Category «Other»

Your medical provider might be recording your mental health care visits

Mental health providers are increasingly using AI technology to record conversations, raising privacy concerns among patients and practitioners. Roxsy Lin informs us that during these sessions, mental health professionals are required to obtain patients’ consent before using the tool. However, as shared by multiple providers, that consent process does not include explanations about how the information is handled. Nor does it say how long and where recordings are stored, or who has access to the data.

Subjects: AI, Healthcare, Privacy

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 13, 2026

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: FCC Proposal Could Ban Anonymous Burner Phones in US; Fighting Spyware: An Update From WhatsApp; Emergency Weather Alerts on Netflix? There is a Growing Push to Get the FCC To Mandate Alerts on Streaming; The Pope’s AI Warning Could Help Workers Seek Religious Exemptions From Using AI; and If you don’t fall for these extortionists’ calls, they’ll show up with USB sticks.

Subjects: AI, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Legal Research, Privacy

Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research, Public Health and the Rule of Law – Part 9

This article is the ninth in a series by Sabrina I. Pacifici focused on the Trump administration’s unrelenting policy of attacking science, healthcare, public health, and the rule of law. The cornerstone of this series are topical highlights on hundreds of anti-government actions conducted by this administration. The greater goal of the series is to identify the consequences of these actions to shatter the health and welfare of our nation – terms broadly used to encompass our nation’s democracy. Together these articles form an actionable pathfinder to identify what must be restored or recreated and relaunched, when we commence the hard work of rebuilding our government.

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Resources, Health, Healthcare, KM, Leadership, Legal Research, Medical Research, United States Law

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 29, 2026

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Peter G. Neumann, Who Warned of Computer Security Risks beginning in 2010, Dies at 93; California Sues Owner of Former 23andMe; Troops’ phones leaked location data to foreign adversaries; FBI Warns Companies About Ransom Gang’s Fake IT Support Tactics; and Crypto Security Pioneer: ‘I Now Consider All of Decentralized Finance Unsafe’.

Subjects: AI, Cryptocurrency, Cybersecurity, Healthcare, Privacy

The form asked my permission to share my health data. Then it wouldn’t let me say no.

Over the last year, Alex Rosenblat, Director of Sociotechnical Research, The Markup, interviewed more than 20 patients, healthcare providers, experts and advocates about the privacy forms they must sign to get care at their providers’ offices. Time and again she was told the same thing: Across the country, from large hospital systems to small, private clinics, patients are being asked to sign waivers blindly without knowing exactly what they’re signing. When patients ask to see more, staff usually don’t have an easy way to show them. When patients do get the forms, it tells them all the ways their medical data will be shared and reused, and some of the ways patients can refuse. But electronic systems make it impossible to opt out on the spot, requiring follow up emails. Records sharing between unaffiliated providers through these networks can benefit patients by making their scattered records more visible to the provider who is treating them. But it can also harm patients.

Subjects: Big Data, Healthcare, Legal Research, Privacy