As mentioned in a previous blog post, Senator Al Franken of Minnesota sent a letter to Accretive Health concerning the allegations in a report by the state’s Attorney General Lori Swanson. Sen. Franken has reason to be concerned. Not only is Minnesota his home state, but he is the Chairman of the Senate Privacy, Technology,…
Author: Dissent
July theft of computer with Fairview patient data wasn't the first, Minnesota AG says
If you were to search DataLossDB.org to find out what we knew about data breaches involving Accretive Health, you would have found one incident from last year. But that may be the tip of the iceberg. Christopher Snowbeck of Pioneer Press reports that there were others: When a laptop computer was stolen last summer from…
Canada: Zellers sued by pharmacists over selling patient records to Loblaws, Metro
Dana Flavelle reports: A group of Zellers pharmacists will seek an injunction Thursday to prevent the retailer from selling thousands of patient records to two major grocery store chains for at least $35 million, says their lawyer, Gerhard Pyper. The application comes amid a lawsuit being heard in Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List)….
Report: Some cloud providers have ‘dirty disks’
Brandon Butler reports: A forensic IT study by a U.K. security consultancy found that some multi-tenant public cloud providers have “dirty disks” that are not fully wiped clean after each use by a customer, leaving potentially sensitive data exposed to other users. Last year, officials at Context Information Security conducted a study to determine if…
Watchdog defends apparent discrepancies in fines for private and public sector data breaches
The UK’s data protection watchdog has defended its policy of issuing fines after newly released figures suggested private sector organisations are issued with disproportionately fewer fines than local Government ones. Read more on Out-Law.com.
Vermont Senate Approves Police Access To Drug Files
While a federal court ruled Florida’s drug-testing law unconstitutional yesterday, not all news is good news in terms of invasions of health issues. Vermont Public Radio reports: The Vermont Senate has voted to allow police access without a search warrant to a database of Vermonters’ prescriptions maintained by the Vermont Department of Health. In an…