Secondary uses of data

Secondary uses of data

Baase identified several concerning issues regarding data usage (pg 66 & 67, and many others), specifically the identifying of certain individuals with regards to special interest groups (i.e., abortion clinics, KKK rallies, gay rights organizations, etc). I am especially concerned about this and even more intrigued by individual medical record information being distributed (also discussed by Baase beginning on pg 64 under “Personal Health and Medical Information”). The first issue really hits home. The DMV, as good as their employment process is, can still be very scary. Just as Professor Perry explained in class, I’llI use the following scenario to illustrate this point: A police officer has the option of having a “confidentiality” record regarding the DMV (for obvious reasons, so an arrestee doesn’t follow them home or find a way to run a personal license plate and find their home). Long story short, a criminal did just this and was able to “pay off” a DMV employee to look up his personal info. As a result, the police officer was murdered by this individual.

We have a trust in governmental employees sometimes due to their strict hiring process (we also have a distrust, but for other reasons), and trust they will handle our personal information as if it was their own, but we’re very mistaken. The second issue scares me more though, the access to medical records; the following link addresses many of these concerns: http://www.amia.org/inside/initiatives/healthdata/meeting_introduction.pdf#search='Secondary%20uses%20of%20data'). People are helpless in this area in that illness or injuries are often not one’s fault. My concern is whether the government/employers/private citizens will use this documented data for ulterior motives and I believe it is very likely they might succeed. The government likes to hide behind the “national security” issue and to some extent they have a point (think of small pox, black plague, or in light of recent news the avian flu virus). I might even agree with their assessment that these illnesses if seen can be catastrophic if left undetected. If someone enters a hospital with a gunshot wound or knife stabbing wound, they are required to call the police. Why couldn’t this be the next step for viruses? Then where does it stop? Employers too want to know the history of a person to identify if they are a medical risk. Would you employ someone with a previous back injury for a job requiring manual labor? These are legitimate reasons to investigate secondary uses of data, but are we opening Pandora’s Box? I don’t trust the government enough to give them this power, but as a result if an epidemic does occur, could I now have just written my or my children’s death warrant?

Just to give you an idea of how unsecured we are on the web, go to www.zabasearch.com and type in your name and state. Most of us will come up with our address and/or birth date. Then go to http://earth.google.com/ and now you have a view of where someone lives. This is very scary in the sense the computer world has made these things so easy (all this coming from someone who doesn't know computers well, imagine what someone can do when they understand computers).