Orwellian Nightmare Continues As Congress ‘Acts’ On Privacy

After numerous false starts and outright failures, Congress is once again taking up legislation that would provide uniform guidelines for how tech companies can gather, package and exploit our online activity.

While the ultimate fate of that effort is as uncertain as its predecessors, there's another data privacy problem the worthies should address as soon as possible.

The issue: a new study has found that hospitals routinely violate health privacy laws, sharing patient information with third parties – tech companies and data brokers (but I repeat myself) despite HIPAA regulations prohibiting such actions.

As TechSpot's Shawn Knight reports:

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania recently analyzed 100 non-federal acute care hospitals (those with an emergency room) across the country and found that a whopping 96 percent transmitted user information to third parties. If that weren't bad enough, the team was only able to find publicly accessible privacy policies on 71 percent of sites.

And for those who did post privacy policies, the supporting documents weren't exactly user-friendly:

Polices averaged more than 2500 words in length and were written at a college reading-level. Given estimates that more than one-half of adults in the US lack literacy proficiency and that the average patient in the US reads at a grade 8 level, the length and complexity of privacy policies likely pose substantial barriers to users' ability to read and understand them.

Which is almost always the point of such complex documents, and why they are one of the longest running “jokes” on the internet.

For all the problems with hospitals playing fast, loose and free with data, compared to the data gathering monsters our cars are, hospitals look like models of discretion. (RELATED: Comprehensive Study Reveals The Worst Product For Privacy)

And when measured against the privacy-mangling potential of artificial intelligence? Even the most porous web privacy policy on Earth might not be able to compete with an unscrupulous actor using AI to find out everything, and more, about almost everyone.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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