Bennett Medical Bill - New action list created - Cook reponse to Mulligan

[James Love <love@tap.org>]

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TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - INFORMATION POLICY NOTE
November 2, 1995
   
    Privacy and Medical Records

-   I have recieved a request from Gordon Cook to respond to Deirdre 
Mulligan's comments, and they are attached below.  We have created an 
unmoderated open internet email list called med-privacy where further 
back and forth discussions should take place.  I also encourage anyone to 
use med-privacy to post information about S. 1360, the medical records 
legislation.  The Consumer Project on Technology hopes to have its own 
comments on the legislation out this afternoon, and  they will be posted 
to med-privacy and tap-info.  Apparently hearings on the bill will be 
held on November 14, 1995, and the sponors, such as CDT, want the bill 
voted on by Thanksgiving.  Marc Rotenberg and Jamie Love (opposed) will 
debate Janlori Goldman (supporter) on this topic on tuesday at the 
November meeting of the Telecommunciations Policy Roundtable.


To subscriber to med-privacy, send a note to:

   listproc@tap.org

with the message:

   subscriber med-privacy yourfirstname yourlastname



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Gordon Cook's response to Deirdre Mulligan is below:


Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 16:49:48 -0500 (EST)
From: Gordon Cook <gcook@tigger.jvnc.net>
To: James Love <love@Essential.ORG>
Subject: Re: Deirdre Mulligan's defense of Bennett Medical Records
Bill

Deirdre Mulligan <deirdre@cdt.org> writes

No bill is ever perfect, and many of these organizations, including
CDT, would like to see certain sections of this bill improved.

COOK:  ARGH....sounds like what EFF was saying about the digital 
wiretap legislation a year ago when it promoted *ITS* passage.

CDT:  We don't need protection from computers.  We need privacy
protection.  Ensuring privacy protection is fundamental regardless
of whether personal health information systems are automated or
paper-based

COOK:  But what you have to DO to ensure it is totally different

CDT:  Moreover, CDT and a number of other organizations
are not luddites. We are attempting to reap the privacy potential
that is in new technologies if they are designed to respect privacy
at the frontend.  Audit trails, encryption technologies, digital
signatures, masking and other technological tools offer methods to
secure information, track access to records, and enforce privacy
policy that are non-existent in a paper based system.

COOK:  so we should therefore be grateful to CDT for giving a
helping push to the massive computerization of medical records! 
When ANYTHING is entered into a computer searchable database it
becomes MASSIVELY easier to find via computerized fishing
expeditions.  And good hackers can evade audit trails.  Besides
what outside federal agency is gonna be able to go through these
data bases and find evidence of misuse!?  No one has any $ for the
enforcement of anything any more.  Lessee.  I am a manager at an
insurance company, I find evidence of abuse via one of your audit
trails.  What am I gonna do.  Turn my own company in!?

What does the legislation promote?  Increasing computerization of 
records.  
Who pays your salaries?  The very huge telecom and computer
companies seeking all this new business from national information
infratsructure. 
Lord save us from the self appointed messiahs of NII.


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