Protecting personal information is important to all Americans. In the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law (the US is one of the few remaining countries without one), states are stepping up. Five states have adopted comprehensive privacy legislation: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and Utah. And more than half of the country’s state legislatures have […]
Tag Archives: Privacy
Healthcare providers carry a heavy load and it just got heavier. In the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the prohibition and criminalization of abortion in some states, healthcare providers are now burdened with being more vigilant than ever in defending patients’ privacy rights. This is true in all states, even where […]
We learned early in life from the Three Little Pigs that a house made of straw or sticks, while much easier to build, lacks the safety and security of a brick house. This fable’s lesson applies to many scenarios including the recent rapid deployment of telehealth services. While a pandemic, not laziness, caused the hurried telehealth services implementation for many, that’s irrelevant to the big bad wolf (and there is always a big bad wolf). He will come and he will huff, and he will puff, and he will compromise the privacy of patient information in a system without adequate protections.
In Part I of this mini-series last week, Dayle A. Duran, Esq., CIPP/US articulately described Apple and Google’s COVID-19 contact tracing API. Overall, she concluded that, if used as intended, the technology provides good privacy protections, but flagged that the real privacy risks lie in unintended use and function creep. Recently proposed bipartisan legislation may adequately address these concerns.