It's not that they can,
it's that they can so cheaply!
Privacy advocates tend
to know the following, but I suspect the general public doesn’t and
would be a bit shocked. Laura Hutchinson of WWLP in Massachusetts,
reported
in a piece on medical identity theft:
The
22News I-Team did an experiment and found we didn’t
have to pay any money at all to find out names of people in
Massachusetts who are diabetics, the number of times a day they need
medication, who their doctor is and where they live.
You’d
like to think that those closed-door meetings with your doctor stay
between you two, but as more hospitals and doctors’ offices put
their records online, it’s becoming easier for people to access
them.
Springfield
consumer advocate Milagros Johnson says medical identity theft is
getting worse and a 22News I-Team investigation reveals just how easy
it is to get information.
We
discovered websites that sell patient information. They appear
to target medical supply companies, but there’s nothing stopping
the general public from accessing the information as well.
The
22News I-Team e-mailed the company to ask what they could offer and
for how much. They gave a list of prices but also supplied us
with free samples: samples of names and personal information.
For
no money at all, we were able to get the names of hundreds of
patients, their home address and number, names of their doctors, how
often they take medication, etc. Some of these people are right here
in Western Mass.
If you don’t want
such information being freely acquired and re-sold, then stop call us
some of “privacy wingnuts,” and join us in trying to protect
patient privacy.
I would have a few
dozen questions too. Starting with the schools procedures for
handling “false positives.” Do they tackle the “sex offender?”
Are police called? Do they have any liability for the error?
Karen Ann Cullotta
report:
When
a trio of privacy rights activists dropped by a Wilmette School
District 39 board of education meeting, they told officials that
installing a security system that requires visitors to swipe their
driver’s license before entering school buildings could prove both
invasive and unconstitutional.
A
school district spokeswoman said officials plan to review the
concerns expressed by Wilmette resident Richard Sobel and fellow
members of the Cyber Privacy Project.
But
District 39 joins school districts across the north suburbs and the
country in investing in a driver’s license scanning system aimed at
preventing registered sex offenders from stepping inside a school
building.
Read more on the
Chicago
Tribune.
I experienced one such
system a few years ago in a school in my area of New York. Not
surprisingly, I immediately asked a bunch of questions as to whether
and how the information got processed and stored. I’m glad to see
others raising questions, too.
It’s one thing to be
asked to show your driver’s license or some identification if
you’re entering a school, but it’s another thing to have school
personnel running checks – even if automated – against databases.
In this case, the school district is reportedly
concerned about sexual predators. What if a district decided it was
also concerned about determining who had a concealed carry permit?
Or who might have a record of mental illness? “It’s for the
children,” they’d say, right? But public schools are public
property. Should a member of the public have to go through such
checks just to enter a school? Where will it stop?
[From
the article:
The LobbyGuard driver's
license scanning system has been screening visitors against a sex
offender data base prior to their entering New Trier Township High
School District 203 buildings for five years, district spokeswoman
Nicole Dizon said.
… Jim Vesterman,
CEO of the Houston-based Raptor Technologies said the company's
scanning systems are used in 10,000 schools across the U.S. and
roughly 600 schools in Illinois.
Vesterman pointed to a
September 2010 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruling
that upheld a school's right to determine whether a visitor is
registered sex offender, and said requiring photo identification did
not violate constitutional rights.
Once again I get to
say, “I told ya so!” Simple rule: find something everyone hates
the government for doing and build your business model around it.
Government customers are sure to find you.
Michael B. Farrell
reports:
The
National Security Agency’s digital snooping may have inflamed a
national debate over privacy, but it has been a godsend for a tiny
start-up in Cambridge.
The
company, Sqrrl Data Inc., was founded by six former employees of the
spy agency. They had helped build the massive database the NSA uses
to store and analyze the billions of bits of information it gathers
on Americans and people around the world. Sqrrl (pronounced
“squirrel”) had planned to release a new
commercial version of the NSA database, called Accumulo,
in mid-June, timed to a prominent technology conference that would be
full of potential customers.
Read more on Boston
Globe.
“If we started giving
money to those who were injured, others would realize they had a case
too. Then everyone who messed with your privacy would start
suing...”
Greg Stohr reports:
The
U.S. Supreme Court left intact Facebook Inc. (FB)’s $9.5 million
settlement of privacy claims, declining to hear objections that none
of the money was being paid to people whose rights were violated.
The
justices today let stand a federal appeals court decision that upheld
the accord, which resolved claims over Facebook’s discarded Beacon
advertising program.
Read more on Bloomberg
News.
This could be
interesting to my Math students.
This fall GeoGebra
released new apps for Android, iPad, and Windows 8. All three of
the apps include the graphing and modeling tools available on your
desktop. The apps also include GeoGebraTube in which you can search
for the things that other GeoGebra users have created. The video
embedded below provides an overview of the Windows 8 GeoGebra app
(the video does not have sound).
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