However this "optimization" can also lead to shallow, distorted view of what information you have immediate access to when searching.
I can't believe you trust a public corporation to create that bubble around you.
Any time you use any search engine, you are trusting a -- probably largely anonymous to you, whether or not its a public corporation -- outside party to populate an immediate-access bubble for you. The fact that the engine supplier doesn't use information about you doesn't stop it from being a shallow and distorted bubble, it just makes it less likely that the distortion aligns with your preferences.
In the real world, sometimes you have to make the choice of doing things right, or actually getting them done.
In my experience, in the real world, the invocation of this phrase is usually used as justification for doing things in a manner that is so bad that what is actually done doesn't actually qualify in any meaningful way as doing the thing that was supposed to be done at all, although it often has enough of the superficial appearance of doing so that the people involved might reasonably hope that they will be out of the radius of accountability when it is realized that what was supposed to be done wasn't done.
So when I hear it, I mentally translate it into "in the real world, sometimes you have the choice between admitting that things can't be done as requested with the resources alotted and pretending that they can and hoping not to be held accountable when the failure is revealed."
So we used our super advanced technology to know precisely where this asteroid will be in like 2042 or whatever but we were off by almost half its mass (or volume)? Anyone see a little disconnect there?
Trajectories of an observed object in the solar system are comparatively project from observation, deducing mass can be trickier. So, no, I don't see a disconnect. You don't need to know its mass to know its trajectory (at least, at the level at issue, for an object of its scale given how close it passes to other objects in the solar system and their scale.)
Especially since other solar system bodies' gravitational fields will affect it differently if it weighs double what we thought.
Not much. Sure, it might make a difference to the effect of a very-close-pass to a similar-scale object, but compared to the main objects of interest that effect its orbit -- like the Earth and the Sun -- its mass is so small as to be pretty much irrelevant for most purposes in terms of figuring its trajectory.
I don't see any indication that mere filming is the basis of the obstruction charge, but one way or another that's irrelevant to what I said. I didn't say they were right to charge him with obstruction, I said that that -- not a HIPAA violation -- was what they were charging him with. The claim that he was being charged with a HIPAA violation is simply wrong.
If you want to argue that he shouldn't be charged with obstruction, that's fine, but offering it as a response to me pointing it out that the claim that he was being charged with a HIPAA violation is false is simply an irrelevancy.
Hell, there's not even any evidence the person was having a mental breakdown
On what basis do you draw this conclusion? TFA doesn't address it one way or another.
So you're saying he was riding a unicorn?
No, I'm saying TFA doesn't discuss what evidence the police may or may not have on the issue, so I am curious what the basis is for your claim that they don't have any (if you mean merely that the article presents no evidence on this point, I would agree with you, but I would point out that that's pretty irrelevant to the validity of claim by the police.)
You mean HIPAA? Please point to the provision violated.
If you were to check your medical records online and your employer has the ability to see them, they are in big trouble.
If your employer knowingly obtains your medical records, they are in big trouble under 42 USC 1320d-6. If they are able to see them through someone else's choice of sending them over a channel exposed to the employer, I don't see any provision of HIPAA that would apply to them.
Seeing as the SENATE run by the DNC hasn't voted on a budget in over 3 years
The Senate is not run by the Democratic National Committee.
The Senate has not only voted on but passed budgets in each of the last three years (and every year previously); if they didn't, there would be a government shutdown, as the government doesn't operate without a budget (even a late budget would produce a shutdown, it just wouldn't last the whole year.)
I keep hearing this "no budget" thing in various forms (Obama hasn't passed a budget -- as if the President passes budgets -- in X years, the US hasn't had a budget in X years, the Senate hasn't voted on a budget in X years) in different forums, but I don't understand how people can believe it.
In fact, it has voted on several different budgets in most of those years; for instance, before later passing a budget, it defeated the House-passed 2012 budget on a 40-57 vote less than two months after the House passed it.
The worse place I worked at thought they'd be smart and reward people who stay healthy by combining 2 weeks vacation and 2 weeks sick time into 4 weeks of combined sick and vacation time.
I've seen places try to be even "smarter" and combine 2 weeks vacation and 2 weeks sick time into 3 weeks of combined "annual leave" or "paid time off".
A dumb one or one that doesn't know the HIPAA laws might. The charge is bogus (unless there's been a huge change in how HIPAA works that I'm unaware of) and the guy is not a covered entity that must follow HIPAA's regulations.
Well, he's not being charged with HIPAA violations, but the actual criminal privacy prohibitions in HIPAA also apply to anyone obtaining information without authorization when the information is maintained by a covered entity, not just to unauthorized disclosure by a covered entity (42 USC 1320d-6), so while there aren't HIPAA charges in this case and its probably the case that such charges would not be supportable by the facts in this case, it is not the case that only covered entities are subject to penalties for HIPAA violations (particularly when it comes to criminal penalties.)
Did you just say "The law is really complicated, so it's okay if police officers don't understand it and therefore make false arrests?"
To be fair to GP, they said HIPAA is complicated, and that its understandable if people misunderstand its borders; the officer here may not have understood HIPAA and may have been wrong in the notes describing a "HIPAA data privacy violation", but that's pretty much irrelevant to your statement because (1) there was no arrest, and (2) the legal charge in the citation (rather than the description of events) wasn't about a HIPAA violation anyway.
HIPAA applies in exactly no fucking way at all to a typical citizen.
If by "a typical citizen" you mean "one who isn't violating HIPAA" (which is certainly the vast majority of citizens), that's true. If you mean "a citizen who is neither a HIPAA covered entity nor an employee of such an entity", then its not true at all -- HIPAA makes it a crime for anyone to knowingly obtain protected information that is maintained by a covered entity without authorization, regardless of whether the person doing the obtaining has any special relationship to a covered entity. (See 42 USC Sec. 1302d-6)
Follow the logic here, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
Ok, you're wrong. On pretty much every salient point.
He was charged with violating HIPAA
No, he was charged with obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct (the/. headline says otherwise, but the/. headline is wrong: RTFA.)
based on the evidence confiscated by police during the evidence.
No, he was charged based on what he allegedly did during the encounter with police, not based on the evidence on the camera. Whether there is sufficient evidence to maintain those charges is a matter for a court to decide, but its not at all unheard of for a trial to proceed based on the testimony of a few witnesses.
This would mean that they would either a) have to let the guy go, based on lack of evidence, or b) produce the undoctored evidence, showing the missteps that police took.
This might be true in a system where testimony of witnesses (including the arresting officer and other officers) was not evidence. However, in the American legal system, witness testimony is a fairly important kind of evidence.
Either way, the guy walks, or the police gets dinged with evidence tampering.
If there is sufficient evidence of evidence tampering, someone might get dinged with it, but by your standard of evidence (which clearly excludes witness testimony), there is no evidence, and by a more normal standard the evidence is mixed and controvertible.
I have had cause to research this in a different set of circumstances. The public is not bound by HIPAA. Only health professionals and organizations routinely dealing in health information are covered.
Oh, and I don't recall seeing criminal penalties. Only civil.
While there were no HIPAA charges here (the/. headline is wrong: if you RTFA you will see that the charges were obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct, not HIPAA violations, though there was a HIPAA violation mentioned in the officer's narrative of events on the citation, which is distinct from the legal charges, both of these AC statements about HIPAA are incorrect. I direct you to the main criminal privacy-related part of HIPAA, 42 USC Sec. 1320d-6:
(a) Offense
A person who knowingly and in violation of this part— (1) uses or causes to be used a unique health identifier; (2) obtains individually identifiable health information relating to an individual; or (3) discloses individually identifiable health information to another person,
shall be punished as provided in subsection (b) of this section. For purposes of the previous sentence, a person (including an employee or other individual) shall be considered to have obtained or disclosed individually identifiable health information in violation of this part if the information is maintained by a covered entity (as defined in the HIPAA privacy regulation described in section 1320d–9 (b)(3) of this title) and the individual obtained or disclosed such information without authorization. (b) Penalties
A person described in subsection (a) of this section shall— (1) be fined not more than $50,000, imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both; (2) if the offense is committed under false pretenses, be fined not more than $100,000, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both; and (3) if the offense is committed with intent to sell, transfer, or use individually identifiable health information for commercial advantage, personal gain, or malicious harm, be fined not more than $250,000, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
Note that people who illegally obtain information that was held by a HIPAA-covered entity are liable, and that liability most certainly includes criminal liability.
I have some similar mixed thoughts, but honestly I don't really believe their explanation in this case. If someone mentally ill were being filmed in public and the police were not present, would any prosecutor later press HIPAA charges for the public filming?
No one is pressing HIPAA charges in this case, either. The charge is obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct.
There is a mention of "HIPAA data privacy violation" in the officer's narrative of events supporting the citation, but that's not what is charged .
The police confiscated his camera, deleted the footage, and are charging him with a HIPAA violation (of which there is no legal basis to charge him).
Except that, if you read TFA rather than trusting the Slashdot headline, the police are not charging him with a HIPAA violation; they are charging him with obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct. There is mention of a "HIPAA data privacy violation" in the narrative of events (including note of the subject "refusing to identify himself", etc.) on the citation supporting the charge, but the idea that he is being charged with a HIPAA violation is a pure invention of the Slashdot headline writer.
Hell, there's not even any evidence the person was having a mental breakdown
On what basis do you draw this conclusion? TFA doesn't address it one way or another.
Though that's all true, it still didn't stop this particular officer from arresting a non-health worker for allegedly committing a HIPPA violation.
Sure it did. The person was cited and charged with obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct, not with a violation of HIPAA (and, as note in GP, its "HIPAA" -- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 -- not "HIPPA".)
People (including the author of the headline of TFS) seem to have trouble distinguishing what TFA describes the subject being charged with with the officer's description of the events supporting the charge on the citation. "HIPAA data privacy violation", "refused to identify himself", etc., are events that are described in the notes on the citation, but they aren't the legal charges. The legal charges are obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct.
the notes on the citation describing the event mention a HIPAA data privacy violation, but that's the description of the officer's version of the facts surrounding the charge, not the charged offense.
The notes on the citation also note that he refused to identify himself. But just like he isn't charged with a HIPAA violation, he's not being charged with "refusing to identify himself"; he's charged with "obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct". The notes on the citation explain the officer's story of events that provides the context for the charges, but it isn't the legal charge.
In fact, I'd dare bet that if there's a local scanner feed of that police department, Radio Reference archives scanner audio IIRC for three months and can almost guarantee you'll find a HIPPA violation there.
First, its HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), not HIPPA.
Second, since law enforcement agencies are not generally covered entities under HIPAA (which generally applies to health care providers, health plans, and health care clearinghouses, and their contracted business associates) in the first place, it might be harder to find a HIPAA violation than you think.
While the headline of TFS asserts that he was charged with a HIPAA violation, the TFA makes clear that he was, in fact, charged with "obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct"; the notes on the citation describing the event mention a HIPAA data privacy violation, but that's the description of the officer's version of the facts surrounding the charge, not the charged offense.
Recently, I was surprised to learn that a records transfer was handled by a third party private company,
completely out of the patients' control. There's noHIPAA requirement there; they can data-mine all they want....very sad.
This is, in fact, not true; the HIPAA covered entity employing them is required under HIPAA to contractually bind them to obey the same requirements as the party they are employed by is bound to, and, under more recent provisions (I believe from the HITECH Act, but possibly from the ACA), Business associates are also directly subject to privacy/security requirements as principals.
Part of HIPPA was to address information portability.
First, its HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), not HIPPA.
Second, it was to address insurance portability, not information portability.
While it may be better, patent information portability is painfully lacking. When will this be addressed with the same gusto as the privacy portion?
Portability of patient information didn't become as big a focus of federal efforts until fairly recent with the push to EHRs, and particularly the Meaningful Use provisions of the HITECH Act (part of the 2009 stimulus bill); the focus there is on incentives, though, not requirements and penalties.
HIPAA is the biggest waste of paper ever to come out of DC. It solves nonexistent problems with imaginary solutions an imposes a constant and never ending expense on providers, raising costs for everyone.
The main problem HIPAA aims to address (well, the main technical problem; HIPAA includes more than the IT-related aspects) is the barriers to health care access posed by health care payers (private and public) mandate mutually incompatible requirements and formats for billing, payment, and other administrative transactions (which make -- and moreso, made prior to HIPAA -- it difficult for providers to deal with multiple different insurers); the privacy and security aspects of HIPAA were in no small part instituted to mitigate the primary basis for political resistance to the standardization of electronic transactions and the push to use electronic transactions in healthcare (and the more recent enhancements regarding privacy and security served a similar purpose with regard to the push to EHRs.)
These problems are not "nonexistent", and while the standardization under HIPAA and subsequent related acts hasn't solved them, it certainly has mitigated them to a certain extent, and most of the newer requirements are motivated directly at addressing the gaps that have been identified -- largely by providers -- in the existing requirements.
I think many people have a misconception that vaccination prevents infection. It doesn't, it improves the immune response to infection and reduces the severity of the illness (sometimes quite significantly). I'm not aware of a study that looks at the relative contagion rates of the infected in a vaccinated vs. control group.
The relevant studies I've seen have been about the protective effects of "cocoon immunization" for neonates (who can't be vaccinated), and have shown positive results from immunizing those around them.
Nobody cares if the nurses contract flu per se, they just don't want them near the patients if they are contagious and the best way to do that is to avoid the contagion in the first place.
Actually, they do care very much about that; one of the major reasons for mandatory flu vaccination of health care workers is to reduce the risk that those health care workers are unable to work effectively in the event of a major flu outbreak. (The big push began during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and this was the main motivating factor.)
The other method to reduce transmission is prevent caregivers from working in the hospital if they show signs of being sick with any significantly harmful highly contagious disease.
Hospitals tend to do that, too, though enforcement is probably somewhat spotty, because its hardly as if every hospital employee can be given an exam at the start of every shift.
That is no more a mutually exclusive option with flu vaccinations than proper hygiene procedures are.
Slashdot Mirror
Any time you use any search engine, you are trusting a -- probably largely anonymous to you, whether or not its a public corporation -- outside party to populate an immediate-access bubble for you. The fact that the engine supplier doesn't use information about you doesn't stop it from being a shallow and distorted bubble, it just makes it less likely that the distortion aligns with your preferences.
In my experience, in the real world, the invocation of this phrase is usually used as justification for doing things in a manner that is so bad that what is actually done doesn't actually qualify in any meaningful way as doing the thing that was supposed to be done at all, although it often has enough of the superficial appearance of doing so that the people involved might reasonably hope that they will be out of the radius of accountability when it is realized that what was supposed to be done wasn't done.
So when I hear it, I mentally translate it into "in the real world, sometimes you have the choice between admitting that things can't be done as requested with the resources alotted and pretending that they can and hoping not to be held accountable when the failure is revealed."
It can't both be "more common" and not "happen as often".
Trajectories of an observed object in the solar system are comparatively project from observation, deducing mass can be trickier. So, no, I don't see a disconnect. You don't need to know its mass to know its trajectory (at least, at the level at issue, for an object of its scale given how close it passes to other objects in the solar system and their scale.)
Not much. Sure, it might make a difference to the effect of a very-close-pass to a similar-scale object, but compared to the main objects of interest that effect its orbit -- like the Earth and the Sun -- its mass is so small as to be pretty much irrelevant for most purposes in terms of figuring its trajectory.
I don't see any indication that mere filming is the basis of the obstruction charge, but one way or another that's irrelevant to what I said. I didn't say they were right to charge him with obstruction, I said that that -- not a HIPAA violation -- was what they were charging him with. The claim that he was being charged with a HIPAA violation is simply wrong. If you want to argue that he shouldn't be charged with obstruction, that's fine, but offering it as a response to me pointing it out that the claim that he was being charged with a HIPAA violation is false is simply an irrelevancy.
No, I'm saying TFA doesn't discuss what evidence the police may or may not have on the issue, so I am curious what the basis is for your claim that they don't have any (if you mean merely that the article presents no evidence on this point, I would agree with you, but I would point out that that's pretty irrelevant to the validity of claim by the police.)
You mean HIPAA? Please point to the provision violated.
If your employer knowingly obtains your medical records, they are in big trouble under 42 USC 1320d-6. If they are able to see them through someone else's choice of sending them over a channel exposed to the employer, I don't see any provision of HIPAA that would apply to them.
The Senate is not run by the Democratic National Committee.
The Senate has not only voted on but passed budgets in each of the last three years (and every year previously); if they didn't, there would be a government shutdown, as the government doesn't operate without a budget (even a late budget would produce a shutdown, it just wouldn't last the whole year.)
I keep hearing this "no budget" thing in various forms (Obama hasn't passed a budget -- as if the President passes budgets -- in X years, the US hasn't had a budget in X years, the Senate hasn't voted on a budget in X years) in different forums, but I don't understand how people can believe it. In fact, it has voted on several different budgets in most of those years; for instance, before later passing a budget, it defeated the House-passed 2012 budget on a 40-57 vote less than two months after the House passed it.
I've seen places try to be even "smarter" and combine 2 weeks vacation and 2 weeks sick time into 3 weeks of combined "annual leave" or "paid time off".
Well, he's not being charged with HIPAA violations, but the actual criminal privacy prohibitions in HIPAA also apply to anyone obtaining information without authorization when the information is maintained by a covered entity, not just to unauthorized disclosure by a covered entity (42 USC 1320d-6), so while there aren't HIPAA charges in this case and its probably the case that such charges would not be supportable by the facts in this case, it is not the case that only covered entities are subject to penalties for HIPAA violations (particularly when it comes to criminal penalties.)
To be fair to GP, they said HIPAA is complicated, and that its understandable if people misunderstand its borders; the officer here may not have understood HIPAA and may have been wrong in the notes describing a "HIPAA data privacy violation", but that's pretty much irrelevant to your statement because (1) there was no arrest, and (2) the legal charge in the citation (rather than the description of events) wasn't about a HIPAA violation anyway.
If by "a typical citizen" you mean "one who isn't violating HIPAA" (which is certainly the vast majority of citizens), that's true. If you mean "a citizen who is neither a HIPAA covered entity nor an employee of such an entity", then its not true at all -- HIPAA makes it a crime for anyone to knowingly obtain protected information that is maintained by a covered entity without authorization, regardless of whether the person doing the obtaining has any special relationship to a covered entity. (See 42 USC Sec. 1302d-6)
Ok, you're wrong. On pretty much every salient point.
No, he was charged with obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct (the /. headline says otherwise, but the /. headline is wrong: RTFA.)
No, he was charged based on what he allegedly did during the encounter with police, not based on the evidence on the camera. Whether there is sufficient evidence to maintain those charges is a matter for a court to decide, but its not at all unheard of for a trial to proceed based on the testimony of a few witnesses.
This might be true in a system where testimony of witnesses (including the arresting officer and other officers) was not evidence. However, in the American legal system, witness testimony is a fairly important kind of evidence.
If there is sufficient evidence of evidence tampering, someone might get dinged with it, but by your standard of evidence (which clearly excludes witness testimony), there is no evidence, and by a more normal standard the evidence is mixed and controvertible.
While there were no HIPAA charges here (the /. headline is wrong: if you RTFA you will see that the charges were obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct, not HIPAA violations, though there was a HIPAA violation mentioned in the officer's narrative of events on the citation, which is distinct from the legal charges, both of these AC statements about HIPAA are incorrect. I direct you to the main criminal privacy-related part of HIPAA, 42 USC Sec. 1320d-6:
Note that people who illegally obtain information that was held by a HIPAA-covered entity are liable, and that liability most certainly includes criminal liability.
No one is pressing HIPAA charges in this case, either. The charge is obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct.
There is a mention of "HIPAA data privacy violation" in the officer's narrative of events supporting the citation, but that's not what is charged .
Except that, if you read TFA rather than trusting the Slashdot headline, the police are not charging him with a HIPAA violation; they are charging him with obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct. There is mention of a "HIPAA data privacy violation" in the narrative of events (including note of the subject "refusing to identify himself", etc.) on the citation supporting the charge, but the idea that he is being charged with a HIPAA violation is a pure invention of the Slashdot headline writer.
On what basis do you draw this conclusion? TFA doesn't address it one way or another.
Sure it did. The person was cited and charged with obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct, not with a violation of HIPAA (and, as note in GP, its "HIPAA" -- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 -- not "HIPPA".)
People (including the author of the headline of TFS) seem to have trouble distinguishing what TFA describes the subject being charged with with the officer's description of the events supporting the charge on the citation. "HIPAA data privacy violation", "refused to identify himself", etc., are events that are described in the notes on the citation, but they aren't the legal charges. The legal charges are obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct.
I refer you to what I wrote in GP:
The notes on the citation also note that he refused to identify himself. But just like he isn't charged with a HIPAA violation, he's not being charged with "refusing to identify himself"; he's charged with "obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct". The notes on the citation explain the officer's story of events that provides the context for the charges, but it isn't the legal charge.
First, its HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), not HIPPA.
Second, since law enforcement agencies are not generally covered entities under HIPAA (which generally applies to health care providers, health plans, and health care clearinghouses, and their contracted business associates) in the first place, it might be harder to find a HIPAA violation than you think.
While the headline of TFS asserts that he was charged with a HIPAA violation, the TFA makes clear that he was, in fact, charged with "obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct"; the notes on the citation describing the event mention a HIPAA data privacy violation, but that's the description of the officer's version of the facts surrounding the charge, not the charged offense.
This is, in fact, not true; the HIPAA covered entity employing them is required under HIPAA to contractually bind them to obey the same requirements as the party they are employed by is bound to, and, under more recent provisions (I believe from the HITECH Act, but possibly from the ACA), Business associates are also directly subject to privacy/security requirements as principals.
First, its HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), not HIPPA. Second, it was to address insurance portability, not information portability.
Portability of patient information didn't become as big a focus of federal efforts until fairly recent with the push to EHRs, and particularly the Meaningful Use provisions of the HITECH Act (part of the 2009 stimulus bill); the focus there is on incentives, though, not requirements and penalties.
The main problem HIPAA aims to address (well, the main technical problem; HIPAA includes more than the IT-related aspects) is the barriers to health care access posed by health care payers (private and public) mandate mutually incompatible requirements and formats for billing, payment, and other administrative transactions (which make -- and moreso, made prior to HIPAA -- it difficult for providers to deal with multiple different insurers); the privacy and security aspects of HIPAA were in no small part instituted to mitigate the primary basis for political resistance to the standardization of electronic transactions and the push to use electronic transactions in healthcare (and the more recent enhancements regarding privacy and security served a similar purpose with regard to the push to EHRs.)
These problems are not "nonexistent", and while the standardization under HIPAA and subsequent related acts hasn't solved them, it certainly has mitigated them to a certain extent, and most of the newer requirements are motivated directly at addressing the gaps that have been identified -- largely by providers -- in the existing requirements.
The relevant studies I've seen have been about the protective effects of "cocoon immunization" for neonates (who can't be vaccinated), and have shown positive results from immunizing those around them.
Actually, they do care very much about that; one of the major reasons for mandatory flu vaccination of health care workers is to reduce the risk that those health care workers are unable to work effectively in the event of a major flu outbreak. (The big push began during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and this was the main motivating factor.)
Actually, "the item" doesn't say that, it says that that is a claim made by the head of a political advocacy group who supports the fired workers.
Hospitals tend to do that, too, though enforcement is probably somewhat spotty, because its hardly as if every hospital employee can be given an exam at the start of every shift. That is no more a mutually exclusive option with flu vaccinations than proper hygiene procedures are.