[privacy] Can We Now Expect AT&T To Provide Health Records to The U.S. Governmen t, Too?

[Paul Ferguson]

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Via Yahoo! News (AP).

[snip]

AT&T Inc. is partnering with Tennessee to provide the country's first
statewide system to electronically exchange patient medical information,
the telecommunications company said Monday.

The system is designed to securely transmit detailed patient information
between medical professionals. It will allow doctors to access medical
histories, prescribe medicines over the Internet and transfer images like
X-rays, MRIs and CT scans.

"As patients we really want our information to be available to physicians
whenever and wherever they're needed," said Diane Turcan, director of
health care marketing for AT&T in Atlanta. "And we certainly don't want to
be copying paper records."

Tennessee's program is seen as a model for other states and may be a
springboard for interstate information sharing networks in the future, she
said.

[snip]

More:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080225/ap_on_hi_te/at_t_medical_exchange

If AT&T has been providing your call records & Internet activities
to the U.S. Government without your knowledge or permission -- or
more importantly, without a valid court order or any other judicial
oversight -- why would anyone trust them with their health records?

- - ferg

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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/