Dive Brief:
- An examination of documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden suggests that the National Security Agency's wide grasp extends to medical records.
- Washington Post researchers reviewed roughly 160,000 e-mails and IMs, along with 7,900 documents from 11,000 online accounts that had been intercepted by the NSA. They found that even when a person had not been targeted as possibly being involved in terrorist activity, documents intercepted include personal data of many kinds, including medical records.
- What makes this worrisome, according to one expert, is not only that the data gets collected, but that the agency has not proven skilled at safeguarding the data.
Dive Insight:
While health leaders may not have the power to stop the NSA from snooping on medical records, it's good for them to be aware that the agency's reach extends to what would ordinarily be sacrosanct personal health data. Health organizations may or may not agree with critics contending that collecting and storing such data on ordinary Americans is illegal, but they may want to have a voice in the discussion on this subject. Clearly, it's in their interests to know just how vulnerable their patients' records may be to government review.