Sixteen hospital employees at Ben Taub were fired for accessing the medical record of a First year medical resident assigned to Ben Taub Hospital. The medical resident was shot in a grocery store parking lot and was admitted to Ben Taub as a patient. Most of the fired employees worked at Ben Taub Hospital and included nurses, managers, clerks, and others. The hospital cited the accessing of the medical record as a violation of patient privacy under the Health Insurance Portability Protection Act privacy rule. She is expected to make a full recovery. The move toward a national e-Health Records System makes privacy violations and patient privacy of key interest to privacy advocates. Curiosity coupled with technology continue to be the top challenges for privacy in the digital age.
Lawmakers in Argentina approve forced DNA collection from individuals who may be the children of murdered political prisoners from over a quarter century ago. The practice of placing children with other families if their mothers gave birth while being held as political prisoners and possibly killed is the reason given for the new law. Political dissent was suppressed though kidnappings, arrest, torture, and murder. There are concerns that the new law may allow authorities to compel individuals to provide DNA for any purpose or use.
A gathering of international privacy experts set the stage for a three day meeting on Internet privacy, held in Madrid Spain. Fifty nations who attended the meeting reached a draft agreement on Internet privacy. The Madrid Declaration was adopted by over a hundred privacy advocacy organizations from around the world.
Smart Meters are going in homes without the privacy protection consumers will need to be sure no one is looking at their energy usage data. A lot of talk about customers sharing information with unregulated non-utility service providers to help manage energy usage, but not much talk about how that information might otherwise be used. Knowing when some one is home or who is home would be of interest to thieves, and marketers. Insurance providers might want to know if your are on that treadmill and for how long.
A Fordham Law Schoolstudy found that state educational databases across the country ignore key privacy protections for the nation’s school children. The study reports that at least 32% of states warehouse children’s social security numbers; at least 22% of states record student pregnancies; and at least 46% of the states track mental health, illness, and jail sentences as part of the children’s educational records. Some states outsource the data processing without any restrictions on use or confidentiality for children’s information. Access to this information and the disclosure of personal data may occur for decades and follow children well into their adult lives. These findings come as Congress is considering the Student Aid and Financial Responsibility Act, which would expand and integrate the 43 existing state databases without taking into account the critical privacy failures in the states’ electronic warehouses of children’s information. For more information on children’s privacy issues see Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
In July 2009, a woman lost a $58,000 a year accounting job with Corporate Mailing Services of Arbutus after a background check reported a non-existent criminal record. Her employer won a contact with the Social Security Administration (SSA), which required that the company submit all employees to a criminal background check. The FBI's National Crime Information Center database reported in error that the employee had a criminal record. The Social Security Administration reported back to her employer within 2 weeks acknowledging the mistake and stated that the account could in fact work on the project. The company has not reinstated the dismissed worker. There are long running issues regarding the accuracy of NCIC database. In 2003 the DOJ exempted the FBI, which manages the NCIC, from Federal Privacy Act obligations for data accuracy. The administration is moving forward with a plan to require all federal government contractors submit E-verify checks conducted by the Department of Homeland Security to determine whether they can be employed. There are questions about accuracy of this system and the potential for inaccurate reporting. Accuracy requirements for information held in databases is critical to the protection of privacy rights.
Facebook released a revised privacy policy. The updated policy provides a more concise description of the privacy practices of the developers of third-party applications. Facebook also announced that it will evaluate the collection of user data by application developers. According to a blog post, the revised policy is a response to a complaint filed by Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic in 2008, and attempts to “[fulfill] our commitment to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to update our privacy policy to better describe a number of practices.” Concerns remain about the use of Facebook users' data.
