5 ms·

The Chesa Boudin DA "misrepresentations" document, linked towards the end of this story, is weak, bordering on Trumpian. It highlights as "misrepresentations" c

• xKingfisher 6mo ago
  How does it seem that Radley is talking past Gary? All discussion of the 'Misrepresentations' article is responsive to Gary's mention of it in the original article. And at no point does Radley appear to endorse its contents.
• rafram 6mo ago
  The main HIPAA claim seems to be that the victim didn’t provide (or consent to the publication of) that X-ray, and neither did their only family member known to possess it. I don’t know who released it, but if it was someone in the medical office, that is a genuine HIPAA violation.
  • tptacek 6mo ago
    It could be a violation at the medical office, but Lim isn't a covered entity, and the document accuses her directly.
  • adrr 6mo ago
    HIPAA only covers entities that are legally required to follow it. Covered entities and business associates. It doesn’t apply to anyone else.
• deleted 6mo ago
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• dijksterhuis 6mo ago
  > The Chesa Boudin DA "misrepresentations" document, linked towards the end of this story, is weak, bordering on Trumpian. Are we reading the same document? The first example is almost a perfect example of what's stated in TFA. Lim is incredibly aggressive in making her argument, and not an argument based on real evidence. Scanning through the rest, it reads as much the same. Direct gdrive link for those who don't want to go back and scroll through the article again: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VZKYxe0oGq7HeC5Kj2lxf-X55r4jnvTF/view?pli=1 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VZKYxe0oGq7HeC5Kj2lxf-X55r4... edit: > At one point it accuses Lim of "violating HIPAA", which is not a thing† (HIPAA constrains covered entities, not reporters). Ehhhhh. I diagree with that reading. There's a clarification bullet point two lines down from the headline bullet (page 3). Emphasis mine. > This suggests Ms. Lim was received a patient’s privileged medical records from another unauthorized source in violation of HIPAA. I read this as the unauthorized source is violating HIPAA. But I guess neither of us are lawyers. So...
  • tptacek 6mo ago
    That's an extremely charitable read of a DA's office alleging lawbreaking. I really think you have to kind of slant your head and squint to come away with the impression that that section isn't about Lim, but rather the unnamed medical office.
    • dijksterhuis 6mo ago
      As i said, neither of us is lawyers. Neither of us are experts in what a DA's office has written, and what that writing should be interpreted as under the law. Perhaps a more charitable reading is what is called for, given we're not experts in the domain. i don't know about you, but i'm pretty confident a DA's office has a much better idea than me about what each of the HIPAA sentences in the document translate to in terms of "allegations".
      • tptacek 6mo ago
        The question you're raising isn't a legal one, at least as I understand it. I read you to be saying "the reasonable take on this document is that they are saying SOMEONE violated HIPAA, but not Lim". That's a question about messaging, not the law.
• nickburns 6mo ago
  Can you elaborate on "basic competency issues", either in the case of Boudin's office and/or other high profile reformist prosecutors? Is that just a polite way of calling them dumb, à la what the kids are calling a 'skill issue' nowadays?
  • tptacek 6mo ago
    I can speak at length to the tenure of Kim Foxx, Chicago's former high-profile progressive prosecutor. I know some of the issues rhyme with Boudin's term, but San Franciscans can tell his story better than I can. So, first, no, I feel like I'm saying the opposite of "they're dumb". I don't think either Foxx or Boudin are dumb. I think they're both interesting people with interesting and valuable views. When I say "basic competence issues", I'm talking about the kinds of things that would go wrong if, like, you or I took over the CCSAO and started managing all the prosecutions in Cook County. For instance: having huge numbers of line prosecutors resign, in part because you totally fuck up the promotion ladder, in part because you shift staffing priorities away from line prosecution and towards internal policy positions, and in part because you fail to sell your immediate-term vision for how you're going to manage the agency. The superficial way to look at veteran prosecutors resigning is that they're no longer culture fits, which you can look at as a good thing: Boudin and Foxx were hired to change those cultures. But a more practical and immediate way to look at them is that losing veterans puts the screws on your ability to execute the day-to-day of the agency. These prosecutor offices were incredibly strained before people like Boudin and Foxx got there. Which means: there was already an extent to which prosecution decisions were being made not just on justice, safety, or public policy more broadly, but simply on a triage basis. When you start losing significant numbers of people, you lose the ability to set your own execution priorities; circumstances are making prosecutorial decisions. Foxx tried to put a brave face on it, but nobody was buying it. What's more frustrating is that Foxx was doing this at the same time as Illinois was rolling out SAFE-T, which ended cash bail in Illinois. I am wholeheartedly in favor of SAFE-T, and I think by-default cash bail is an idiotic system that unnecessarily amplifies the societal cost of law enforcement. But SAFE-T was ultra-controversial in Chicagoland, and Foxx went through all this stuff while people were freaking out daily about catch-and-release. It didn't help that all of this coincided with a huge regional increase in carjackings, the second most important urban index crime after murder. It further didn't help that she was accused of refusing to prosecute juvenile carjackers, and that when confronted by reporters about that, she didn't have a clear denial. I hope this reads as I intend it to, which is: not ideological, just an assessment about whether someone is prepared to step in and run the office, most of which is boring and just needs to be done correctly. (I think you can probably look at Krasner as an example of a prosecutor who has avoided these traps.)
• 0xbadcafebee 6mo ago
  > I've watched outsider-y progressives get elected into prosecutor roles and then fail their constituencies Political achievement via moral/ethical/legal means does not work. We expect a single person with extremely limited power to assume a relatively minor position in government, then somehow defeat incredibly wealthy organized opponents, in addition to solving complex logistical and social issues, and to do all that without ever doing anything wrong? It's nearly impossible. Progressives need to return to the good old days of corruption and coercion if they want to get anything done.
  • JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
    > then somehow defeat incredibly wealthy organized opponents, in addition to solving complex logistical and social issues, and to do all that without ever doing anything wrong? No, we expect them to do like one thing right without bungling the basics. The track record of the pre-pandemic era wave of progressive prosecutors was some combination of doing absolutely jack shit in the first category and/or being asked for table stakes on the latter and swallowing their chips.
• JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
  > I feel like I've watched outsider-y progressives get elected into prosecutor roles and then fail their constituencies not because of ideology but over basic competency issues Huh, I went through a similar journey in New York, starting as an advocate of criminal-justice reform and then getting fed up with the incompetence. And while I wouldn't say ideological inflexibility is ideology per se, one of the contributors to ineffectiveness I saw in New York was a simultaneous inability to tolerate competent people with even slightly-divergent viewpoints (and there were a lot of red lines–I don't know what multidimensional beast could thread them), or, alternatively, an inability to fire or beach clearly-incompetent people because they were part of a priority community. (Read "community" broadly. It might be an identity. It was more often whatever union or local progressive club the person cropped up through.)
  • abirch 6mo ago
    Some of the difficulties of criminal-justice reform include: you can't arrest your way out of mental illness. It's easier for society to lock up the mentally ill in with a 1-dollar bond that it is to provide the help that they need. It's probably cheaper to do give them the housing and help, but it's easier to get money for jails and jailers than it is to get money for mental health facilities.
    • tptacek 6mo ago
      I agree that this is a major challenge, but (for example) it has basically nothing to do with the carjacking phenomenon. I'm just saying, this stuff is complicated, and anyone with a straightforward solution is wrong.
      • johnnyanmac 6mo ago
        >but (for example) it has basically nothing to do with the carjacking phenomenon. Nevermind if this is even a "phenomenon". How about we just pick 2 or 3 issues and actually solve those first? It's very clear that we are at best spreading ourselves thin and at worst being distracted by everything in a malicious attempt to flood the zone. We aren't angry enough at any single issue as a result. Pick 2-3 main issues, and just spend an entire year tackling those. Easier PR, easier accountability.
• singleshot_ 6mo ago
  > I'd be foursquare behind a progressive prosecutor in a major city that ran a tight ship Strongly inclined to hire such a prosecutor. Has this model been successfully deployed in any large U.S. cities? My only experience is watching it struggle in a medium one. On your last point: given the ethical responsibility of a prosecutor, I’d go one step further. If you’re the prosecutor for a jurisdiction where a journalist works, and you make any statement about the legality of the journalists works, you better be substantially likely to secure a conviction, otherwise you should mind your business.
  • tptacek 6mo ago
    Yes. It is a weird document. Journalists are unfair to prosecutors and police chiefs all the time. Shut up and do the job. (I have feelings here because we're in a mini-spat between our PD and our terrible local newspaper, which is upset that our chief won't give them an interview after the local police union gave her a no-confidence vote; where I live, that vote is, reasonably, viewed as a sign she's doing the job well. But either way: she's not going to give an interview on this!)
• jrflowers 6mo ago
  Violating HIPAA rights and “violating HIPAA” aren’t the same thing. The rights granted by HIPAA are universal, everybody’s got them and anybody can violate them, it’s just that healthcare professionals are bound to not do that. You could violate my HIPAA “rights” all day and not get in trouble, because the law around protecting those rights does not apply to you. I could still write in a memo that the associated behavior is a dick move or a troubling issue with your character and ethics though. Anyway, possibly poorly-worded title aside, it is made clear that Lim was receiving information from someone that clearly was violating HIPAA laws. Here is the text: Dion Lim Violates HIPAA Rights of a Victim of Violence & Invades Her Privacy • Dion Lim released an x-ray of the victim of a stabbing—without the victim’s permission, in a clear violation of the victim’s HIPAA and privacy rights. o She claimed online that she had her grandson’s permission, but there is no indication he was authorized to grant consent on her behalf—and he was not the one to provide the photo, which she made clear in a tweet explaining she showed the x-ray to him, “and explained the decision to share it” as part of pressure to ensure the case was prosecuted. ▪ This suggests Ms. Lim was received a patient’s privileged medical records from another unauthorized source in violation of HIPAA. • In connection with that same case, Ms. Lim posted video of the brutal stabbing. o Despite the DA’s Office’s press release referencing the victim’s request for privacy (which was reiterated at the May 7, 2021 press conference in which Ms. Lim was present), she has not taken down this post. It says that the victim’s HIPAA rights were violated in the process of that information being released, which appears to be objectively true. The second reference goes further to clarify: > This suggests Ms. Lim was received a patient’s privileged medical records from another unauthorized source in violation of HIPAA. The only way to read that sentence as an accusation of Lim violating HIPAA would be to read it and conclude that she was both “an unauthorized source in violation of HIPAA” and also the reporter that the unauthorized source shared the information with (in violation of HIPAA, the law) Calling the whole document “Trumpian” is kind of extreme when the criticism is “There’s an ambiguous phrase in it and I will not be addressing the clarifying language a couple sentences away from it” or “I think this lawyer meant ‘statutes’ when he wrote ‘rights’ which I imagine makes him wrong”
  • tptacek 6mo ago
    There's a whole subthread that already covered this ground. The passage obviously implicates Lim --- the subject of the entire document --- a reporter, in lawbreaking, without alleging facts sufficient to establish that liability, and was written by the DA's office. When Trump's DOJ does this sort of thing, we all (rightly) freak the fuck out.