Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today sued Health Net of Connecticut, Inc. for failing to secure private patient medical records and financial information involving 446,000 Connecticut enrollees and promptly notify consumers endangered by the security breach. Blumenthal is also seeking a court order blocking Health Net from continued violations of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability…
Category: Of Note
ID theft and fraud defense: Multiple Personality Disorder?
Tom Witowsky reports on a case where lawyers for accused embezzler Phyllis Stevens are considering offering her psychiatric history of being treated for Multiple Personality Disorder as part of their defense in federal court. Stevens was indicted on 20 counts of money laundering, wire fraud, identity theft and computer fraud for allegedly embezzling nearly $6…
(follow-up) Would-be AIG extortionist sentenced
Tom Spalding reports: A 28-year-old Indianapolis man was sentenced today to two years in state prison for trying to extort $208,00 from an insurance company after stealing a computer server. Kevin M. Stewart was the first to be prosecuted under a law that makes it a crime to commit extortion with material from a protected…
Health care: A ‘goldmine’ for fraudsters
Parija Kavilanz reports: There’s a group of people who really love the U.S. health care system — the fraudsters, scammers and organized criminal gangs who are bilking the system of as much as $100 billion a year. Health care identity theft dominated all other crimes in the sector last year, according to Louis Saccoccio, executive…
Google, Citing Cyber Attack, Threatens to Exit China
Miguel Helft and John Markoff report: Google threatened late Tuesday to pull out of its operations in China after it said it had uncovered a massive cyber attack on its computers that originated there. As a result, the company said, it would no longer agree to censor its search engine in China and may exit…
New Chinese Tort Liability Law Contains Provisions Affecting Personal Data
Hunton & Williams provide more details on the newly passed Chinese tort law: Certain of its provisions relate, expressly or in a general sense, to personal information. These provisions can cause data users to incur liability to data subjects for the mishandling of personal information. In particular: The law (at Articles 2 and 6) states…