William Ralston reminds us how devastating the Vastaamo breach and ransom incident has been: Jukka-Pekka Puro will never forget 2017. Facing the heartbreak of a divorce, Puro, a university lecturer in Turku, southwestern Finland, found himself tussling with depression. This spiralled into suicidal ideations when doctors told him he had aggressive kidney cancer, and no…
Category: Healthcare
Agents raid home of fired Florida data scientist who built COVID-19 dashboard
This is troubling. Jeffrey Schweers reports from Florida: State police brandishing firearms Monday raided the home of Rebekah Jones, the former Department of Health data scientist who built the state’s much-praised COVID-19 dashboard before being fired over what she said was refusing to “manipulate data.” “They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at…
Researchers Explore Privacy Techniques to Protect Against Re-Identification of Genomic Information
Libbie Canter of Covington & Burling writes: It’s the stuff of science fiction: adversaries extract DNA information from a cup of coffee or postage stamp and use it infer one’s most private traits. However, a recently released study entitled, “Data Sanitization to Reduce Private Information Leakage from Functional Genomics” discusses how this can be achieved,…
Planned database of Victorians’ health information ‘trashes privacy’
Henrietta Cook reports: The private medical information of every Victorian who has used public hospitals and health services will be collected by the Health Department, stored on a database and accessed by clinicians under a controversial state government plan. The proposal, which was quietly unveiled in September, has attracted criticism from legal, consumer and public…