Ah, kudos to Patrick Ouellette of HealthITSecurity.com, who dug into recent reports of a Medtronic breach more deeply than I did. While most media reiterated Medtronic’s claims that no patient data was involved, Patrick reports: Though medical device maker Medtronic revealed that hackers had entered network on two separate occasions last year in its Securities and…
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Shielding grisly scenes because there's no expectation of privacy in public spaces
Back in the day when I was an active emergency medical technician (EMT), we really didn’t have to deal with gawkers who might try to take pictures to upload to the Internet of horrific accidents that happened in public spaces. And if someone tried to poke their nose in to the accident scene, an authoritative “back…
Encrypted Web traffic can reveal highly sensitive information
Jeremy Kirk reports: Analyzing encrypted Web traffic can potentially reveal highly sensitive information such as medical conditions and sexual orientation, according to a research paper that forecasts how privacy on the Internet may erode. In a paper titled “I Know Why You Went to the Clinic,” researchers show that by observing encrypted Web traffic and identifying patterns,…
Update: NY: Two plead guilty to Albany Medical Center identity theft charges
Fox23 reports: Two people, who were accused of stealing identities of multiple patients at a local hospital and opening fraudulent credit card accounts, have pleaded guilty to their charges. According to District Attorney P. David Soares, Emmett Woods, 25, and Suzette Guzman-Moore, 45, pleaded guilty to their charges this month. Read more on Fox23.
$800,000 HIPAA settlement in medical records dumping case
From HHS, this press release today about an incident that never appeared in their public breach tool: Parkview Health System, Inc. has agreed to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Parkview…
Does de-identification work or not?
Daniel Barth-Jones writes: In a FierceBigData article which ran last Wednesday, Pam Baker posed some compelling questions regarding a recent “Big Data and Innovation, Setting the Record Straight:De-identification Does Work” whitepaper (.pdf) released by Ann Cavoukian, the Ontario information and privacy commissioner, and Daniel Castro, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Senior Analyst. Of these, the most salient question was also the…