People who do not need to know my medical info, an incomplete list:

[azurelunatic]

So there is a thing going around the interwebs that attributes the concept that if health insurance discrimination were not a thing, people would be okay with their medical records being open access to some google big wheel.

This is not reflecting reality. Allow me to demonstrate.


Mama doesn't need to know about the STD scare I had in college while banging Shawn and he had collected a new partner.

It is none of my co-workers' business whether I am on the Pill or not.

People have weird ideas about mental illness. There are places and times I don't talk about even my depression, not to mention the more exotic shit.

In particular, that well-meaning lady from the shooting range knows jack and shit, and I don't feel like educating her.

Every now and then I run into someone who is way more into me than I am to them. Medical info is just one more thing they don't need as fuel to make a nuisance of themselves.

And then the blowhards who think because they once knew someone with the condition, this makes them more of an expert than the person living with it & their doctor combined.

Various people who used to bully me don't get anything they could possibly use.

Comments

[asciident]

I don't even really have medical records that aren't at least a decade out of date, and I certainly think open access to them would not be okay, insurance discrimination or not. Google et al can just be satisfied with guessing if my search history applies to my physical condition.

[azurelunatic]

If I had something painful like a bad miscarriage in mine, I am pretty sure I would not want people I barely know or don't like to feel it was an acceptable line of conversation.

And hell, even without insurance discrimination, employment discrimination would happen. Consider the chronic migraine.

[siderea]

Also targeting for crimes. A google mashup map of incidence of arthritis in a community is a treasure map of poorly defended caches of vics, percs, and oxies for desperate junkies. Oh, want benzos instead? Check out PTSD and GAD to see which houses to burglarize (or armed invasion, take your pick). Out of smack? Find out who in your neighborhood is on methodone or suboxone by looking up "Opioid Dependence".

Someone has not thought this through.

[azurelunatic]

Oh god, I had not even thought of that.

Someone has really not.

[norabombay]

OOOH, and you forgot the obvious one: people, who for -whatever- reason had an abortion.

Put that on the map, an give an asshole protest group five minutes. Triple points for possible ex partners who were not informed.

[azurelunatic]

Because getting murdered by your ex is totally how you want to start your day.

[pauamma]

My search history is as useless as TMN and me(*), working together, can make it. (Sometimes, what TMN searches for on my behalf scares me, when I see it in the status line.)

(*) What Google gets that's genuinely from me is occasional searches for which DuckDuckGo didn't turn up anything useful. Other search engines only get TMN queries.

[asciident]

If Google is actually making guesses about me based on search, it must think I'm genuinely fucked up. :) I search all kinds of things, from things affecting me to things I read about or heard on TV or whatever.

[tsjafo]

I note that people who tend to think everything should be open to everyone else (like the government or Mark Zuckerberg for example) don't feel the same way about their information. It's ok for everyone to know your business, just not theirs.

[siderea]

Also, they are more comfortable with their privacy being breached because their privilege insulates them from all sorts of consequences. For instance, re the threat I just described above, if you are a well compensated C-level executive living in Weston, MA, where there is no public transit, in a manorial multi-acre estate down a quiet rural road, you are vastly less likely to be burglarized for your month's supply of percoset than if you are a retired working-class resident of Upham's Corner in Dorchester, MA, living on the first floor of a triple-decker.

[kaberett]

YES.

[matgb]

Health insurance isn't much of an issue in the UK (because, y'know, NHS), but disclosure of medical records is a serioues crime and the privacy surrounding it is taken very seriously. for the reasons you give and others.

The idea that everyone wants all potential employers to know all their history is utterly daft.

[forthwritten]

Yes, agreed with this - even if discrimination in health insurance is a non-issue for whatever reason, there are still many, many reasons to maintain privacy of medical records.

[mmegaera]

I'd never heard of this concept before. I guess I live a sheltered life online.

But NO. Just HELL, NO. There are things in my medical past that I would like to have stay there, thankyouverymuch.

[senmut]

I work in medical-related fields and I'd never heard of it. It is like the exact opposite of HIPAA. And There are so many ways the concept is totally daft.

[norabombay]

Fuck those people.

I'm ok with medical records being used- in anonamized fashion for certain kinds of very legitimate medical/public health/epidemiology research. The kind of stuff that involves grants, universities, and review boards.

That it would be just put out there? FUCK NO.

My medical history is mine, thank you very much. I share what needs sharing- ie, please don't feed me red bull or energy drinks, I'm allergic.

And that is it.

[amberfox]

That sounds about right. I'm pretty upfront about being bipolar, but only when I have the energy to play "look how normal the crazy person is" with people. The only medical information I reliably hand out to strangers is food allergies, and even then only to people feeding me. (I'm constantly surprised at the number of things people put alcohol in, and I've learned the hard way that it's safest just to ask upfront.)

[pauamma]

I'd be wary of even that. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/05/reidentifying_a.html

[norabombay]

I am from a public health family- I'm well aware of how easy, in current computing and internet days- it is to id someone from what is supposed to be an anon dataset.

I think that it is a real and legit privacy concern- but I also think that in general, it's a good thing to be doing research, and it serves a real societal good. It just needs to have the appropriate concern for privacy.

Unlike say, a public open database, which is a nightmare waiting to happen.

[pauamma]

Oh, I agree about the usefulness. But "the appropriate concern for privacy" can no longer include "don't worry, it's anonymized" as the sole step. It needs to describe which steps they took to make re-identifying it too hard/costly to be worth the attempt. Because if there's one thing that the last dozen years have demonstrated, it's that the database *will* be leaked - whether it's Anonymous doing it for the lulz or some idiot having it unencrypted on a laptop or CD that subsequently gets lost or stolen.

[icarus]

Anyone who thinks medical info could be public either hasn't thought it through, or has only aspirin on their medical record.

[siderea]

Actually, the jerk under discussion came out about having a medical condition, and thought the response he got was so awesome and supportive and helpful, that he doesn't see why everyone else shouldn't.

Must be nice to be king.

[icarus]

*eyeroll*

He had a speech condition. Huge social stigma. Right up there with astigmatism by golly.

[vlion]

+1, A+, 100%, exactly.

There are Things out there relating to people's medical history that are simply not OK for public consumption. There are so very many ways to misuse information, and medical information is so intimate that you can do all sorts of things relating to it.

I am not going to put my black hat thinking on about this, because that'd scare everyone incl. me.

[trixieleitz]

...people would be okay with their medical records being open access to some google big wheel.

...what the actual fucking fuck O_O

[azurelunatic]

Page is coming at it from the direction of a dude who is mostly in a position to not get hurt.

Also, people are already sharing that of their medical information that they feel comfortable sharing, often not under a googleable name.

Consider fucking_meds.

Larry Page, Google I/O

[azurelunatic]

http://www.itworld.com/legal/356676/larry-page-wants-see-your-medical-records

Re: Larry Page, Google I/O

[trixieleitz]

I wonder how much information Larry Page's "personal" medical history discloses about his blood relatives' health conditions :/

[silveradept]

My medical history is important to me, my partner(s) and my physician(s). Anyone else requesting can go kindly fuck themselves. That this is not the default is not good at all.