Maria Dinzeo reports:
A survivor of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre is suing Yahoo! for helping China capture political dissidents, claiming in a federal lawsuit that he was arrested, tortured and imprisoned after the web provider gave the contents of his email account to party officials.
Read more on Courthouse News.
In other news, Nicholas Iovino reports:
A former Twitter employee accused of helping Saudi Arabia spy on its critics pleaded not guilty Wednesday to 23 criminal counts, including acting as an unregistered foreign agent and obstructing an investigation.
According to a superseding indictment issued July 28, Abouammo used his inside access as a Twitter employee to help Saudi Arabia obtain the private information of dissidents who criticized the oil-rich nation’s government and royal family on Twitter.
Read more on Courthouse News.
People selling out dissidents for money is not the only privacy violation of concern these days. A recent study by researchers at Florida Atlantic University, Baylor University and the State University of New York at Buffalo reports that health care professionals will sell out patient privacy/data if the price is right. From the abstract of the study:
Results: Many of the subjects believed there was a high probability of being caught. Nevertheless, many of them could be incentivized to violate HIPAA laws. In the nursing scenario, 45.9% (240/523) of the participants indicated that there is a price, ranging from US $1000 to over US $10 million, that is acceptable for violating HIPAA laws. In the doctors’ scenario, 35.4% (185/523) of the participants indicated that there is a price, ranging from US $1000 to over US $10 million, for violating HIPAA laws. In the insurance agent scenario, 45.1% (236/523) of the participants indicated that there is a price, ranging from US $1000 to over US $10 million, for violating HIPAA laws. When a personal context is involved, the percentages substantially increase. In the scenario where an experimental treatment for the subject’s mother is needed, which is not covered by insurance, 78.4% (410/523) of the participants would accept US $100,000 from a media outlet for the medical records of a politician. In the scenario where US $50,000 is needed to obtain medical records about a famous reality star to help a friend in need of emergency medical transportation, 64.6% (338/523) of the participants would accept the money.
Before you sink into depression, as I started to do, do read the whole study and its methodology. It may change your impression of the findings.