Why privacy matters

Some people say, I'm not doing anything illegal, why does Facebook privacy matter?

Watch this YouTube video by Glenn Greenwald to find out why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=pcSlowAhvUk  It's 4 years old and yet really applies to millions of people giving up not only their own privacy, but that of their friends.

Facebook, Zuckerberg and data mining for votes

"In the last two elections, Facebook has sold its user data to Democratic and, apparently more controversially, Republican campaign affiliates. Google, Twitter, and Facebook have often been accused of censoring users’ expression according to their own political tastes. Civil libertarians have accused social-media and Internet giants of violating rights of privacy, by monitoring the shopping, travel, eating, and entertainment habits of their customers to the extent that they know where and when Americans travel or communicate with one another."

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/high-tech-corporations-need-oversight-muckraking-reporters/?

And or course, the Democrats weren't outraged when it was Obama and Zuckerberg getting together frequently.

"Unprecedented capital and revenue matter — both the fear of governments’ losing it and the hope of acquiring it. Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, is the world’s richest person, worth $112 billion. Bill Gates of Microsoft is second, at $90 billion, Mark Zuckerberg ($71 billion) is fifth. Civilization has never seen such Croesus-like concentration of personal wealth, and we are dumfounded by it."

Obama refuses to stop the NSA telephone record program, despite the recommendation of his own Board

“The Administration has not implemented the [Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight] Board’s recommendation to halt the NSA’s telephone records program, which it could do at any time without congressional involvement. Instead, the Administration has continued the program, with modifications, while seeking legislation to create a new system for government access to telephone records under Section 215.”   http://www.pclob.gov/newsroom/20150129.html

The Board stated, "the Administration can end the bulk telephone records program at any time, without congressional involvement." EPIC [Electronic Privacy Information Center] and a broad coalition have repeatedly urged the President end the NSA's bulk record collection program. Previously, EPIC petitioned the Supreme Court, with the support of dozens of legal experts, arguing that the NSA program was unlawful. (Jan. 30, 2015)

The PCLOB is an independent agency within the executive branch established by the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007. The bipartisan, five-member Board is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. By statute, the Chairman serves full time, but the four other Board members serve in their positions part-time. The PCLOB’s mission is to ensure that the federal government’s efforts to prevent terrorism are balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties.​ http://www.pclob.gov/about-us.html

Your privacy if you try to complete a survey

Just for "fun" I decided to read through the privacy rights I was giving away in order to complete a store survey (in order to enter a sweepstakes). I had to click through a number of hot links to even get to this level. Reminds me very much of HIPAA, which by the time you read through all the ways your privacy is protected, everyone except possibly the janitorial service has access to your medical records.

"Legal Requirements and Protection of Our Company and Others

We may disclose your information in other special circumstances. These include situations when the sharing is necessary to protect the safety, property, or other rights of BIG RETAILER, our customers, our associates, or any other person, or where otherwise required by law. Examples include protecting the health or safety of customers, or addressing crimes committed on BIG RETAILER property. Data from in-store security cameras may also be provided to law enforcement upon written request. BIG RETAILER may provide your personal information in response to a search warrant or other legally valid inquiry or order, or to an investigative body in the case of a breach of an agreement or contravention of law, or as otherwise required by applicable law."

I think the Boston Bombers will be caught.

Elections have consequences

A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.

CNET has learned that Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to law enforcement concerns. A vote on his bill, which now authorizes warrantless access to Americans' e-mail, is scheduled for next week.

Revised bill highlights

✭ Grants warrantless access to Americans' electronic correspondence to over 22 federal agencies. Only a subpoena is required, not a search warrant signed by a judge based on probable cause.

✭ Permits state and local law enforcement to warrantlessly access Americans' correspondence stored on systems not offered "to the public," including university networks.

✭ Authorizes any law enforcement agency to access accounts without a warrant -- or subsequent court review -- if they claim "emergency" situations exist.

✭ Says providers "shall notify" law enforcement in advance of any plans to tell their customers that they've been the target of a warrant, order, or subpoena.

✭ Delays notification of customers whose accounts have been accessed from 3 days to "10 business days." This notification can be postponed by up to 360 days

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552225-38/senate-bill-rewrite-lets-feds-read-your-e-mail-without-warrants/

Google's new privacy rules, March 1, 2012

Google has many products and over 60 privacy policies. It is going to standardize them to create a "beautifully simple and intuitive experience" based on five principles. The "information" referred to in the principles is what we the users have provided the company and what it has collected about us in the years we've been using Google--which is a lot, by the way.

1. Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.
2. Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.
3. Make the collection of personal information transparent.
4. Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.
5. Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.

For instance, Google tracks every search I make using its search engine--I do use some other products, but rarely. Yesterday I read a number of articles in print/on-line newspapers--I can either look at my search history provided by Microsoft or click on a Google feature that will tell me the top 8 sites I visited recently including Facebook, my blog, my site meter, articles about Charles Murray, articles in a Tea Party aggregator of news stories, Glenn Beck TV, electronic health records, and something about the welfare state. This tab is color coded to tell me how actively I've been searching those topics. I can click to the next page, which suggests that since I read the New York Times, perhaps I'd like to visit some other newspapers (I'm pretty sure I visit WaPo more often than NYT, but perhaps the origin of the article is what is counted).

I certainly don't keep my politics a secret since I hit a lot of hot button topics here, but just what does "responsible steward" mean when a huge mega-corporation lobbies and donates heavily to political candidates, has recently lost a court case brought by the government and been fined for illegal activity (pharmacy ads), and it carefully tracks every possible angle I research? I also search a lot of religious and theology sites--is that algorithm suppressed? Is it stewardship of their resources or my privacy that matters? (I know the answer to that!) They do, after all, have a responsibility to their stockholders and employees, their "owners." The fact that I can click on a tab and see just what Google is tracking about me I suppose meets principle 3, transparency.

Always keep in mind that Google is not your servant, slave, or employee--it is a highly sophisticated tool that exists only to sell a product/products to keep its investors happy and well paid. You only have to read to learn this, but because it does such a good job, you can be lulled into believing "Google is your friend."

Knowing a little bit about you can help make Google products better, both for you and for others. By understanding your preferences we can ensure that we give you the search results that you’re looking for, and by analyzing the search logs of millions of users in aggregate, we can continually improve our search algorithm, develop new features, keep our systems secure and even predict the next flu outbreak.

The Facebook-Politico connection

I don’t know how many of you are on Facebook, but I am, and I’m part of a “closed” political discussion group, not unlike an e-mail list or listserv. Right now because of the debates, the insults are flying fast and furious between Ron Paul supporters and traditional conservatives. Frankly, I don’t like the new Politico-Facebook partnership. In fact, I’m horrified. I wouldn’t like it anymore than the small print notice at the bottom of print magazine subscriptions that says they sell their mailing lists, but the Politico website is an Obama water carrier. It’s good for a conservative to read it, but it’s better to know what a real $100 bill looks like rather than study the counterfeit bill. Just because they say actual human employees won’t be reading this stuff, doesn’t mean that won’t happen—or that rogue employees** working undercover won’t pass it along either out of commitment to the party apparatchiks or for profit. Here’s the gist of it from All things D

“A partnership between Facebook and Politico announced today is one of the more far-reaching efforts. It will consist of sentiment analysis reports and voting-age user surveys, accompanied by stories by Politico reporters.

Most notably, the Facebook-Politico data set will include Facebook users’ private status messages and comments. While that may alarm some people, Facebook and Politico say the entire process is automated and no Facebook employees read the posts.

Rather, every post and comment — both public and private — by a U.S. user that mentions a presidential candidate’s name will be fed through a sentiment analysis tool that spits out anonymized measures of the general U.S. Facebook population.

This is similar to the way Google offers reports on search trends based on its users’ aggregate search activities.”

The solution, of course, is to get off Facebook or only discuss your latest operation, the grandchildren or what’s for dinner (and many do that).

-------

**I was a librarian at Ohio State, which had the grand daddy of all computerized library systems—other major libraries built on our experience/shoulders, then quickly passed us up as commercial efforts (like those on the internet) became available. But back in the “old days” we always had student employees who knew more than their bosses (like me) who could send deans overdue notices for nonsense. Even 15 years later, when we were still using bundles of microfiche to check overdue books and were supposed to look only for a specific ID number, it wasn’t too tough to look at the alphabetic list (also included) and see which high flying, overpaid professor had 200 books checked out to his office using the library as his personal collection.

Speaking of privacy

Apparently there are some who don't believe the government (layers and layers of departments of people) can keep a secret, so Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) wants to exclude records about AIDS, STDs and abortion from the electronic health records that are going to be required of all of our doctors. Doesn't that seem a little odd? Is that a racist smear against the President, Pelosi and Reid to find one more thing wrong with this plan? I just don't recall seeing that before. Do you suppose it was slipped into another funding bill, like armored vehicles or old growth forests?

Go flag yourself

This e-mail suggests that we all comply with the President's request that we spy on each other and turn in our on-line neighbors.

All Leftists and terrorists have one thing in common: You can scream at 'em, you can argue with 'em, you can chase 'em and you can even shoot 'em. But for God's sake, just don't laugh at 'em.

Well, considering the White House's brazen request for American citizens to "flag" other American citizens by turning their HealthCare content into the White House Dissent Management Bureau via flag@whitehouse.gov, this brownshirt tactic needs to be laughed at.

How: Turn yourselves in. All of us and everyone we know. Report yourselves to the White House Dissent Management Czar - and in such volume - as to make a mockery of the entire sleazy endeavor.

Think of it as reporting yourself to the local PD for speeding. We'd all be emailing about 5 times per day. Well, every time you have a thought on HealthCare, much less write or speak about it, send the contents of the thoughts/words/conversation to flag@WhiteHouse.gov .

Operation Go Flag Yourself!

What a great idea--seen at Brutally Honest.

Update: NYT reports: “Due to privacy concerns, federal agencies since June 2000 [i.e. primarily the Bush administration] have been prohibited from using many such Web-tracking technologies, particularly persistent cookies, unless an agency head decreed a compelling need.

But the Obama administration is keen to modernize federal agency sites and . . . it sees the old cookie policy as out of date, now that cookies are mainstream and more accepted, and a barrier to adding user-friendly features, analyzing what content is most valuable to citizens and figuring out how to make improvements.

Yet, the cookie issue remains a hot-button one for many citizens and Internet-privacy advocates who believe that in a free society the state should not track citizens accessing public information. “

White House revisits cookies, Aug. 5.

Use a land line for important presidential-type talk

"President-elect Barack Obama may not find it that hard to give up his BlackBerry after all. Verizon Wireless has announced that some of its employees accessed his personal cell phone account records. The wireless provider apologized to the president-elect and said it would discipline the employees involved." Story here. Read the DNS story in the December Wired, and you may switch to land line anyway. Maybe the Verizon employees will just get a wrist slap like Gov. Strickland's
pro-Obama employee who plumbed the depths of Joe the Plumber's records in our state data bases. Routine, she says, for people in the news!

Trapped in the Net

There's an informative article in the July 9 JAMA about web searching for information about physicians (JAMA: 300:2; 213). It suggests that the internet is both the friend and foe of the physicians. However, the same applies to anyone of any profession, or even a retiree such as myself who has a "presence" on the web. I'm going to substitute the word "you" for "physician," and "client" for "patient," so you'll see what I mean. All this is paraphrased from the article.

States [or agencies or employers] now routinely publish information about your education, training, certification and publications.

These sites may also include information about disciplinary actions.

Information about lawsuits and [other employment problems] are often available with a dozen keystrokes.

Increasingly, data about your performance are being made available in the public domain.

Some information not available to the general public is shared by professional groups and insurance companies, and then indirectly to clients.

Personal information is readily available on the web.

Mortgage deed registries are now available online.

With just a last name, in some cities, a client can obtain your home address, home price, and mortgage information.

It is also possible to infer if you are married or in a domestic partnership by determining who is the co-owner.

Several Web sites will complete discreet "digital background checks" for a small fee.

Date of birth, criminal records, marriage records, bankruptcy records, small claims court filings, complaints to police and judgments are available on the web.

Social networks sites, popular with younger web users, are a goldmine of information on hobbies, favorite movies, and relationships.

Social networks often post photos of others in the network linking personal information about your friends, cyber and otherwise.

Clients can determine what groups you belong to--who is your favorite sports team, your favorite political and social causes, musical tastes, sexual orientation, etc., and it's not to hard to track your whereabouts with a check of the leisure sites for your town.

Sometimes there is slanderous information about you on the web on a blog or other social network site.

Sometimes there is negative information about someone with your same name.

The younger you are, the more tech savvy you are, the more likely it is that you've willingly traded your privacy for a presence on the web.

The best way to control the information is to be pro-active--create your own web page so it appears first. Research shows that the average web user views 1.9 pages of results per search term.

If you have a social networking site, use the privacy controls to limit access to your most special friends and family.

Be aggressive about slanderous material about you on the web. This article suggested a WSJ story of Feb. 17, 2008, "Starting out: washing your Web face," by S.
Banjo.

Regularly conduct a web search of your own name, in all its forms with quotation marks.

I'm not sure I blogged about it, or just wrote the supervisor, but after I discovered pleasant little bios and photos online about the staff of a day care center that included the names of the women's husbands and children and their interests, I was able to find all sorts of information about them using public information from the county auditor and local newspaper stories about their children and husbands (sports schedules and leisure events). If I'd been a stalker or burglar, everything I needed was available within a few keystrokes. I urged the supervisor to take down the personal information about her employees because there's way too much information out there about all of us, including where the windows are on our houses, and the access roads. Sometimes when I look up a person, all I find are donor records for their university or favorite charity from the latest newsletter. That often supplies age (graduation date) and residence. Certainly an idea of assets and interests. But what a search that could start in the hands of the wrong person. Church newsletters are online these days, with home phone numbers for the head of this or that ministry and committee, as well as photos! These photos turn up in Google Image searches. And on and on.

4707

I love Google, but. . .

this plan was really dumb. High tech route to terrorism and treason.

"The Pentagon has put the kibosh on Google Street View's access to military bases. The access restriction surfaced after a Google street mapping team took photos on the grounds of Fort Sam Houston in Texas and posted them to the site. U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, chief of the U.S. Northern Command, reportedly said the images compromised security by showing the location of guards, details about barrier operation and building portals. Google removed the images at the Department of Defense's request." Story at TechNewsWorld by Jim Offner, 3/7/08

I think that some of these companies like Facebook, AOL, Google, Yahoo, etc. who claim they are "sensitive" to privacy concerns are run by people too young to understand security--personal or national. For instance, if I wanted to, I could purchase a site tracker for my blog that could probably figure out exactly where your computer is, then what you're buying from AOL, and then through a subscription to another program where your medical records are; but there's no cost to find out what you look like, and how close the 2nd story window of your house is to an access road. I occasionally wander into a website by accident that tells me more about me and my behavior on the computer than I remember, including a comment I made on a listserv or usenet bulletin board 13 years ago and who my grandparents were! (I don't post my genealogy on the web, but others do.)

I won't even go into what I could uncover about your hospital records--I spent some time fiddling with that a few years ago and was so frightened, I just stopped. I really didn't want to know--and I was just using the limited, "free" access to find out the profit of "non-profit" hospitals. Before my husband retired (sole proprietor with me as the staff), I used our county auditor's website extensively--it saved us the time of driving to the property, taking photographs and measuring the set backs and access. What? You think criminals don't use computers?

One time I alerted our church pre-school director about how much information I could track about families of her staff in just a few minutes, using completely free things like Google mapping, on-line local newspapers, and the image feature. Most of my e-mails to the church are ignored or don't address my concerns, so I don't know if anything was done. For years I would suggest to the OSU Libraries that our SS# not be our library access number--I don't know if that has been changed, and God only knows what else it is linked to. Here's my real concern: the university runs on low paid, student labor much more knowledgeable about computers than the faculty or administrators--if it (and other universities) had to find staff that smart and at those wages, they'd have to close down (many are foreign, non-citizens, btw, and all our universities have become dependent on foreign governments to pay their tuition costs).

Just a note about Facebook--no, two notes: The creator, Mark Zuckerberg, is now 23 and has a personal worth of 3 Billion dollars, and Facebook is valued at 15 Billion, according to WSJ. He started at age 19 by illegally hacking into the university's database of student records. The second question: did either of the 2 college women whose murders have recently been saturating the cable news networks have their photos and activities on an internet social networking site, like Facebook?

Librarians and privacy

What were librarians, the guardians of privacy when it comes to the Patriot Act and pornographers on the internet, saying about Facebook, the social networking site. Well, if you google "librarians Facebook privacy" you'll find they were practically wetting themselves in their eagerness to be relevant.

In today's Wall Street Journal Randall Rothenberg calls the news of the shutdown of Facebook's Beacon program, a victory for "market forces."

Within the space of a month or so, Facebook launched and then shut down an advertising program called Beacon that alerted users to purchases and other activities their "friends" made outside Facebook. The episode has been called many things: "annoying," "upsetting," "creepy," a "nightmare," a "privacy hairball." I call it proof that when it comes to the evolution of the Internet, market forces work.

Apparently, Facebook subscribers didn't like their friends being exploited, even if they didn't think of it in privacy terms. When the internet users respond quickly, and massively, it saves us all from more government regulations, says Rothenberg.

The internet is not free. It's supported by advertising. The advertisers using interactive technology is estimated by Rothenberg to be at $20 billion in 2007, growing to $62 billion by 2011. But they overreached, and alert subscribers said NO.

Still, I've got to wonder where were all those librarians who wanted to keep terrorists' library patterns private and fought the Patriot Act, and not put filters on library computers to protect children because it might interfer with "information gathering." Interesting concerns, these liberals.

Politicizing the tragedy

Within minutes of the news of the shootings at VA Tech, the terrible tragedy was being politicized on both the left and the right, by the talking heads, the talk show hosts, the blogs, the politicians. The poor parents hadn't even been notified yet--they were still trying to call their dead children, and we had started a very angry, politically charged "conversation" about gun control, American culture, "we" and "we're all to blame." Rosie O'Donnell and other hot shots have a private security force to protect them, so we know she'll call for gun control for others--that's what left wing entertainers do. But it was equally upsetting to hear the conservative talk hosts railing against the lefties who they believe are trying to bring them down with this issue, and then second guessing the police investigation of the first murders in the dorm. The blame game was unbelieveable. I feel so sorry for the school officials who never ever thought they would be facing a carnage like this. A pox on both houses. As I understand the laws of Virginia, the murderer had done everything legal. I think the college administration and the police who must have faced a scene most would only see in war or horror movies have behaved with honor and dignity. No one would ask a city of 30,000 to secure a shut down after a murder or have cameras in every building, but that's what people are shouting now! Let the parents at least bury their children before you get on the soap box for your favorite cause.

This man, as it now turns out, was criminally insane. You don't pass legislation or make grand judgements about an entire nation because an insane college student has fantasies, is paranoid, or is a psycopath--and consumed with or by evil. What we may need to look at, instead of gun control, is our privacy laws and disability laws which have put many of us in danger both from disease and people who can't control their minds or take their medication.

Confidential except for. . .

The IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, the Privacy Act of 1974, and the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 requires that the IRS ask for information. But first they want me to know why, and who else might see it, and what would happen to me if they didn't receive it.

The IRS has a right to ask and it is mandatory for me to answer this because of the Internal Revenue Code sections 6001, 6011, and 6012(a). But here's my favorite part:

My tax returns are confidential BUT Code section 6103 allows or requires the IRS to give it to a whole bunch of others such as

• Department of Justice
• cities
• states
• DC
• U.S. commonwealths or possessions
• certain foreign governments
• so they can carry out their tax laws.

The IRS may disclose my tax information to obtain information it can't get any other way to the

• Department of Treasury
• its contractors
• other persons as necessary

The IRS can disclose my tax information to

• The Comptroller General of the United States
• the Committees of Congress
• federal, state, and local child support agencies
• other federal agencies concerning entitlement for benefits or repayment of loans
• other countries under a tax treaty
• federal and state agencies to enforce federal nontax criminal laws
• federal law enforcement
• federal intelligence agencies to combat terrorism.

This information is on page 22 of the 35 page instruction booklet for the 1040EZ for filing electronically (so much for paper reduction). But the booklet does not contain any tax forms.

The pie chart on p. 33 says that 37% of the federal income goes for Social Security, Medicare, and support for the disabled and elderly; 20% goes for social programs like Medicaid, food stamps, assistance for the needy, Supplemental security income and related programs like health research and unemployment compensation; 10% goes for physical, human and community development such as agriculture, natural resources, environment, space, energy, science, etc.; and ta-dah, 24% for national defense, veterans and foreign affairs, of which 20% is funding the global war on terror.

421 Identity theft

Libraries, churches and educational institutions that use our Social Security Numbers to track members, clients, students and staff with huge accessible and hack-easy databases need to rethink this very risky method of record keeping.

On August 5, Ohio Gov. Bob Taft signed H.B. 204 to establish what will be called the Ohio Privacy/Public Records Access Study Committee. The effective date of the legislation is Nov. 3. Establishing a study committee 4 months out that won’t report for 12 months may not be much of a change in a practice long overdue, but it is a first step.

“The purpose of the study committee is to discuss concerns related to personal information contained in public records, including identity theft and fraud, and dissemination of such information through the Internet. The study committee, which will have 12 months to report recommendations to the governor and Ohio General Assembly, will also review legitimate uses of personal information contained in public records by businesses, government, the legal community and the media.” (Bulletin, ONA, August 13, 2004)

Why libraries and universities like Ohio State haven’t figured this out on their own with their usual committee structure, I don’t know. All those talented and politically savvy folks and they can’t clean up their own backyard with a little common sense? I intend to make my voice heard on this one.

Another privacy issue is having all our homes and neighborhoods (photographs, plot plans, floor plan sketch, and land plats) on the internet. As a business, we used this service (state gov’t) many times and sometimes I’d pull up the color photo and floor plan while my husband was still having a first interview with a client. But it is also available to all sorts of mischief makers who might not have gone to city hall and requested the information for a fee the way we used to do it.

354 Have you ever read the fine print?

I saw a newsletter (free) on a topic (could be anything--travel, horses, genealogy, publishing) that looked interesting. Now, I know these sites are only fronts for advertising--they provide free information on the internet or sent to my mail box, in order to collect readers, who will then click on ads, and the website receives a return on its investment. It is really just a modern magazine, which for a hundred years has been articles wrapped in advertising for subscribers whose names were freely sold to other advertisers.

Here’s the deal:

It wants my name, e-mail address, some demographics, etc. and recommends I read the disclaimer.

First it assures me that my privacy is very important to this company, and then goes on to explain how very unprivate all this is.

It doesn’t collect identifiable information unless I provide it (by subscribing).

It won’t sell or rent my information to a 3rd party.

It will only use my information to notify me of updates and for marketing purposes (that’s really pretty broad).

It isn’t responsible for the policies of websites to which it links.

It doesn’t use cookies to recognize visitors (but if I’m a subscriber, I assume I’m not a visitor?)

It will assist me by providing on-line shopping opportunities and advertising related to the information I’m reading about.

It will share aggregated research data, such as a my domain name and the Web site pages I have visited with advertisers or business partners.

Now here’s the big one:

as a general rule, it will not disclose any of my personally-identifiable information other than as set forth above except

when I specifically grant permission (like if I forget to check off not to share it) or

if it is required, such as when there is a good faith belief that the law requires it. It is that phrase, “as a general rule,” that sounds a bit squishy to me.

Advertisers or Web sites that have links to this newsletter’s web site may collect personally identifiable information about me. The information practices of the Web sites linked to this newsletter are not covered by its privacy policy.

If I make a purchase from a merchant or service provider listed on its Web site, the information obtained during my visit to the merchant or service provider's Web site - including tracking information, cookies and credit card number and contact information - is provided so that the purchase transaction may occur. Each merchant or service provider has a separate privacy and information collection practice.

There is a hosting company (unidentified) that protects the data about me that this company has collected.

I think the final statement is something about the above not being legal advice.

Everyday we give away our privacy, which is why I'm not too worried about the Patriot Act. We HAVE no private information. We gave it all away when we became enamored with the internet.

#83 High tech, high fat, low common sense

The push from the Health Information Management folks to make everything electronic in order to insure the privacy requirements of the new HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 (August 21), Public Law 104-191, which amended the Internal Revenue Service Code of 1986) would be a bit more believable if I hadn’t been in doctors’ offices since HIPAA’s implementation in April.

The new rules require 1) standardization of electronic patient health, administrative and financial data, 2) unique health identifiers for individuals, employers, health plans and health care providers and 3) security standards protecting the confidentiality and integrity of "individually identifiable health information," past, present or future.” A full employment law for the computer folks since these systems have to be continuously upgraded.

We, the patients, have signed innumerable forms saying we’ve been informed. They’ve changed the cubicles at check-in for the waiting rooms, and built fancy stalls to separate us at the pharmacies. Our surname is no longer called out in the waiting room--too bad if your name is Bob or Bill. No more sign in sheets--you might see who arrived at 8:15. But you can’t regulate common sense apparently.

This week I was left alone after a high-tech test in a room with really fancy information equipment, the kind AHIMA wants all medical facilities to have. Up on the computer screen was a list of names, birth dates and ID numbers in the section of the alphabet for my name--records in this database were linked to the records for my testing--and everyone else’s. The password to the equipment used for my test was on a yellow-sticky on the front of the machine. Oh yes, and scattered on the counter were packaged hypodermic needles and an open package of sealed vials (didn’t recognize the medication, but someone else might).

Last spring I was in this same new, state-of-the art facility sitting by myself in one cubicle, with information about the last patient still on the screen. When paper files were being used, I don’t recall ever seeing someone else’s file.

I also noticed that the staff working directly with patients in the back rooms where testing is done, were walking around the halls eating snacks out of open bags. When it was my turn, I was ushered into another area where the technician had her breakfast coffee and muffin on her desk. On my way out, I noticed a lovely staff lounge, with sink, microwave and seating, but why use it when you can eat all day long at your desk while manipulating carefully shielded patient data?