Mary Anne Pazanowski reports: Health-care providers must turn over patients’ names and contact information to Washington in the state’s consumer fraud litigation. Neither the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act nor its state equivalent protected the information from compelled disclosure in a civil case because there’s already a protective order in place, and the…
Category: Court
Voter List Access, Maine Privacy Law Clash at First Circuit
Allie Reed reports: Maine’s privacy law protecting voters’ personal information is in question after a panel of First Circuit judges suggested a conservative election law firm has standing to sue the secretary of state. The Public Interest Legal Foundation is suing Maine over its law preventing people who obtain personal information from its central voter registration system…
Appeals court lifts partial block on Idaho abortion ban
Josh Gerstein reports: A federal appeals court has lifted a lower court ruling that prevented the State of Idaho from enforcing aspects of its near-total ban on abortion. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order Thursday granting Idaho officials’ request to put the injunction against the law on hold while the state appeals the lower…
Security researcher warns of chilling effect after feds search phone at airport
Zack Whittaker reports: U.S. security researcher is warning of a chilling effect after he was detained on arrival at a U.S. airport, his phone was searched, and was ordered to testify to a grand jury, only to have prosecutors reverse course and drop the investigation later. On Wednesday, Sam Curry, a security engineer at blockchain technology…