23 min
BONUS: Secrecy and the Coronavirus Why Don’t We Know Podcast
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- News Commentary
This week we're sharing a Bonus Episode of Why Don't We Know, focused on secrecy and data during the pandemic. Government agencies everywhere, not just schools, are using COVID19 as an excuse for not sharing information.
We found some particularly puzzling examples, like at the FBI, where the open records office decided to only accept mail-in requests, not electronic ones.
Other FOIA office phone lines were disconnected. Calls went unreturned. Emails unanswered.
In this episode, we also explore how government agencies are misapplying the Health Insurance and Portability Act. You probably know it as HIPAA.
Our two guests, Carolyne Hartley, a privacy and compliance strategist and expert for HIPAA cases, and Al-Amyn Sumar, a media law attorney who is trying to help news organizations get better data, talk to us about how many officials either don't understand what HIPAA says, or are hoping that the public doesn't understand what it says, and are using it to hide critical information.
“I see it cited on Twitter all the time in all kinds of different contexts where people say, "Well, HIPAA protects this," and actually HIPAA has nothing to do with whatever they're talking about,” Sumar said.
According to Hartley, the confusion over it often boils down to one thing: Politics.
“We're kind of victims of our own freedom,” Hartley said. “In a communist country, you wouldn't have that freedom. The communist government would come in and say, you tell us who's got COVID, who's been diagnosed, give us the names and the people you've been around, and we're going to contact every one of those. In our country where we do exercise the luxury of freedom, unfortunately, that boils down to whether or not the public health authority, or the individual nursing home decides that they want to share that information.”
This week we're sharing a Bonus Episode of Why Don't We Know, focused on secrecy and data during the pandemic. Government agencies everywhere, not just schools, are using COVID19 as an excuse for not sharing information.
We found some particularly puzzling examples, like at the FBI, where the open records office decided to only accept mail-in requests, not electronic ones.
Other FOIA office phone lines were disconnected. Calls went unreturned. Emails unanswered.
In this episode, we also explore how government agencies are misapplying the Health Insurance and Portability Act. You probably know it as HIPAA.
Our two guests, Carolyne Hartley, a privacy and compliance strategist and expert for HIPAA cases, and Al-Amyn Sumar, a media law attorney who is trying to help news organizations get better data, talk to us about how many officials either don't understand what HIPAA says, or are hoping that the public doesn't understand what it says, and are using it to hide critical information.
“I see it cited on Twitter all the time in all kinds of different contexts where people say, "Well, HIPAA protects this," and actually HIPAA has nothing to do with whatever they're talking about,” Sumar said.
According to Hartley, the confusion over it often boils down to one thing: Politics.
“We're kind of victims of our own freedom,” Hartley said. “In a communist country, you wouldn't have that freedom. The communist government would come in and say, you tell us who's got COVID, who's been diagnosed, give us the names and the people you've been around, and we're going to contact every one of those. In our country where we do exercise the luxury of freedom, unfortunately, that boils down to whether or not the public health authority, or the individual nursing home decides that they want to share that information.”
23 min