissent,
January 7, 2012
There’s a follow-up to a situation I
blogged about earlier this week where a patients’
records were revealed to media by executives of Shasta Regional
Medical Center without explicit patient consent.
Michael Hiltzik provides an update to
his previous coverage:
Prime Healthcare
has responded, with a letter and a public statement, to my
January 4 column about the flouting of patient confidentiality by
its corporate office and two executives at its Shasta Regional
Medical Center. In the response, Prime states for the record that it
believes its disclosure of medical information about the patient,
Darlene Courtois, was legal because she “voluntarily disclosed her
medical records” to the investigative reporting organization
California Watch. The company’s statement is here.
Read more on The
Los Angeles Times.
Having read their statement, all I can
say is “wow” and they should probably shut up before they step in
it even more. In their statement, they write:
SRMC has reviewed
the facts and circumstances surrounding the claim made by Mr. Hiltzik
and determined, in consultation with legal counsel, that there has
been no violation of federal and state privacy laws.
Well, they don’t get to make that
determination, despite their assertion. The federal and state
agencies or the courts make that determination. All they can really
say is that they didn’t think they were violating any state or
federal law and still don’t think they are.
But it gets worse (from my
perspective). They go on to say:
By publicly
engaging in these activities, SRMC was informed and believed that the
patient waived her HIPAA rights and that in fact she wanted her
medical information to be disclosed and examined. In addition, among
other things, SRMC had a good faith belief that the disclosure, if
any, was necessary to prevent or lessen a threat to the health and
safety of the public.
How do they figure that SRMC was
“informed” that the patient waived their
responsibilities under HIPAA? Are they mind readers? Of course not.
Perhaps they drew an inference, but an inference does not negate any
legal obligations.
I think it’s ridiculous that they now
throw in a “good faith belief” that their disclosure was
necessary to prevent a threat to the health and safety of the public.
The only clear threat I can see in the situation is a threat to
their reputation. Are they arguing that if people believed the
previous statements by California Watch they might avoid necessary
care at SRMC?
I really think they’ve dug themselves
into a deep hole on this one and it would have been better to say
that their understanding was that if she talked, they could, too.
They still would have been wrong under HIPAA (as I understand it,
anyway), but their repeated insistence that they did
nothing wrong legally is only inviting a smackdown by HHS and the
state.
Update: Given a full range of
capability, what is an appropriate level of response? Would you
break his thumbs or screw up his credit rating?
In the wake of the online theft of at
least 6,000 credit card numbers belonging to Israelis, Israel's
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that "Israel has
active capabilities for striking at those who are trying to harm it,
and no
agency or hacker will be immune from retaliatory action."
Also at Reuters, with a few more details about the believed thief,
known as OxOmar: "After Israeli media ran what they said were
interviews conducted with OxOmar over email, the Haaretz newspaper
said a blogger had tracked the hacker down and determined he was a
19-year-old citizen of the United Arab Emirates studying and working
in Mexico."
What is the threshold for
decertification? Are the vendors employing a Jedi mind trick?
“These are not the failures you are looking for...”
E-ballot
device for presidential vote has bugs, report confirms
The Formal
Investigative Report issued late last month by the Electronic
Assistance Commission (EAC), which certifies electronic voting
equipment, issued a notice of noncompliance for the DS200 optical
scanning device manufactured by Electronic Systems & Software
(ES&S), but did
not decertify the machine.
The report found three anomalies:
- Intermittent screen freezes, system lockups, and shutdowns that prevent the voting system from operating in the manner in which it was designed
- Failure to log all normal and abnormal voting system events
- Skewing of the ballot, resulting in a negative effect on system accuracy
Specifically, the DS200 failed in some
cases to record when the touch screen was calibrated or the system
was powered on or off, failed to read votes correctly
when a ballot was inserted at an angle, and accepted
a voted ballot without recording the ballot on its
internal counter and without recording the marks, according to the
report.
More likely an AT&T-like tap at the
collection point. More efficient. Much simpler to enable.
"In a
tweet early this morning, cybersecurity researcher Christopher
Soghoian pointed to an internal memo of India's Military
Intelligence that has been liberated by hackers and posted
on the Net. The memo suggests that, "in exchange for the
Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including
RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as
"RINOA") have agreed to provide
backdoor access on their devices. The Indian
government then "utilized backdoors provided by RINOA" to
intercept internal emails of the U.S.-China
Economic and Security Review Commission, a U.S. government body
with a mandate to monitor, investigate and report to Congress on 'the
national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic
relationship' between the U.S. and China. Manan Kakkar, an Indian
blogger for ZDNet, has also picked
up the story and writes that it may be the fruits of an earlier
hack of Symantec. If Apple is providing governments with a backdoor
to iOS, can we assume that they have also done so with Mac OS X?"
Something for the Criminal Justice
students?
Document:
‘Black box’ data from Lt. Governor Murray’s crash
January 7, 2012 by Dissent
I’ve occasionally blogged about EDRs
or “black box recorders” in cars. But have you ever seen their
output or a report from one? I hadn’t. The Boston Globe published
one such report after Massachusetts’ Lieutenant Governor Timothy P.
Murray was in an accident
in a state vehicle. The findings contradicted his previous
statements about the accident.
Anyway, you can read the report here.
And do note the disclaimer section about what the instruments record
and don’t record – and how crash reconstructionists need to be
aware of certain limitations.
Very interesting chart. After
Healthcare and Lawyers comes computer geeks and educators – I
suspect someone isn't reading the numbers correctly.
January 07, 2012
WSJ
- 2011 Jobs Snapshot - Unemployment Rate by Job
"The national U.S. unemployment
rate is 8.5%, but that varies widely by what profession you might be
in. The below chart shows the size of select industries and their
unemployment rates. The table below shows all the occupations within
those industries and their unemployment rates. Search
the list to find what the unemployment rate is for your job."
Another tool for the “We don't need
no stinking lawyers” folder?
Usually the license agreements you
agree to while signing up for a web service or installing software
include many confusing portions that discourage you from reading
everything. Here to make matters simpler is a desktop tool called
EULAlyzer.
… When the app opens up you can
either paste license agreements into it or click on an icon to
indicate which window the agreement is open in.
Once the agreement has been detected,
the app analyzes it and searches for ‘interesting’ words and
terms that you should go over.
Also read related article: 4
Ways To Read & Understand An End User License Agreement (EULA)
More Easily.
I know many instructors (you know who
you are) that create brilliant, easy to read handouts on a wide
variety of software and other topics just for the six or ten students
in a class. Might as well get paid for the work you have already
done...
On Whizzley, you can become a
publishing author for free, and submit your own articles as regularly
as you want. You won't have to create your very own blog, and you
won't have to worry about running it either. That'll be taken care
of for you. You'll be free to focus on your writing, and on saying
what you want to say using the best words you could ever use. And
you'll be paid for your efforts, you'll get a permanent 50% to 60%
share of royalties.
No comments:
Post a Comment