[IP] Patriot Act search

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

> Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 12:24:18 -0700
> From: Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Patriot Act search
> X-Sender: simon@higgs.com
> To: dave@farber.net
>
>
> At 01:56 PM 7/26/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>
> My experience is that title search companies will do that for anyone 
> calling cold and identifying themselves as a realtor in the middle of a 
> transaction. A friend with a collections agency background did this once 
> in front of me. In under three minutes he had the full record that he was 
> looking for.
>
> Also on another note, I fired my daughter's pediatrician last week. He 
> refused to see my daughter on an urgent-care visit because I refused to 
> sign a sight-unseen agreement to his new privacy policy - which I 
> discovered ran to multiple pages of single-space small print. He also 
> refused to show me a copy of the HIPAA law which he claimed to derive his 
> privacy policy. On the brief examination of his policy (I wasn't allowed 
> to keep a copy), I could not see anywhere where my daughter's privacy (or 
> mine) was protected. It was a long list of circumstances, definitely not 
> directly related to patient treatment, where he would release patient 
> information. Some of it seemed to cover releasing information to law 
> enforcement (deriving from the Patriot Act maybe?) which could be 
> expected. But my brief understanding of what I read told me that patient 
> records could be released (read "sold") for research covering marketing, 
> statistical data, and everything else to all comers (i.e. it did not 
> appear to be limited to the actual process required for patient treatment 
> per HIPAA). Isn't there a doctor's ethical mandate of putting the patient 
> first? I'm getting fed up with needing a degree in accounting and law 
> before receiving proper medical attention.
>
> > > Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:06:47 -0400
> > > From: Scott Alexander <salex@dsl.cis.upenn.edu>
> > > Subject: Patriot Act search
> > > To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
> > >
> > > We have refinanced our house and today was the closing.  Among the
> > > documents we had to look at was a long list of judgments against people
> > > with names remotely similar to ours.  At the end it was a "Patriot
> > > Search" statement saying that our names did not appear.  Presumably
> > > there are two aspects to this.  I suspect that those having a false
> > > match on this list will not only make flying difficult as previously
> > > discussed on IP, but will also make getting a mortgage difficult.  OTOH,
> > > I'd suspect that finding a title company willing to run a few extra
> > > searches would allow a terrorist cell to find which of their members
> > > were listed with very little risk.
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Scott
> >
> > -------------------------------------
> > You are subscribed as simon@higgs.com
> > To manage your subscription, go to
> >  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
> >
> > Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Simon Higgs
>
> --
>
> The Blog: http://www.simonhiggs.com/
>
> ###

-------------------------------------
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/