Martin Matishak reports: A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators on Thursday attempted to break a monthslong logjam over extending a controversial surveillance program by introducing compromise legislation to win over privacy and national security hawks. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) proposed a measure to reauthorize and reform Section 702 of the…
Category: U.S.
Massachusett’s Supreme Judicial Court tosses warrantless secret video recording
by Jennifer Smith, CommonWealth Beacon December 4, 2024 Tthrew cold water on police use of a popular covert recording technology, ruling unanimously over Thanksgiving week that cell phone video taken of a suspect during a drug investigation without a warrant violates Massachusetts’ 1968 wiretap law. Massachusetts has one of the strictest anti-wiretap laws in the…
VA Nurse Charged With Unlawfully Accessing Patient Health Information
GRAND RAPIDS – U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten today announced that Jessica Nicole Pitcher, 41, of Shelbyville, Michigan, was charged by misdemeanor information with unlawfully accessing health information pertaining to a patient of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs without authorization, in violation of Title 42, United States Code, Section 1320d-6(a)(2)….
HHS Office for Civil Rights Imposes a $548,265 Penalty Against Children’s Hospital Colorado
Not all monetary penalties are for breaches affecting large numbers of patients. In this case, HHS imposed a penalty on an entity that had breaches in both 2017 and 2020. PogoWasRight notes that the 2017 incident affected 3,370 patients, and the 2020 incident affected 2,553 patients — as reported to HHS at the time. Today,…