Privacy, Shmivacy Redux

As we noted several years ago, that’s the (explicitly hidden) message greeting newly-registered visitors to the 404Care.gov site. But that rat’s nest is far from the only place that your “private” health info isn’t so private. To be sure, we’ve been blogging on this very issue for over a decade, but the stakes have grown higher, and the problem larger.

FoIB Ʀєfùsєηíκ did some heavy-duty research to document the claim that nothing’s really private anymore:

“No one told the average American that HIPAA loosened data exchange and that it’s expanded now with HITECH, even to the community level, such that individuals are targeted for intervention by social services agencies.

And no one told patients that “de-identified data” is a myth … Technology has advanced such that patients can rather easily be re-identified.”

And since a picture’s worth 1,000 words:

[click to embiggen]

I’m still not convinced that the whole ObamaTax isn’t just a brilliant marketing scheme by LifeLock.

[Pic source]