The Tech Industry’s Latest Privacy Trojan Horse
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Beware the Tech Industry’s Latest Privacy Trojan Horse
A tech startup is pushing a set of state bills disguised as medical data privacy measures — but they’re really focused on profits not patients.
Did you hear the story about the do-gooder tech company that is pushing new state “privacy” bills across the nation?
The pitch by that company, Hu-manity.co — which is so effective its Oregon bill was introduced with more than 40 co-sponsors — is that patients’ health information is being sold for big money without their consent and without providing them any compensation. The solution these bills propose is to prohibit such information from being sold without patients’ permission and without giving them a cut of the profits when their information is sold. Sounds like a big win for privacy and consumers.
Only it’s not. Beware the tech industry’s latest privacy Trojan Horse.
If these bills were purely designed to prevent the sale of patient’s personal information without their express permission, the ACLU would wholeheartedly support such “opt-in” privacy measures. But that is far from these bills’ goal.
Hu-manity.co’s real goal is to use state legislation to create a new way for data sellers to profit off of consumers’ personal information. The current bills being pursued are limited to medical patients, but future iterations are likely to cover a broader range of consumers.
Currently, profits on the sale of patient information are captured when the information is initially sold by a health care provider to a data broker, marketer, or other user and again if the information is resold. While the overall market for personal consumer information, which is predicted to hit $203 billion by 2020, is huge, it is also fairly saturated with existing data mining and selling companies.
Rather than compete with the high volume of companies in the existing market, Hu-manity.co is looking to create a new, less-populated niche from which to generate profits. And that is what is behind the company’s current multi-state legislative push.
Hu-manity.co’s strategy is to use legislation to artificially generate a robust market for “customer information sales agents” who will facilitate — and profit from — the sale of patients’ medical information. That is why Hu-manity.co’s legislation, after it mandates patient consent before selling their information, undermines its own privacy provisions by requiring all consent forms notify patients they can “elect to receive a share of any remuneration received” from the sale of their information — an election Hu-manity.co’s business model is designed to effectuate. And whereas in the past, health care providers could sell patient information directly to data brokers, Hu-manity.co’s legislation effectively requires that health care providers use companies like itself to complete the transaction…continue reading
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