4 ms·
This is so insane and so tragic. The anguish these people are going through right now is unconscionable. And the people doing this are truly the scum of the ear
by adriand 6y ago
This is so insane and so tragic. The anguish these people are going through right now is unconscionable. And the people doing this are truly the scum of the earth.
It also raises the question whether certain records just ought not to be digitized, ever. I saw a therapist a few years ago. I asked her at the start, while reviewing her Ts&Cs, about the service she used to store her client data. It was a very secure online service, she assured me. Yeah right, I thought. I asked her to keep my records on paper in her locked filing cabinet instead, and she agreed. I would really recommend the same course of action to anyone.
- amelius 6y agoPerhaps they should simply store patients as numbers.
- biot 6y agoThat tends to not work very well: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html
- mjevans 6y agoThat would help, but metadata is a powerful thing. The relations, tendencies, and activities of someone, particularly the kind of notes (I imagine) are kept for therapy subjects, would be a treasure trove even with some subject indirection.
- jedimastert 6y agoUnfortunately you need surprisingly little data to uniquely identify someone. For example, sex, date of birth, and zip code can uniquely identify a large swath of the general public. http://latanyasweeney.org/work/identifiability.html http://latanyasweeney.org/work/identifiability.html
- srtjstjsj 6y agoSo removing the unnecessary date of birth and zip code, problem solved.
- vesinisa 6y agoMy spouse works as psychotherapist. She has ever only used pen & paper for patient notes for exactly this reason. No digital service is unhackable, and the cases where you would actually need to access patient notes in electronic form are quite rare.
- Shivetya 6y agoSadly this is no guarantee as the news is replete with stories of people finding medical records in trash or abandoned in close facilities. However since no system is perfect laws have to exist to prevent the information from being used by others except as how authorized by the law; examples would be preventing prospective employers from using it to filter candidates, housing agencies would be similar restricted. The same law would put in place a means to force it to be removed from any site hosting the information. The key take away is we cannot guarantee full protection but we minimize the damage caused
- dredmorbius 6y agoRecords-in-trash take considerable work to access, parse, transmit, and duplicate. Digital data are immensely reproducible. Motivated adversaries may be motivated. Ask Dan. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-worlds-most-famous-filing-cabinet-36568830/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-worlds-most-famou...
- eloisius 6y agoIt also vastly decreases the feasible number of attackers. Digital records means you are vulnerable to criminals globally, particularly ones from places that don’t care so much about US law. Paper records in the trash are vulnerable to an extremely localized threat.
- dredmorbius 6y agoQuite. If you can access it from anywhere (or your healthcare provider, other white hats, etc.), so can the black (or grey, or red, or geen,...) hats.
- zajio1am 6y agoIMHO using separate computer not connected to any network, locked in cabinet, should be safe enough.
- james305 6y agoAgree on this point. Some computers just should not be internet connected. Security is the wild west right now and isn't going to be fixed any time soon.