FBI violated Americans’ privacy by abusing access to NSA surveillance data, court rules; October 8, 2019

Nick Statt, The Verge; FBI violated Americans’ privacy by abusing access to NSA surveillance data, court rules

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation made tens of thousands of unauthorized searches related to US citizens between 2017 and 2018, a court ruled. The agency violated both the law that authorized the surveillance program they used and the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.

The ruling was made in October 2018 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a secret government court responsible for reviewing and authorizing searches of foreign individuals inside and outside the US. It was just made public today."

Your health records are supposed to be private. They aren’t.; Washington Post, 12/30/15

Charles Ornstein, Washington Post; Your health records are supposed to be private. They aren’t. :

"After spending the past year reporting on loopholes and lax enforcement of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal patient-privacy law known as HIPAA, I’ve come to realize that it’s not just celebrity patients who are at risk. We all are...

We all know HIPAA, whether we recognize the acronym or not. It’s what requires us to stand behind a line, away from other customers, at the pharmacy counter or when checking in at the doctor’s office. It is the reason we get privacy declaration forms to sign whenever we visit a new medical provider. It is used to scare health-care workers, telling them that if they improperly disclose others’ information, they could pay a steep fine or even go to jail.

But in reality, it is a toothless tiger. Unless you’re famous, most hospitals and clinics don’t keep tabs on who looks at your records if you don’t complain. And even though the civil rights office can impose large fines, it rarely does: It received nearly 18,000 complaints in 2014 but took only six formal actions that year. A recent report from the HHS inspector general said the office wasn’t keeping track of repeat offenders, much less doing anything about them."

Yes, You've Got Something To Hide; TechDirt.com, 1/9/13

Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; Yes, You've Got Something To Hide: "We've tried a few times to debunk the ridiculous logic of "if you've got nothing to hide..." argument in favor of surveillance, but leave it the awesome Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal to do a much better job in the form of a simple webcomic."