Amanda Bronstad reports that UCLA Health System was sued over a September breach revealed last month. The potential class action lawsuit, filed December 14, alleges violations of California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, which provides for statutory damages of $1,000/per person. At over 16,000 patients, that could cost them $16.3 million plus legal fees and…
Author: Dissent
Fertile sperm donor draws criticism from FDA, docs
Marcus Wohlsen of Associated Press reports: Physicians and the federal government cited the case of a San Francisco Bay area man who has fathered 14 children as an example of the risks posed by the informal market for sperm donations, which doctors consider unsafe but some people call a civil liberties issue. Trent Arsenault, 36,…
University of Mississippi Medical Center and Mississippi State Department of Health notify 1500 research participants that stolen laptop contained their health information
The University of Mississippi Medical Center and the Mississippi State Department of Health are informing nearly 1,500 participants in research studies of a breach of their personal health information. A UMMC faculty member had been assigned a laptop for use in the studies. On Oct. 31, a UMMC employee reported that the laptop used for…
WA: Renton Doctor Office Burglarized; CDs with patients' SSN and medical information stolen
ID Experts released this substitute notice in media on behalf of their client: The office of Paul C. Brown, M.D., P.S., was burglarized the weekend of October 14, 2011. The thieves broke into the office and stole various pieces of office equipment including CDs containing patient information data from 1993 – 2004. Upon discovery of…
TX: Ex-city workers sentenced for ID thefts
There’s a follow-up to a breach reported previously on this blog. Guillermo Contreras reports: A San Antonio couple who worked for the city was sentenced Thursday for using stolen Social Security information to buy a boat, jewelry and several vehicles, including two motorcycles, two Cadillacs and a $43,000 Corvette. U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia gave Mary Mercy Lopez, 49,…
Ex-Credit Suisse worker guilty of data theft
And so a long-running data theft case ends. The Local (Switzerland) reports: The Swiss Federal Criminal Court sentenced on Thursday a former employee of Credit Suisse to a two-year suspended sentence for breaching bank secrecy laws and money laundering. The former bank worker was also fined 3,500 francs ($3,727) after he confessed to having stolen…