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Links: Outsourcing Privacy
Posted by Steven Wu on Monday, March 29 @ 01:25:40 EST Privacy
From Slashdot comes a story about how a series of outsourcing led to workers in Pakistan handling confidential patient data--without the hospital's (let alone the patients') knowledge.

The specific example that is the foundation of the article strikes me as a little off topic. The article recounts how a person hired to transcribe a hospital's records circumvented a contractual provision and outsourced the work to a person in Pakistan. It seems to me that the problem with what the responsible party did here had nothing to do with the fact that it was a Pakistani who actually did the transcribing. Privacy is lost whenever a person who agrees to keep data confidential gives that data to somebody else, whether that person is in the United States or not. What happened here was a problem inherent in any outsourcing, not just foreign outsourcing.

Of course, the article does point out what might be a real problem: giving private data to people outside of the United States who are not subject to American law and against whom American judgments cannot be enforced, as a practical matter. I imagine the same problem would exist for outsourcing the programming of security/encryption software. This is, unfortunately, not a problem that the market will likely solve, due to information deficiencies--do you know who transcribes the records in your local hospital? I suppose we could just legislatively mandate massive (double/treble), strict-liability tort awards for loss of privacy, and let private actors adjust their behavior accordingly.

 
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Ah but the trend is toward "tort reform" (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, March 29 @ 02:47:11 EST
Which is another way of saying "let them do whatever they want without worrying about lawsuits, or, at least, about large judgements".


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Re: Outsourcing Privacy (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, March 29 @ 16:57:59 EST
It's going to be damn hard for them to get indemnification from their contractors when someone decides to sue them on HIPAA infractions now, hmm?


[ Reply to This ]


Re: Outsourcing Privacy (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Wednesday, March 31 @ 22:48:17 EST
Um, when was the last time a privacy judgement was won or enforced against a corporation _inside_ the United States? As far as I have been able to see, the privacy laws are toothless and the courts lock shut the gums of anyone who tries to even gnaw with them.

So I don't see how this makes much of a difference.

sPh


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