The personal information of 640 staff and inpatients of Bokuto Hospital in Sumida Ward, Tokyo, was exposed on the Internet via Winny file-sharing software a male clerical employee used on his home computer, the Tokyo metropolitan government said. The incident marked the first time the patient information of a metropolitan hospital was exposed on the…
Author: Dissent
IN: Personal Info Of More Than 8,700 Posted On State Site
The Social Security Numbers of more than 8,700 current and former state employees were inadvertently posted on a state Web site last week, officials said. The information of 8,775 employees who had filed a worker’s compensation or disability claim between 2005 and 2008 was uploaded in a file to the Indiana Department of Administration’s procurement…
MD: Missing HCC flash drive contained personal info on 70 DSS clients
On December 5, Harford Community College learned (pdf) that a flash drive containing personal information had been misplaced by an employee at its WAGE Connection office in Aberdeen, Maryland. The personal information of 70 Department of Social Service clients participating in the WAGE Connection program was on the missing drive and included their name, social…
SEC Review of Apple May Pit Investors Against Privacy
Karen Gullo, Connie Guglielmo and David Scheer report: Apple Inc.’s shifting disclosures about Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs’s health are forcing regulators into new legal territory, balancing investors’ right to information against a last bastion of executive privacy. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s inquiry, reported by Bloomberg News last week, is likely to examine how…
Stimulus bill includes protection for digital health care records
Dan Kaplan reports: A portion of the $818 billion stimulus bill that was passed this week by the U.S. House calls for computerizing all health records in five years, but the legislation also contains stringent privacy and security controls to protect this online data. Experts said these measures would complement the Health Insurance Portability and…
Electronic Health Records: DOD's and VA's Sharing of Information Could Benefit from Improved Management
GAO-09-268 January 28, 2009 Summary Under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are required to accelerate the exchange of health information between the departments and to develop systems or capabilities that allow for interoperability (generally, the ability of systems…