| |
|
Thursday, October 26, 2006
|
|
Two years ago, when Bill Clinton had heart surgery performed in New
York's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, 17 hospital employees --
including a doctor -- peeked at the former president's health care
records out of curiosity. Earlier this year, Boston-based Brigham and
Women's Hospital repeatedly faxed patient admission sheets to a nearby
bank by accident. The faxing continued even after bank employees warned
the hospital. In Hawaii, Wilcox Memorial Hospital lost a thumb drive
containing personal information on every one of its 120,000 current and
former patients.
None of the institutions involved in these incidents has been fined
under the highly touted medical privacy law, known as HIPAA (Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).
In fact, there have been 22,664 HIPAA privacy-related complaints
filed since the privacy rule took effect in 2004, and not a single
institution has been fined for privacy lapses, according to the
Department of Health and Human Services, which enforces HIPPA. It's not
clear that any of the three incidents above generated HIPAA privacy
complaints, so the total number of privacy-related incidents is no
doubt higher.
Health privacy advocates are crying foul. One even calls HIPAA a "charade."
"It's a huge charade imposed on the public at great expense," said
Twila Brase, president of the Citizens' Council on Health Care, a
Minnesota patient-rights group. "The real scandal ... is that they
called it a privacy rule."
9:57:32 PM 
|
|
If you don't like what your favorite Internet search engine or e-commerce site does with information it collects about you, your options are limited to living with it or logging off.
Major search engines, for instance, all keep records of your searches for weeks, months or even years, often tied to your computer's Internet address or more. Retailers, meanwhile, generally presume the right to send marketing e-mails.
Although online companies have become better at disclosing data practices, privacy advocates say the services' stated policies generally don't give consumers real choice.
"None of them have gotten to the point of giving a lot of controls in users' hands," said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the technology watchdog group Center for Democracy and Technology. Privacy policies "are about notice ... not about control."
Recent developments from companies losing laptops containing sensitive data to Time Warner Inc.'s AOL releasing customers' search terms have again turned the spotlight on Internet privacy.
But the push for stronger federal protections is countered by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' desire to require Internet providers to preserve customer records to help prosecutors fight child pornography. Officials have released few details, though they say any proposal would keep the data in company hands until the government seeks a subpoena or other lawful process.
8:59:52 PM
|
|
Calls for a change to international rules on data transfers intensified Monday when two leading trade associations called on U.S. and European Union decision-makers to take action. The American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union (AmCham EU) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) "urgently call upon decision-makers on both sides of the Atlantic to deliver real progress on international transfers of personal data, a matter of growing concern for businesses worldwide," the trade groups said in a statement. The call for action comes as more and more companies face legal uncertainty sparked by the very different approach to data privacy in the U.S. and Europe. In recent weeks SWIFT, a Belgian financial data transfer company, has been found guilty of handing over personal data to U.S. authorities in breach of European data protection laws. SWIFT was forced to hand over the data by U.S. officials investigating terrorist financing. Meanwhile, European airlines are being forced by the U.S. to break European data protection laws by handing over personal details about passengers flying to the U.S. Failure to hand over the information, including passengers' names, addresses and credit card details, would result in them losing landing rights at U.S. airports, or being fined up to $6,000 per passenger.
8:54:54 PM
|
|
The Mozilla Foundation risks losing the browser battle if it fails
to keep up with Microsoft by incorporating new security technology into
Firefox, a Verisign exec has claimed.
According to Verisign product marketing director Tim Callan, the
"loose collection of technoanarchists" which make up the open source
development community has frustrated efforts to build new security
features into its new browser. Verisign is at the RSA Europe Conference in Nice talking up a new
breed of online security certificate. The padlock encryption symbol
used by browsers has been effectively meaningless for some time, and
consumer paranoia surrounding fraud remains a barrier to using online
commerce for many.
In response, the verification industry in the form of the CA browser
forum has come up with extended validation SSL, where the certificate
really is a guarantee of kosher status. Honest.
3:59:30 PM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2006 Paul Hardwick.
Last update: 11/10/06; 2:11:44 AM.
|
|
|
