“It's for their own good! Except of course when it causes great harm, but we have agreed that doesn't matter...”

Advocacy Group Issues Recommendations on Using Surveillance Data for HIV Care Linkage and Retention

Project Inform, an HIV and hepatitis advocacy and education group has published recommendations drafted by a diverse group of advocates and public health professionals guiding the use of laboratory data collected by public health surveillance agencies to link and retain people with HIV in health care. These recommendations were developed at a Think Tank held by Project Inform November 6 and 7 in San Francisco.

“The CDC has confirmed that only about half of all people with HIV are in consistent care in the United States.

… For several years now a majority of states and U.S. territories have mandated that labs report the results of CD4 and viral load tests to public health departments. Put in place originally to monitor the health of people living with HIV, in more recent years public health departments have used the data to identify people with HIV who were never linked to care or who have fallen out of care, and then reach out to those individuals directly or through a provider.

Such activities are not without controversy or risks to the person being contacted.

… “The risks of harm to individuals from improper use of HIV information can indeed be very real, especially in states with punitive laws related to HIV status disclosure,” said Walt Senterfitt, a Think Tank attendee and long time activist, public health epidemiologist and ethicist. “The group decided, however, that there is a potentially much greater harm in not doing everything possible to ensure access to treatment, care and support of those with HIV who are marginalized by the system.

… The report may be found online at: www.projectinform.org/pdf/surveillance_0313.pdf

(Related) Not sure the “group” in the previous article ever saw these. Certainly not “Principle # 3.

Patients decide if they want to participate.”

PPR Releases Trust Framework© for Data Privacy

Patient Privacy Rights (PPR) is pleased to announce the publication of its Privacy Trust Framework©, a set of 75+ auditable criteria based on 15 key privacy principles. The framework enables objective measurement of how well health IT, platforms, applications, electronic systems, and research projects protect data privacy and ensure patient control over the collection, use, and disclosure of their health data. The published paper outlining the principles and standards set forth in the Trust Framework© is available in the Social Science Research Network library [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2231667 ] and on PPR’s website [ http://patientprivacyrights.org/trust-framework/ ].

The copyrighted Trust Framework© was developed by the bipartisan Coalition for Patient Privacy, in concert with Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The Framework© was developed, tested, and validated on HealthVault over an 18 month period. It is grounded in Americans’ longstanding civil, human, and ethical rights to health information privacy and enables identification of health IT systems and products that comply with the 15 ‘gold standard’ privacy principles established by the bipartisan Coalition for Patient Privacy.

The Framework© benefits patients by allowing them to easily see and compare which systems, applications, platforms, websites, and research projects are worthy of their trust. At the same time, companies and organizations will benefit as citizens reward them by participating in systems and using applications that distinguish themselves as trustworthy.

The Trust Framework© [ http://patientprivacyrights.org/trust-framework/ ] can also play an integral role in building a vibrant, trusted research ecosystem. Individuals are more willing to participate in research when they know they control the use and further disclosure of personal health information and can choose which research projects they want to participate in. The Trust Framework© offers research organizations and institutions the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to informed consent and strong data security and privacy protections. The Framework can also be used for research about consent and factors that influence trust and data donation for research.

An interesting school of thought: limiting the number of possible passwords results in greater security.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/wtf-ats-profane-password-ban-lets-some-swears-through/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29

WTF? AT&T’s profane-password ban lets some swears through

No, it's not an April Fool's prank. AT&T really is forbidding passwords that contain obscene language. Or at least that's what the company's password reset page says.

This could be truly expensive... Imagine that I ask Company A if they have data on me. They don't and they tell me so. Next month I ask again. Now they have to tell me that they had my name and address from my earlier inquiry (otherwise, how did I get their previous denial letter?) This will revitalize the Postal Service (unless everyone uses e-mail)

New California “Right to Know” Act Would Let Consumers Find Out Who Has Their Personal Data — And Get a Copy of It

Rainey Reitman writes:

… A new proposal in California, supported by a diverse coalition including EFF and the ACLU of Northern California, is fighting to bring transparency and access to the seedy underbelly of digital data exchanges. The Right to Know Act (AB 1291) would require a company to give users access to the personal data the company has stored on them—as well as a list of all the other companies with whom that original company has shared the users’ personal data—when a user requests it. It would cover California residents and would apply to both offline and online companies. If you live in California, click here to support this bill.

Read more on EFF.

I read this as, “You can let the Feds run it or you can run it and let the Feds pay for it.” I see that as similar to Mao's “Let 1,000 flowers bloom.”

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/real_state_power_means_getting.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

Real State Power Means Getting in the Obamacare Game

After a hard-fought legislative battle and a Supreme Court challenge, the fight over Obamacare now rages at the state level, as states decide whether to run their own health-care exchanges under the auspices of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Over half of the states have refused to set up their own health exchanges; most of those have also rejected the Act's Medicaid expansion. Politics are obviously at work here, as Republicans seek to block Obama's agenda. But there are principles at stake as well. Texas governor Rick Perry calls Obamacare a "brazen intrusion into the sovereignty of our state." He and other governors believe that boycotting the program is the right way to protect state power.

That is a mistake. In fact, the governors have it precisely backwards. If they care about state power or have doubts about Obamacare, they shouldn't be sitting on the sidelines by boycotting — they should be suiting up and getting in the game. The reality is that they would have much more power, and influence over the shape of the program, by administering it under a flexible federal law.

A few Republican governors have recently figured out why it's worth playing ball with the federal executive. When Florida's Rick Scott and New Jersey's Chris Christie did an about face on the new Medicaid expansion last month, they were granted immense discretion to run their programs as they saw fit. Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe cut an even better deal. He agreed to expand health care to his state's poor not through more Medicaid but through a bigger private health insurance exchange, with the feds picking up 100% of the tab. As Beebe put it, "basically [HHS] agreed to give us about everything that we've asked for."

So you could Tweet, “Google wants to buy us,” but only if you had already told your investors that you might be Tweeting newsworth stuff they should be looking for...

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/033054.html

April 02, 2013

SEC Says Social Media OK for Company Announcements if Investors Are Alerted

"The Securities and Exchange Commission today issued a report that makes clear that companies can use social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to announce key information in compliance with Regulation Fair Disclosure (Regulation FD) so long as investors have been alerted about which social media will be used to disseminate such information. The SEC’s report of investigation confirms that Regulation FD applies to social media and other emerging means of communication used by public companies the same way it applies to company websites. The SEC issued guidance in 2008 clarifying that websites can serve as an effective means for disseminating information to investors if they’ve been made aware that’s where to look for it. Today’s report clarifies that company communications made through social media channels could constitute selective disclosures and, therefore, require careful Regulation FD analysis."

Einstein would be confused. Since space-time was “discovered,” a time-shift is automatically a location-shift. So why don't two legal technologies (TV antenna and Internet) also add up to legal?

Court: Aereo TV Rebroadcast Is Still Legal

"While Redigi is illegal, Aereo, the service that allows users to time-shift over-the-air TV programming, isn't. 'We conclude that Aereo's transmissions of unique copies of broadcast television programs created at its users' requests and transmitted while the programs are still airing on broadcast television are not 'public performances' of the plaintiffs' copyrighted works,' said the ruling (PDF). Of course, both decisions are going to be appealed. 'The outcome also answers the question, at least momentarily, of whether online television would be controlled by a stodgy industry that once shunned the VCR, or whether third-party innovators embracing technological advances have a chance to build on the openness of public airwaves. ... Aereo’s technological setup, the court found, basically allows it to do what cable companies could not: retransmit broadcast airwaves without paying licensing fees. In short, the Aereo service is as legal as somebody putting an antenna on top of their house to capture broadcast signals. The court said Aereo “provides the functionality of three devices: a standard TV antenna, a DVR, and a Slingbox” device. “Each of these devices is legal, so it stands to reason that a service that combines them is also legal. Only in the world of copyright maximalists do people need to get special permission to watch over-the-air television with an antenna,” said John Bergmayer, an attorney with the digital-rights group Public Knowledge. “Just because ‘the internet’ is involved doesn’t change this."'"

This is important, because I wouldn't want to say, “KaBoom!” when I should be saying, “KaBlooie!”

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/033056.html

April 02, 2013

Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms

Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 8 November 2010 (As Amended Through 15 March 2013)
1. "Scope - The Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms sets forth standard US military and associated terminology to encompass the joint activity of the Armed Forces of the United States. These military and associated terms, together with their definitions, constitute approved Department of Defense (DOD) terminology for general use by all DOD components.
2. Purpose = This publication supplements standard English-language dictionaries and standardizes military and associated terminology to improve communication and mutualunderstanding within DOD, with other federal agencies, and among the United States and its allies..."