Surveillance Society?
George Savage ·
June 13, 2010 at 1:41am
As creepy as this is, just wait until your doctor works for the federal government.
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Comments:
May '10
Re: Surveillance Society?
Feels creepy, but we narcissists do kind of expose it all on-line. Imagine if my doctor frequented Ricochet and read all this....
Re: Surveillance Society?
Great point, cdor. My credit card company knows more about me and my family than any other entity on earth. I don't worry much about Visa because 1) their employees can't lock me up; 2) there's always American Express; and 3) Visa has controls in place that prevent unauthorized access to my information, even by the executives. Sadly, not so with government agencies.
Edited on June 13, 2010 at 5:40pmMay '10
Re: Surveillance Society?
George, I would say that is not exactly true. There are numerous rules/controls on government employees to prevent the misuse of private data (Privacy Act, etc). However the problem always arises when people choose to break those rules.
Much like with guns, where the left can pass as many gun control laws as they want, and it won't stop some people who ignore those rules from shooting other people, we cannot stop people with access to privacy data from misusing that data if they choose to ignore privacy laws. But that does translate to mean there are no controls in place.
May '10
Re: Surveillance Society?
They mention psychiatry in the article, but I can see it applying to pain management, as well. I just don't see physicians in any other area of medicine having any interest at all in Googling information about their patients...or time. Maybe there's a potential for supplementing patient care with an information search if mental health issues and/or narcotics are involved. Otherwise, patients should be responsible for themselves and their level of compliance (or non-compliance). The consequences are the patient's...although, I guess there's an argument for the cost to society for treating sick populations.
Re: Surveillance Society?
I agree that patients need to be masters of their own healthcare, apart from rare situations (e.g., XDR tuberculosis) where improper treatment creates a tangible risk to others. I feel better about patients and physicians collaborating on care plans than Googling one another more or less at random.
Charles, Visa really does have better controls than government agencies. Relatively few employees can pull up personally identifiable customer data, and any such access leaves a clear audit trail 100 percent of the time. It no doubt focuses the mind of a would-be perpetrator to know that any confidentiality breach will be traced back to the source in mere moments.
The embedded link function isn't working for me right now, so here's more from Visa's corporate code of conduct: http://investor.visa.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=215693&p=irol-govConduct#10
May '10
Re: Surveillance Society?
I share your perspective George but would love to see this issue discussed in the context of homeland security. This is an area of dissonance in the conservative movement it seems to me. We distrust government in all areas except when it comes to national security and then we think it should have broad, unchecked powers? We don't trust it to arbitrate end-of-life care decisions but we trust it to define when torture is warranted? Help me out here.
Re: Surveillance Society?
Trace Urdan: I share your perspective George but would love to see this issue discussed in the context of homeland security. This is an area of dissonance in the conservative movement it seems to me. We distrust government in all areas except when it comes to national security and then we think it should have broad, unchecked powers? We don't trust it to arbitrate end-of-life care decisions but we trust it to define when torture is warranted? Help me out here. · Jun 14 at 7:26am
Trace, I don't want unchecked government anywhere. National security is clearly a federal responsibility under the Constitution while health care is not. However, it is undeniably true that as the government grows it gets progressively more difficult for citizens to hold it accountable in any area. There's just too much going on.
Torture is already prohibited by the Constitution, by statute and by treaty. Nobody supports torture. The hubbub during the Bush years was really an argument over whether waterboarding -- a process performed on US soldiers undergoing SERE training and three Al Qaeda bigwigs -- meets the definition.
May '10
Re: Surveillance Society?
George Savage: I agree that patients need to be masters of their own healthcare, apart from rare situations...where improper treatment creates a tangible risk to others. I feel better about patients and physicians collaborating on care plans than Googling one another more or less at random.
I guess it sounded like I agreed with the practice of patient Googling. Actually, I didn't have enough time to think it through and definitively decide one way or the other. My comment was more of an exercise in *why* a physician would even care. My reaction is to not like it for the obvious...breech of trust and invasion of privacy (regardless of the information source being public). But, my reason for not decrying it outright is from witnessing first hand a pain patient play my husband over weeks for narcotics. She had perfected the art of deceit and charmed our home number out of one of the nurses. Pharmacies should be the primary watch-dogs in those situations, but she gave me a glimpse of a lower caliber of patient that certain specialties have to deal with more than others.
May '10
Re: Surveillance Society?
George Savage: I feel better about patients and physicians collaborating on care plans.
Your magic pill is the perfect bridge to help with that collaboration!!