I agree that medical records deserve more privacy but the police are utilizing subpoenas. Most of these companies are complying as the cost to review and challenge each subpoena will add up. It’s not worth eating into their profits and current law allows them to do this. I wouldn’t expect them not to utilize every legal tool at their disposal.
The legal standard for a subpoena from a federal agency is "reasonably relevant to an authorized investigation." As determined by the agency itself.
That's an incredibly low bar. And if pharmacies respond to subpoena without even having a lawyer review them first, there really isn't anything to stop requests that fall below this low standard.
A subpoena is a court order, and the only way to challenge it would be to go in front of a judge, at which point you could potentially risk criminal contempt charges for not complying in the first place. Hobson's choice :(
> A subpoena is a court order, and the only way to challenge it would be to go in front of a judge, at which point you could potentially risk criminal contempt charges for not complying in the first place.
There may be some special authority subpoenas where things are different, but generally, no, immediately filing a motion to quash instead of complying with a subpoena will not make you subject to any sanctions for not complying up front.
I was curious if people were still going into Pharmacy since every drug store I've walked into in the last 5 years looked like an empty thrift store that just had a tornado blow through it. This article was written by a class of 2025 Pharmacy student.
> Applying to pharmacy school I was told the field was saturated, but now there are corporations offering pharmacists signing bonuses and most pharmacies are understaffed. What changed?
COVID. The pharmacists that were close to retiring just retired. There were less applications to pharmacy schools nationwide and therefore less people entering the field. Previously it was a requirement to have some kind of first post-graduate year (PGY1) and/or second post-graduate year (PGY2) residency to work in the hospital setting, but now I have seen job openings that have no residency requirement, and they are willing to do specialty training on the job because they need more people to fill roles and a larger applicant pool.
I live in the middle of a big downtown and the nearest drug store to me is a 3 mile, 20 minute drive, 45 minute bus ride. I have to go monthly. It's literally the only place I drive for months. I don't know what exactly has happened but the last 5ish years every Pharmacy option has become just terrible. I recall there being 24 hour pharmacies and everything in the past.
I don't even walk down the home aisle of mine anymore when I'm there because they will NOT have my detergent or dog food in stock and haven't had it the last 4-10+ trips I've made. Just an empty shelf where it should be sitting. It's an extra kick in the teeth because living where I live the CLOSEST "grocery" store is this Walgreens. I basically live off of Amazon deliveries and hate it but oh well.
Sometimes I'll drive the 20-25 minutes (3 miles) and get there and they're so understaffed that there's either a "We're at lunch, back in 1 hour" or "Everyone is sick, Pharmacy is closed."
Our pharmacy options are pathetic. And living in a food/pharmacy desert is a nightmare for people who don't have reliable transportation.
All this bs just to get my ADHD meds every month for the last 30 years of my life.
In fact, every medical insurance provider I've had for years has tried to push me onto their in-house pharmaceutical delivery service. Traditional pharmacies have been getting squeezed for a long time.
Ah, I see. I always forget that such services exist, probably because they are of no interest to me. And since my local pharmacy is always busy, I'm thinking I'm not alone in this.
> According to the lawmakers, CVS, Kroger, and Rite Aid said that "their pharmacy staff face extreme pressure to immediately respond to law enforcement demands and, as such, the companies instruct their staff to process those requests in store."
THIS. Expecting indifferently-paid and often-overworked pharmacist assistants, clerks, etc. to stand up to law enforcement - who can easily be armed, uniformed, belligerent, and right in their faces - is cruel and delusional.
It takes real courage to stand up to a request in those circumstances. A notable example from a few years ago was this nurse [0] who was unlawfully arrested and forcefully dragged away by an officer when she refused to take blood samples from an unconscious patient without a warrant.
Imagine how much more difficult it would be to resist this when you're a clerk in a retail store working in public.
After that happened, laws were passed to make it perfectly legal to get blood from unconscious patients without a warrant (https://www.npr.org/2019/06/27/732852170/supreme-court-affir...) and to help avoid the problem of doctors and nurses interfering with the demands of the police, departments in several states have started training officers to draw blood from suspects themselves right on the side of the road so there's no need to take most people to a hospital.
Jeff Payne, the Utah cop who was fired after his violent arrest of that nurse went viral, later got hired by the Weber County Sheriff’s Office to work in the medical unit of the county jail.
What makes it worse is that the person they were attempting to get the blood from was actually the innocent victim in a crash which resulted from a police chase. The police had no reason to believe the driver was under the influence.
It’s too bad law enforcement don’t seem to be held to any standards at all, then maybe folks who are not generally equipped to make legal determinations won’t be accountable for erring just because an unscrupulous officer or prosecutor misleads and/or intimidates them.
Or perhaps the issue is law enforcement criminally intimidating these pharmacists and clerks. Seems they are the only ones that aren't held to any standard.
Lawyers have to fight to get that to apply for digital video. So it would take a specific law to make that carry through to pharmacies.
And for that matter, I doubt the video store law applies to bookstores.
(A judge confirmation process ran in trouble because of video rental records - so a law was written ... which addresses only video rental. For maximum inefficiency or something.)
My wife is an ER charge nurse, and she often complains about the behavior of cops in the emergency room. They have someone on the edge of death and the cops often are in the room yelling at the nurses to get them to do a blood draw and drug screening.
Cops need a warrant to get that, and even if they had a warrant in hand, performing the blood draw wouldn't even be considered until the patient is stabilized. But they never have a warrant, and the pressure the cops apply is withering. Most people -- even doctors and nurses -- would eventually cave.
Fortunately, as the charge nurse, she's the one who has to approve such a thing, so the cops have to deal with her. And she's hard as a rock. They aren't going to make her wilt.
Well, we've spoiled our police force. We've provided them with ridiculous amounts of power, minimal oversight, and very rare and minor consequences.
The behavior you describe is that of a spoiled child, used to getting what it wants immediately by throwing an abusive tantrum, consequences to others and rules be damned. Same reason they execute PIT maneuvers on busy roads, lead high speed chases through the middle of towns, and empty full magazines into densely populated areas, all things that police in other countries are trained not to do, trained to be patient and follow instead. They want it now, and anyone hurt along the way is just a casualty of war, not their problem or responsibility.
It seems like a well-drafted company policy posted and pointed to by the local store staff would be the right way to back up their customers and staff.
“Here’s the phone number to corporate who is, by this policy, the only ones equipped and permitted to satisfy your request.” This also makes it so you don’t even send a car out anymore, but can handle the request electronically from the station.
Here’s how that would play out: You’re the only store manager out of all of the chain to have this policy. The Sherriff calls the Mayor who sends a “concerned” email to your VP of Sales. You standing up for your team not only gets you fired but now you’re on a list against the police.
>Here’s how that would play out: You’re the only store manager out of all of the chain to have this policy.
The parent post specifically says that it wold be company policy, so that wouldn't apply.
>> It seems like a well-drafted company policy posted and pointed to by the local store staff would be the right way to back up their customers and staff.
The same power structure exists irrespective of where you jump into the value chain - The police are a legal gang that goes all the way to the President
Instead of the Mayor, the Sheriff will go to some State Rep or congressperson and the same results happen.
I've seen similar moves play out in the past in real life
Corruption and bending the rules will probably happen even with this system, but it raises the barrier, and if it's inconvenient enough, it will be only done for the most important cases.
If every local sheriff can intimidate and bully a local pharmacist to get the information it's very different than if you need a congress person to call in a favor with supposedly one of the few people who have access to the information.
Why would a Vp of sales, who’s presumably in another part of the country, give in to the demands of a mayor of one of the towns their stores are in and fire a manager? That sounds far fetched to me.
The problem with that is that is shifts the burden from the clerk to the company. Right now, these places can claim ignorance and/or take whatever is the highest moral high ground.
At that point, the company itself is under scrutiny in the public eye. They can't blame their front-line staff.
In the time before ubiquitous cell phones, I was a cashier at a gas station. One day a cop came in and asked to use the phone. I directed him to the pay phone. He told me that the pay phone was in use, not realizing that I could see the p[ay phone from where I was standing. He got belligerent and demanded the phone, he made a personal call to his wife. Later he pulled me over and gave me a bogus ticket for not signaling. Real nice people those police, better give them what they want or else.
A tale as old as the first police union: when the city tried to reign them in, the Portland Police politely threatened to walk off the job and the chief (iirc) casually showed up to negotiations with a dossier on one of the city councilors just laid out on the table next to his gun.
i used to work at a place where we had (potentially) a lot of personal and movement information about the city inhabitants ; the police would regularly call the call-center and ask for information, the proper answer was "sure, send us a warrant by email" (and we would never see any warrant) but not every worker would react properly
Yeah, I have expectations... of the police. In most large cities, this is a guaranteed six figure income, with basically no education requirements. They are literally given an "above the law" status via qualified immunity. If they intimidate someone into doing something illegal, like giving up patient information, they should be culpable. Do not punish the weakest person in the power struggle, they are nearly always the victim.
Ofc we should expect them to stand up. They are breaking the law full stop.
I would not give out information on my users, and would rather go the station. They can't do anything but trying to frighten you.
I expect everyone with access to personal data do the same.
> They can't do anything but trying to frighten you.
Police can rob you, rape you, or murder you in the street and even if it's caught on camera they can still face zero meaningful consequences for that. We've certainly seen it happen. They can also arrest you for something like "obstruction" or "contempt of cop" and that's something you'd have to spend time and money on fighting later in the courts. Ongoing retaliation is something else to be concerned about.
In any case, the can certainly do a lot besides "trying to frighten you"
I don’t expect someone in their early 20’s, being paid CVS wages, and dealing with a ton of people all day to necessarily have the best backbone in the face of an armed thug demanding information face to face.
Respecting privacy should be a tenant of law enforcement, since that’s like one of our rights or something, but cops and police unions have been operating outside of the law for their entire history in the US.
Are not the police conspiring to break the law then, at the very least? If I intimidated you into breaking the law, while armed, would I not also be culpable? The more I think about this, the more it seems the police should be the only ones culpable in that situation...
This has the expectation that police wouldn't just pressure the clerk to do it themselves. The clerk says they'll forward it to corporate, the policeman tells him not to bother and hints that, you know, he is the one with the power here. How many people would ignore that and still do the bureaucratic procedure? Especially if the cop says it won't get back to legal and they'd be helping out on a case?
The standard corporate policy would be that pharmacists aren't authorized to release records. To do otherwise would risk their jobs and whatever other action follows an unauthorized release of records.
With this policy across chains, judges would be skeptical of a cop who tried to bully a local records release. Even a rogue cop could understand this reality.
This is the part that would piss me off as a PharmD.
They spend a vast sum of time, money and energy to gain a PharmD, then some asshat company puts them in situations where their licenses could be at risk?
No, enforcement becomes roulette or leverage over people in these situations.
Were I on the board of these companies, I'd be aghast and demand this clear operational issue, which threatens our capacity to provide pharmacy services long term, be remediated.
This is not unlikely, but at the same time, to be put in a position where, in order to do your job, you have to rely on the understanding of "the government" is just shitty.
> Expecting indifferently-paid and often-overworked pharmacist assistants, clerks, etc. to stand up to law enforcement - who can easily be armed, uniformed, belligerent, and right in their faces - is cruel and delusiona
Why do "indifferently-paid and often-overworked pharmacist assistants, clerks, etc." even have access to this? In the US any random pharmacy clerk has access to list of all drugs that customers have ever bought from them and also "medical records" (according to the article)? WTF?
Pharmacists access drug records as a double check against doctors prescriptions. They look for drug interactions, call out side affects, etc. Their role provides important value so it would be difficult to design a system where they can access the info they need but law enforcement can’t request from (without a change to corporate policy/etc)
That weird US thing is a fractured healthcare system. You might have your GP, a specialist, and a psychologist, who all work in different offices that use different records system which may or may not have a working level of interoperability.
Chances are, if any of them know about the medications you’re on that they didn’t prescribe, it’s because you self-disclosed on your intake form or told the nurse during intake verbally. This is not necessarily a great way to know for sure, because patients forget things and people write or type or select the wrong thing.
In this system, it’s much more reliable to have all the prescriptions flow down to one endpoint and have someone trained who can see the exact medications and dosages, and that person can then give the patient the relevant information they need at the time of service.
They're supposed to, but they sometimes make mistakes. Pharmacists are supposed to know about the sort of drugs they're selling so they can catch potentially lethal errors.
Doing away with this safety net to.. avoid addressing police overreach directly is a bad idea.
> They're supposed to, but they sometimes make mistakes. Pharmacists are supposed to know about the sort of drugs they're selling so they can catch potentially lethal errors.
Are there any stats for how many potentially lethal errors they actually catch in practice?
I don't know, did you look? I know from personal experience that pharmacists do catch errors, but I have no clue if anybody is keeping statistics on it. I think most issues get resolved with a phone call from the pharmacist to the doctor and it's anybody's guess if that gets recorded in some database somewhere.
I'm struggling to understand the logic in wanting pharmacists to be more ignorant. Even if cops couldn't interrogate pharmacists because they were all blind and dumb, they'd go to local doctors instead. The police are the problem that needs to be addressed.
You made a statement, it is up to you to back it up.
> I know from personal experience that pharmacists do catch errors, but I have no clue if anybody is keeping statistics on it.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
> I'm struggling to understand the logic in wanting pharmacists to be more ignorant.
This is IT security 101 - the less randos have access to a sensitive data the better.
> Even if cops couldn't interrogate pharmacists because they were all blind and dumb, they'd go to local doctors instead.
In context of US situation I guess the benefit if when out-of-state telehealth doctor prescribes and local pharmacy clerks don't have access to those records. The best theoretical end game would be to either have such records on encrypted device owned by patient or none at all.
> The police are the problem that needs to be addressed.
Last decade or so the tendency has been to solve this by technical means, where possible. Like e2e encrypted messages, encrypted iCloud/Google backups, recent announcement of local Google maps timeline, etc.
It's redundancy. Yes, the doctor will check all this prior to prescription, but doctors can and will make mistakes. Having a secondary layer checking as well is going to save a whole lot of lives.
Do you have any numbers to back up the "is going to save a whole lot of lives"? Granted, Ukraine's healthcare system has never been something to write home about, but I don't remember inability of random pharmacy clerk to see your whole healthcare history to cause much trouble. I wonder how this is handled in EU countries.
it gets even better when you consider that pharmacists are allowed to refuse to fill prescriptions here for "moral reasons", or in fact any other reason. C2 scripts are an absolute joy to fill here (/s) because you're constantly dealing with some tinpot dictator at the pharmacy window who is upset you're filling it on the earliest day you're allowed as opposed to waiting for the last day and finding out it's out-of-stock (because of the constant shortages).
the argument is that pharmacists are a "last line of defense" against the fractured system or mistakes from doctors (or clerical errors etc) but their authority is absolutely not limited to correcting errors or double-checking with the doctor's office. In practice the pharmacists here are incredibly full of themselves, they'll refuse to dispense birth control, etc, and there is no duty for the pharmacy to ensure someone else will service you, they can just say "no" and that's it.
That part stood out to me as well, but because the article said that a subpoena is still required. And it is unclear to me if those pharmacies are at least asking to see it, or if they are telling their staff to handle any and all requests, no questions asked.
I think it's a distinction without a difference. In this context, where this is no pending legal proceeding, a subpoena is just a request with no legal authority. The function of a real subpoena is to punish the recipient for failing to respond (i.e. held in contempt of court), because the request is made on behalf of the court and the court has the authority to compel production. Here, where there's no court case it's not really possible to have a real subpoena. I could equally issue a subpoena in the authority of my own name, and it would have just as much power (none).
Librarians are not overworked the way pharmacists are.
To give you an idea, in a nearby Walgreens, we have pharmacists snapping at customers saying "We got your prescription only two days ago. It's not going to be ready that quickly!"
In my experience, going to one of the non-chain pharmacies (the type that don't sell laundry detergents) is always better. Either one tied to a clinic/hospital, or some independent one. With my pharmacy, I can always get it filled within an hour - I notify them before I head out.
I'm not familiar with that...but are you comparing anonymous workers in a distant and "this call will be recorded..." call center to front-line workers, who may have an armed & angry "law" enforcement officer right in their face?
I think this issue nicely illustrates a common pitfall/tendency of privacy laws. They protect us from everyone except those who cause grief and harm for a living.
The second paragraph regarding abortion is terrifying:
> The revelation raises grave medical privacy concerns, particularly in a post-Dobbs era in which many states are working to criminalize reproductive health care. Even if people in states with restrictive laws cross state lines for care, pharmacists in massive chains, such as CVS, can access records across borders.
I was “pro-life” from as long as I can remember thinking about the issue (I still recall the Bush v. Gore debates) until I voted last month in favor of making free access to abortion a constitutional right in Ohio. It initially took some coaxing from my wife, who helped me try to understand the issue from a woman’s perspective, and for a while I had doubts about whether I had done the right thing, but reading about far-right shenanigans (or potential shenanigans) makes me 100% confident I’m now on the correct side on abortion.
Wherever power __can__ be abused, it __will__ be abused. I wish abortion was less common, and we should work on making it less common, but the last thing we need is ideologues and extremist politicians second-guessing healthcare professionals and harassing women in what is one of the most desperate times in their lives.
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Edit: reading some of the strident and confrontational comments from some of those with whom I actually agree on the issue, it’s clear that “the cause”, if you will, doesn’t always have effective advocates.
I have a fairly thick skin, some I’m avoiding engaging in a similarly mean-spirited way, but extremists (on both sides) are their own worst enemy. In the same way that I was pushed away from being “pro-life”, in part by far-right extremists, I imagine the extremists on the far-left are also losing friends and alienating people.
Not sure why this is being downvoted, I agree that the privacy implications you called out are very serious, and I’m glad you’ve changed your mind and come to the conclusions you did. Thanks for posting about it, and sorry some people are being rude about it. I’m hearing there are a lot of people who were pro-life but didn’t ever expect Row-v-Wade to actually overturn, and now that they are seeing the real-world implications of that, are realizing it’s not a good idea to have dogmatic blanket bans. I heard a podcast about how Idaho’s in crisis because they’ve lost a bunch of their already very small number of obstetricians, because they’re now suspect and legally liable anytime a baby dies, and now women who are having serious pregnancy complications are unable to get care, and are being forced to travel long distances right at the moment they need help.
Retroactive shaming of anyone who was ever against your political position seems like some folks are devolving toward something even worse than cancel culture. The rudeness, as you put it, is not going to change my mind about the issue itself, but it does make me want to avoid the impossible-to-reason-with zealots.
Absolutely, we need to be doing the exact opposite and welcoming and praising people who join us. I’ll say it now: welcome! I’m glad you’re here. We will not make headway with this issue by yelling louder at each other or being more obstinate. What you did is actually hard to do, challenging your own beliefs and changing your mind. That’s commendable.
To be honest, I think if we could strip all existing talking points on both sides, and get people to truly derive their own personal conclusions from scratch, I would expect the vast majority of people to be both in favor of women having absolute autonomy over their health care and body choices, and also in favor of trying to avoid abortion as a contraceptive if we can, avoiding late abortions, and hopefully using it only or mostly as a tool to treat bad situations. In other words, I would expect a lot of people to have the exact stance you’re arriving at - that we need to allow people to do what they need to, and we still hope that abortion isn’t happening excessively or willy-nilly or late without medical necessity. The core idea behind the two camps, the ‘pro-‘ position of each side, is not necessarily in opposition at all, so it’s funny it’s gotten so extreme and presented as completely opposites.
US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for all his faults (which are numerous), supported the 5-4 majority in a landmark case regarding flag burning.
Imagine if Justice William Brennan, who wrote the majority opinion, said to Scalia rudely and dismissively “you don’t really believe in civil liberties, you’re only an absolutist on free speech”. It could have led to it being illegal today to burn the flag (which I don’t approve of on a personal level) - and presumably many other ways of expressing disapproval with how the US government conducts itself.
If you believe life begins at conception and that ending a life is murder, then naturally you're going to believe that abortion is murder and is therefore immoral.
If you do NOT believe life begins at conception than naturally you're not going to believe it's murder and therefor not going to believe it's immoral.
It's possible to disagree with someone's stance on abortion without thinking of it as correct or incorrect.
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edit: why is it people insist on arguing even when the entire point is that arguing about it isn't all that meaningful? The overarching point is to stop acting as if people are definitely right or wrong. stop arguing over semantics of words.
Right, each side is correct within its own framing of the issue, they are both right according to their own separate standards. Both sides are villainizing the other side, and you’re right: they don’t have to. It’s not necessary to say the other side is wrong or immoral. The problem is that in many ways it is pretty effective rally & argument strategy, at least locally & temporarily; it does help some people who mildly agree with it to cement their position and have dramatic talking points that spread.
How do we break the cycle of increasing polarization? I honestly don’t know. It seems to be happening not just for abortion but for everything. All policy and culture, even innocuous stuff, seems to be getting polarized and tribalized in service of the politicians. Rejecting the extremist and villainizing framings of the opponent, on both sides, might help. Listening to and accepting the other side’s reasoning often does wonders for having civil conversation. I like to think of political debates as simply prioritizing what we want, and I wish our political debates would stop name-calling and just evaluate and rank the priorities rationally. This is hard to do though, it takes a lot of work, and there are conflicting priorities. Yelling and polarizing is way easier, takes less work, and is helping some politicians get what they want without having to be polite to their opponents or spend time evaluating their arguments. Maybe it would do some good if we can just help everybody we know see that our debates are mostly making us all tools of the politicians?
I have always thought that the phrase that was popular some years ago "science tells us that life begins at conception" was odd, and misunderstands what we know about life from science.
Life does not begin at conception because it never stopped. The sperm and the egg were both alive at the time of conception, and were life that split off of the collections of cells that we call the parents. Those parents were in turn conceived of live cells (again: a live sperm and a live egg) that came from their parents.
The whole point is that life is one big unbroken chain going back to some first cell (and at that point what is "life" gets complicated).
Rather the whole thing is about a "human life", as in when do we decide that this ball of cells is a separate individual deserving of the protection we give "people". And that is almost completely arbitrary, and science can offer no input on this at all.
Why is a fertilized egg a person? Why are the skin cells that have scraped off on your keyboard not a person deserving protection? If you start chopping bits of a person off (I am not recommending this), is the severed limb not a person? If you could chop off the head and keep both that and the body alive, would those be two people? Or would only the head count as a person?
People are arguing about your words because the ones you pick to make your argument DO matter. You've chosen the dichotomy generally pushed by the Right, rather than a discussion of health care or women's safety. Consider the difference in feel if you posted this as your two conditionals:
If you believe that doctors should be given leeway to treat their patients as they best see fit even if sometimes you disagree with their rationale, you're going to believe abortion should be available.
If you believe that moral rules should be followed and your moral rules are paramount regardless of any doctor's opinion on the ground, you're going to believe abortion should not be available.
This gives a very different feel and perspective to the conversation. The words you pick matter.
the art to disagreeing with someone without vilifying them is to recognize their beliefs come from their values.
Even what you're trying to argue about healthcare.
someone who believes in the word of God is going to argue an individual is less important than God's commandments, someone who does not will argue the individual is more important.
And I don't want to hear any whiffle about a dichotomy here, consider it a spectrum between 0 and 1 if it makes you feel better.
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The point is that framing this as correct/incorrect is a very poor way to frame it, it leaves no room for understanding.
It isn't really a spectrum -- it's binary. The question ultimately is: should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months? If you say no, you're on the side that claims to be pro-choice. If you say yes, you're on the side that claims to be pro-life.
Whether or not you believe that abortion is right or wrong isn't really relevant, except in so far as it informs your opinion about government coercion.
That depends on what your "it" is, and I agree here that framing is really key. Consider the difference between your formulation:
> should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months?
and:
When should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months?
You can take my version and reduce it to yours with "always" and "never" responses, but the world is not digital, it is analog. My question allows for a lot more answers, a lot more debate, and compassion for one another.
A binary response leads only to argumentation because we can't find the edges that we agree on, only the boundary we fight over.
> When should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months?
If you get to the point where you're asking "when", you're already saying the government should be able to force you to carry a fetus. I'm not sure how else to interpret it.
If it helps I guess you can twist my formulation to be "the government should be able to force you to carry a fetus under some circumstances that are evaluated by people on a case-by-case basis". All that "under" and beyond stuff is redundant, however.
As soon as we say that a case requires evaluation we apply force. We coerce the person by threatening them with imprisonment if they don't stop seeking an abortion. Further, we open the door to imprisoning people in a system that is already slow and burdensome; we then give people in government power to wait 9 months for the question to become moot.
> A binary response leads only to argumentation because we can't find the edges that we agree on, only the boundary we fight over.
The debate is not nor has it ever been over circumstances or conditions -- that is a distraction from the pro-life crowd.
For example, some propose exceptions for cases of rape. But can rape be proven in less than 9 months, including appeals? Obviously not. If an allegation or mere statement that a rape occurred is enough then we might as well not issue the threat.
Others propose exceptions if the pregnancy threatens the pregnant person, which just means that some cases will be decided by the government, ultimately.
The boundary is well-defined and fixed. You may just be uncomfortable with it, and that's your choice.
> A British woman who used medication to induce an abortion after the United Kingdom’s legally allowed limit has been sentenced to prison for 28 months, the PA Media news agency reported.
> Like Caswell, many of the women at the Etowah County Detention Center are detained under chemical endangerment of a child charges for alleged drug use during pregnancy, according to the lawsuit. Alabama passed the statute in 2006 to target people who put children at risk by converting their homes into methamphetamine labs, The Post previously reported. But the law has been increasingly applied to cases of fetal endangerment — a byproduct of Alabama’s 2018 personhood constitutional amendment that ensures “the protection of the rights of the unborn child.”
> [O]fficials in Shelby County, Alabama, more than seven years ago brought and later dismissed chemical endangerment charges against a woman who [...] wasn't pregnant, AL.com reported in June 2015. And, in 2019, an Alabama grand jury indicted a woman who lost her unborn baby when she was shot, after declining to charge the shooter because it found she had fired in self-defense.
We're close, if not already there. It's a really bad time to be pregnant in some states.
Who decides if life begins at conception? Usually it’s fundamentalists and extremists who insist on that, and as a mainstream Sunni Muslim, I’ve not heard convincing evidence that Jewish, Christian, or Muslim texts support that position. In fact, I know that in Sunni Muslim tradition there is wide disagreement on when ensoulment of a fetus occurs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion
And let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that life does begin at conception. Isn’t the life and/or welfare of the mother also important? And who would you want making such a specific determination, a healthcare professional or Ron DeSantis?
"Life" is meaningless. Animals are a live. Plants are alive. Who cares when "life" begins?
What should matter is when humanity begins, or, sapience. There's no world in which it makes scientific sense to afford a small cluster of cells without anything even resembling a cow's brain (remember cows? the things we legally slaughter by the hundreds of thousands every day?), let alone a human brain, more rights than the woman the organs of whom are supporting it.
Not only that, but we don't allow the harvesting of organs post mortem without explicit, written consent, even if someone could use them to live. If we're not allowed to use other people's organs to ensure survival, even if the other person is dead, that should apply just as much to fetuses.
There's very obviously a correct side if you want to apply any semblance of logic, reasoning, and thought to the issue. There isn't one if you want to apply religion to it, and follow your gut to conclude that your all-powerful, all-benevolent god is putting souls in fetuses he knows will be aborted, taking them up to heaven for eternal happiness, and getting mad at us for it.
As OP I agree that government has no business getting involved in these debates. But don’t you think insulting and ridiculing religious people, including those who agree with you on the general issue, is a bit much? You’re not really helping your cause by alienating those folks.
Is that an insult? And I don't think I'm ridiculing anyone that agrees with me on the general issue.
I didn't invent the concept of god being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-benevolent. That's my genuine, good-faith understanding of what people believe.
I'm also not mocking it. I disagree with it, but I'm taking it seriously, arguing with the assumption that people believe what they tell me they believe.
It's wild that religious people can say "You condone murder, and will be tortured for eternity for your beliefs" and that's just business as usual, but if I say "That's a bit silly, I would expect the god you tell me you believe in to be more forgiving and understanding" all of a sudden I'm being too mean.
It feels like there's no way to say "I simply don't believe that, and the evidence points to you being incorrect" that's polite enough for religious people, but they can say whatever they want to non-believers and it's ok because it's just what they believe.
Thank you for this. Assuming that people disagree with you for valid reasons is a skill people generally seem to have lost. It's a lot easier to just pigeon-hole them as "other".
I think that the poster is implying that many of the same people who describe themselves as Pro-Life also support the death penalty, are huge supporters of having a huge U.S. military (much bigger than needed for territorial defense, so obviously it is going to be used for other things), and are often loudly pro-gun (the argument here is that a gun is offensive, not defensive, so anti-life). Squaring these positions with the description Pro-Life can be a little odd.
While it is a little unfair to over-simplify this way, many Trump supporters are Pro-Life, and those same people seemed to enjoy and support his recent comments:
"Very simply: If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store".
You can make a position that the thieves he was talking about have given up their right to life in a way that a fetus can not, but I think there is also an argument that this view can not be squared with a Pro-Life designation. I find my own opinion somewhere in the middle, but closer to the latter.
It doesn't matter if it was in your mind. The people who claim to be pro-life explicitly do not believe that ending any human life is always murder, and are very vocal about it. Regardless of what was on your mind, it's impossible to reconcile these two claims about their moral beliefs.
Being a hacker and/or entrepreneur, even loosely defined, doesn’t imply you’re a conformist. In fact, I think what makes HN one of the most desirable places to engage with on the internet is that it’s less of an echo chamber than most.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think changing a political stance should be considered “flip-flopping” unless it’s done for a self-serving purpose. Reevaluating should be considered an attempt to learn and grow. That’s why wisdom is often (but not always) associated with age and/or experience.
Unfortunately in my experience the older the person the less likely that they will be open to re-evaluating their core beliefs and political stance. Wonder if there is a research on the subject.
Companies can be at legal and financial risk if they flat out refuse to respond to subpoenas and instead demand warrants. Without a law to require warrants for this data, most companies are going to respond to them if they come from law enforcement and/or judges in their country.
They literally control our health and well being. Their cartel decides when they want to cut off drugs and services. If we use the last 120 years of data, the medical cartels has won at every cross roads, and seemingly 5% raises every year(with 2% CPI...).
Your entire healtcare records got leaked and now your SSN is on the internet(Beaumont)? OOPSIE but we can't use this data for science because HIPAA. Must keep healthcare data within the cartel for cartel uses only. Imagine if AI had all this data, it could just diagnose for free with offline local models. If anyone disagrees pour on some 'Medical isnt just Science, its ART! You can't just use Science!'
I say this with my monocle because I am a capitalist and I own a healthcare company. The standard billing practices are awful, the demand exceeds my employee supply, and everyone is so impressed that we own a healthcare clinic.
The medical cartels don't have to play by the rules, they are the power. They decide when red tape is cut, what are you going to due? Sue them? Ha look at those odds. Good luck finding a lawyer.
i'd gladly give all my medical data out to whoever if it could be used for training models. i assume my data is all sold by my pharmacy or credit card provider or whoever else anyway
This needs to be more known. The industry is utter garbage and filled with terrible people, or at best people put in a bad position that respond with abuse.
I'm not saying none of them could be pretty good, but it's tough.
Everyone needs to learn about Third Party Doctrine:
> "The third-party doctrine is a United States legal doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties—such as banks, phone companies, internet service providers (ISPs), and e-mail servers—have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in that information. A lack of privacy protection allows the United States government to obtain information from third parties without a legal warrant and without otherwise complying with the Fourth Amendment prohibition against search and seizure without probable cause and a judicial search warrant."
If you want to learn the legal reasoning for this, check out "Habeas Data: Privacy vs. the Rise of Surveillance Tech" by Cyrus Farivar. It's a great and horrifying book.
Right, but while medical offices are third parties, they are also something you cannot (literally) live life without. I would argue that makes them extensions of yourself in the sense that they are acting purely on your behalf in an essential capacity. In this way they are like lawyers, who you need to interact effectively like the court system. In that vain, communications with your medical professionals in their capacity as your caretaker should be strongly protected.
That logic applies similarly with your computing devices.
Minimally. HIPAA covered entities can disclose to law enforcement if they believe the individual is in danger, will cause danger, or may be committing a crime.
Once law enforcement has your data, they are not covered by HIPAA.
When was the last time we had a serious debate about why prescription drugs are gate kept? In most countries, you can buy OTC drugs which in the U.S. require a prescription. Removing that barrier reduces costs and improve privacy.
And as bad as prescriptions, somehow medical devices are even more absurd. Only semi-recently did hearing aids become OTC accessible and prices dropped by 40%+ overnight. If you're on a CPAP, via a medical equipment supplier you'll pay more AFTER insurance's share than you would be paying cash online (and they're half even the online price aboard for identical hardware).
One problem the US has is that prescription stuff is held to a higher standard, but in most other countries the standards for medical stuff and how patients get those things are unrelated. So you could OTC something without lowering the legal standards for quality or testing. The US needs to fix that, keep the standards, but OTC by default unless it can be argued why not.
The even better part is the "higher end" machines that do like, BiPAP, are just firmware flashed revisions of the lower end CPAP/APAP machines with some extra medical approvals on it.
(Learned this one tinkering on the Airbreak CPAP project.)
Standard disclaimers apply, I'm not responsible for people bricking their CPAPs or other life support equipment with this information, you live your own life the way you choose. Please don't screw around with a "live" machine hooked to a patient cough.
I was trying to see what the differences were between the lowest-end "start" CPAP and the highest end - while the firmware would flash over, the menu controls wouldn't work due to the changes made on the low end model - but the therapy start/stop did work (and it was delivering the correct therapy I programmed in via SD card with the clinician software).
And some drugs are OTC or BTC in the US that are prescription in other places.
Not all drugs are intended to treat conditions that laypeople are equipped to self-medicate for. Consider extreme examples to illustrate some of the reasons why: it would be completely crazy for people to attempt to use things like powerful chemotherapy or anesthesia drugs to self medicate. And between these and ibuprofen, there's a bunch of other drugs which could easily be harmful to the user (or the purchaser's dependents) if used under a layperson's unguided judgement.
I think this can be even more important in the US where people have a strong incentive to self-medicate without consulting a doctor.
Acetaminophen does have risks, but they are relatively mild and unlikely compared to the spectrum of drugs we're talking about, treats a condition that is extremely easy to self-diagnose: pain.
Paragraph 2.1 of the main PDF on that page, on page 8:
> Increasing scientific evidence suggests that the clinical issues with antimicrobial resistance that we face in human medicine are primarily the result of antibiotic use in people, rather than the use of antibiotics in animals.
Is there any evidence of this being a problem? Is antiviral resistance more prevalent in France (or other countries that don't require a doctor to prescribe medication of this nature) than in the U.S.?
Evidence, yes. Google turns up a lot more on antibiotic use than antiviral; France has had similar issues there. (I suspect the difference in availability reflects the faster spread of viral disease, making per-country isolation stats tougher. See, for example, how fast Omicron went world-wide.)
> In France, antimicrobial consumption (AC) has been high for many decades in both hospitals and the community. Consumption within the community is 30% higher than the mean European rate and 2–3 times higher than the rates in countries with very low consumption and resistance levels, such as Scandinavian countries.
Given the similar mechanisms, they're likely to have the same issues with antivirals as they do with antibiotics.
We have evidence antiviral existence exists. We have evidence antimicrobial resistance stems from overuse and incomplete courses of the medications. We have evidence that easy access leads to more usage of these agents. I provided specific evidence of France's antimicrobial consumption being higher than the rest of Europe.
What evidence would you accept? Is there evidence you'd like to highlight in the other direction?
This may be a cultural difference. From my perspective, it is not adult to tolerate dishonesty. Being clear that such behavior is unacceptable is not flipping out, it is a social obligation.
When people are evasive, or pretend to answer one question by talking about a different one, that is not debating like an adult. It is toxic and prevents genuine discussion.
Flippantly calling something dishonest when it may be miscommunication signals a tolerance for dishonesty. I would be upset if someone said I were dishonest, because I’m not. Someone who is commonly accused of dishonesty may be more ready to level that argument unsupported.
See what I did there? Do you see why that is not only counterproductive, but also immature?
If you really think someone is simply lying, downvote and move on. Self-congratulatory behaviour adds nothing to the discussion.
I was not flippant. I explained exactly why the behavior was inappropriate: presenting evidence of antibiotic resistance as though it were evidence of antiviral resistance. It is not a miscommunication, as ceejayoz explicitly recognized the distinction before proceeding.
As far as the innuendo that I'm projecting or something, you are entitled to believe whatever you like. As for me and my interactions both in real life and online, I absolutely will not tolerate people who lie. Whether you do or not is up to you, I suppose.
I was in Spain a few months back and basically any drugs are only sold in pharmacies. And, at least one drug (Aleve brand name) which is broadly available OTC in the US generally requires a prescription in Spain and maybe France at least.
Second reverse card: I can buy a giant bottle of Tylenol (acetaminophen/paracetamol) in any grocery store in the US, right off the shelf, using self-checkout. In Germany, I can only buy it in 10-20 tablet packets at a pharmacy, and only after asking the tech at the register for it, and will be warned not to take more than a certain number in a day.
And you’re sure as heck not getting any antibiotic stronger than a first aid cream without a prescription in Germany.
The conversation is fraught with landmines. Beyond cultural and historical aspect, there is money, budgets and careers on the line. As you can imagine, without a good reason, it is typically hard to disrupt status quo.
In a conference few years ago, we had couple LEO speakers and DEA agent , as an example, simply stated that cough medicine being gated in US is the price we need to pay for the way things are now.
I am admittedly on the fence. As a younger person, my response was 'everything for everyone; no restrictions'. These days I hesitate more.
This one[1] is more recent and it will affect otc cough syrup in its current form. But I was thinking about the impact removing DXM [2] from cough medicine.
edit: The net effect of those being that anything that actually works requires prescription.
3. it comes in combination drugs and people don't actually know what each drug does. many people simply "buy cold medicine" when they have a cold, with no thought to the mechanism of the components.
If you're in a place where it is legal you haven't tried it before, next time you have a stuffy nose, give it a try. It doesn't do anything at all, and studies prove it!
> If you're in a place where it is legal you haven't tried it before, next time you have a stuffy nose, give it a try. It doesn't do anything at all, and studies prove it!
The reason I asked is that I've tried the OTC decongestant sprays (which I believe have phenylephrine in them?) some years ago, and they've worked damn well. I don't really believe that the sprays don't work, if that's the claim. But I don't know enough to tell whether the phenylephrine in particular has any effect, and I didn't memorize the ingredient lists of the ones I've bought and tried.
> The reason I asked is that I've tried the OTC decongestant sprays (which I believe have phenylephrine in them?) some years ago, and they've worked damn well.
They're likely multi-medication sprays. Even if they were purely phenylephrine as an active (lol) ingredient, saline nasal spray (water!) helps with some stuffy noses, especially allergy-driven ones.
"A spray with phenylephrine in it worked" and "the phenyleprhine worked" are very different things.
But if they work without phenylephrine then why do companies put that in them? Why not just put everything except that? The story doesn't check out for me.
> The agency approved phenylephrine for over-the-counter use in the 1970s, but it became even more common after 2005, when legislation restricted access to OTC drugs that use a similar decongestant ingredient called pseudoephedrine.
> Phenylephrine works by temporarily reducing the swelling of blood vessels in the nasal passages. A respiratory infection or allergies prompt the body to send white blood cells to the nose, throat and sinuses, leading to swelling in the nasal membranes and the creation of mucus. Decongestants constrict the blood vessels in the sinuses and nose, reducing the swelling and helping fluids drain.
> In pill form, some scientists say, phenylephrine gets absorbed by the gut and is metabolized so well that only a tiny bit makes it to the bloodstream, where it is needed to reach the nose, according to the citizen petition that asks the FDA to pull the drug from store shelves. A citizen petition is a way for industry, consumer groups or individuals to petition the FDA to change regulations or take other administrative action.
That is nasal not oral. The mechanism of delivery matters, and those aren't directly comparable to the oral medicines which are currently under scrutiny.
Thanks. Well that's confusing then. People keep saying phenylephrine doesn't work which seemed blatantly false to me. They're not trying to ban the use in nasal sprays are they?
> How do people keep buying it and using it if it genuinely doesn't do anything for them?
"They wouldn't sell it if it didn't work!"
People buy homeopathy for the same reasons. "It cured my cold! I took it for a couple of days and the cold went away!" Forgetting, of course, that colds resolve on their own in that same timeframe.
It's seriously ridiculous. I have had a prescription for Adderall for over 15 years now but I have to pay $175 every 3 months for a new prescription. They last about 2 minutes on the phone. That's $10,000 I've paid for a doctor to do nothing!
I also have a prescription for this ointment to treat eczema. Last time I ran out I tried to call my dermatologist for a refill, but apparently he's retired now. So just to get this stupid skin cream I had to make an appointment with another doctor, wait a month, and pay money when I already knew exactly the medication I needed from the pharmacy.
It's criminal. The entire doctors profession is the reason why the US is so expensive.
It's cartel based regulations by the AMA. Everything about being a doctor is gate kept. Prescriptions, test results, even becoming a doctor is artificially made harder than it needs to be to keep prices high.
One doctor on HN told me why patients could only get test results through another appointment with the doctor. I thought it was because the docs wanted more money. He told me it was because patients can misinterpret results and go suicide. Yeah makes total sense treating patients like simpletons to keep the money funneling in. Suicide?. Give me a break.
There's some news you just need to hear in person. And of course you're going to have a ton of questions and the most efficient way to do that is talk face to face.
Yeah will the doctor provide that information for free or do they hold that information hostage by making me pay them a fee for consultation? Just tell me the results of the tests over the phone, no need to rip me off.
Did the Adderall help you keep your job/do well in life etc? I think if people could get adderall over the counter then everyone would start taking it. Even those without ADHD. They wouldn't know how to titrate the doseage as well.
But anybody can get adderall. They just have to pay off a doctor to do that. It's a rubber stamp. Dosage selection isn't any more difficult than ibuprofen and is mostly feel based anyway.
Everyone can get it. Not everyone can get it prescribed. But I have previously-prescribed medication which I now just order in bulk overseas. Not because it’s cheaper (it is). But because the hassle of getting prescriptions filled every month is tedious.
Ok, I'll bite - how does one go about sourcing that? I have a similar ethic when it comes to DIY medicine, and do order some from alldaychemist.com, but they are a bit limited in selection. I'm assuming someone dealing in ADHD medication is a bit less public than that however (and as such a name would not be shared on a public forum like this), and I wonder how one goes about finding a reputable seller.
Sounds like more evidence the police are an officially endorsed criminal gang. That seems like the source of the problem, and not solving that is just a bandaid.
I think the framing is silly, but in the spirit of argument, let’s accept it. What is the solution? (To me, it implies disbanding the police, which is not something most people want for obvious reasons.)
I can't believe we're having this discussion either. Force cops to follow rules, full stop. We know that police misconduct begets more misconduct [1], and it works in both directions.
When officers start losing their badge or their pension for cutting corners, they'll stop cutting corners.
Absolutely, cops have to be held to a higher standard. This so called "peace officer" was stopped from trying to draw the blood from the unconscious person! Then he has the gall to arrest the nurse who told him he had no right! Then, instead of taking responsibility for his actions, he blames the system!
Cops in that case were desperate to move liability for an MVA from their buddy who was off-duty and drunk to the other party in the collision, hoping to find that he had anything in his system that they could point to as a contributing, if not causing, factor (because let's face it, if they were willing to do that, I'm sure they'd also be entirely willing to let their buddy sleep it off a few hours before doing his draw so his numbers weren't problematic - I mean, the guy he killed isn't going to be able to testify against him).
Detective Jeff Payne was fired by SLC PD, remained unapologetic. Went to the next county north and hired at the County Jail. He then sued SLC and the PD for wrongful termination, arguing that his bodycam footage was misleading and that he was following direction of a supervisor.
Then we could actually hold officers accountable for their actions.
Qualified immunity should be scaled back drastically and any LEO which violates the law should have a multiplier applied to the sentencing guidelines for any convictions against them.
Well, tying back to the original topic, if I as a healthcare provider am not allowed to "volunteer information about you" to LE if you're in a car accident or incident or similar, then why is a pharmacy allowed to, when the medications you take have a 1:1 or 1:few correlation to your healthcare?
Silly specific example in this case, as a healthcare provider, I can't tell a cop you have high blood pressure, because HIPAA. A pharmacy can tell a cop you take lisinopril/HCTZ, which is only prescribed for high blood pressure, because ... shrug.
The difference is likely the opinion of your organization's legal guidance and the specificity and relevance of the request. HIPAA allows disclosures to subpoena requests.
Not quite that simple. I'm well acquainted with the Privacy Rule, for a whole multitude of reasons (you weren't implying I wasn't)...
> To comply with a court order or court-ordered warrant, a subpoena or summons issued by a judicial officer, or a grand jury subpoena.
Emphasis mine.
From the article:
> Instead, all the pharmacies hand over such information with nothing more than a subpoena, which can be issued by government agencies and does not require review or approval by a judge.
Emphasis also mine.
Police officers are not considered judicial officers, though they are officers of the court.
"Judicial officers are typically categorized as judges, magistrates, puisne judicial officers such as justices of the peace or officers of courts of limited jurisdiction; and notaries public and commissioners of oaths. The powers of judicial officers vary and are usually limited to a certain jurisdiction."
It seems to me that there's an extrapolation here that is not covered by HIPAA. HIPAA only refers to subpoenas issued by or reviewed by judicial officers, not a blanket allowance.
There’s another exception for non-judicial requests too.
The provision that pharmacies are using is, I believe, this one:
> To respond to an administrative request, including an administrative subpoena or summons, a civil or an authorized investigative demand, or similar process authorized under law, provided that: the information sought is relevant and material to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry; the request is specific and limited in scope to the extent reasonably practicable in light of the purpose for which the information is sought, and de-identified information could not reasonably be used (45 CFR 164.512(f)(1)(ii)(C)).
> the information sought is relevant and material to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry
Your average PharmTech at CVS isn't assessing the legitimacy of the inquiry or its relevancy, but is instead blindly acquiescing (or being told to do so).
The other part that is a problem is the use of "and":
> and de-identified information
There's no de-identified information in "Show me all the prescriptions you filled for Mr XYZ."
But what there is is enough plausible deniability for the corporations to say they were following their interpretation of the law.
It's a bit wordy, but it's not really asking for anything too special.
Something like "I'm a police officer with ABC department, and I need to know which drugs Mr. XYZ has purchased between [x] and [y] in regards to a criminal drug trafficking investigation I am investigating" seems to satisfy all of the requirements.
* "administrative request": the officer is asking
* "the information sought is relevant and material to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry": they are real police, and they are investigating a crime regarding this person and these drugs.
* "the request is specific and limited in scope to the extent reasonably practicable in light of the purpose for which the information is sought": It is about Mr XYZ, and it is about drugs he purchased, the crime being investigated is about the same.
* "and de-identified information could not reasonably be used": because it is specifically about Mr XYZ
I think if it's not in the form of a constitutional amendment, then we will be constantly at risk of having it repealed or lessened or made irrelevant by superseding laws.
I understand that we can not go around amending the constitution on a whim, but these topics are so young that we cannot foresee all the possible ramifications of any law that we try to pass but at the same time they are too important to not take action.
A simple, easy-to-understand constitutional mandate such as "no law shall be passed that infringes on a citizens right to digital privacy" would be the ideal solution.
After that, courts can be used to iron out the details and set precedence.
I strongly disagree. The landscape of what "digital privacy" means is rapidly changing, and should be addressed by the national legislature in specific and clear text, not a patchwork of incomplete and conflicting opinions across different court jurisdictions. Clarity and specificity is very important if we want these laws to be effective.
> The landscape of what "digital privacy" means is rapidly changing
How could congress even begin to keep pace with that rate of change?
They certainly have not been keeping pace, and arguably going backwards in a number of areas (see FISA).
The courts could take every issue, one-by-one, and clarify the reasons for any decisions. These decisions would happen in the light of day with an appeals process ready to handle disagreements about the letter and intent of the laws in question.
> should be addressed by the national legislature in specific and clear text
Congress has not shown an interest in keeping pace with technology, and would therefore be hard-pressed to write such "specific and clear" legislation.
It would, therefore, fall to the lobbyists who have draft legislation ready to go with carve-outs custom made for the companies that sponsor them and which are not in the best interest of the average US citizen.
Congress might be slow, but our patchwork of courts are even slower to come up with clear and comprehensive case law, and constitutional amendments can take hundreds of years to ratify.
There is a solution for the problem you're highlighting: Congress passes a law which delegates authority to a regulatory agency. For instance, Congress doesn't need to be an expert on the latest airplanes in order to regulate them. They have assigned the FAA to do this.
Neither privacy abuse nor cops lawlessness are "young". Really. But constitutional amendment would allow for a general principle. US laws really do not.
> Neither privacy abuse nor cops lawlessness are "young".
Agreed, but I was trying to comment about digital privacy which is a fairly new issue.
> constitutional amendment would allow for a general principle. US laws really do not.
That's pretty much my point. We already have a similar amendment (the fourth amendment) already officially ratified, so this is not unprecedented.
The problem with the fourth amendment is that it was written in a time when the government would need to physically go somewhere and take something, so there is no general principle allotted for digital privacy.
At the same time, there _are_ laws governing ownership of data which made sense when it was the credit reporting agencies trading information for legitimate business purposes, but now we are in a very different landscape of what information can be stored, traded, transmitted, sold at a scale never before seen. These laws would need to be revised and would need the heft of a constitutional amendment to drive that process.
That's fair - and anyway nowadays even the interpretation of the constitution has never been more open.
A problem with laws is that there are so many to choose from and they are so narrow. See for example the video rental records law. An extremely narrow law that ignores the broader issue entirely (and which penalty is not even scaled for inflation). Same for credit reporting. Or for HIPAA.
General principle is needed and we are not likely to get that from laws. And in the US that's not what laws are for. Generally. So the 4th amendment could be touched up to correct the fact that it was written when "online", "data", computers did not exist - and metadata was thin enough to not matter too much, and "privacy" was or was not the point and was unclear of a concept. Fixing the 4th would establish the principle that yes, now digital matters and privacy matters and must be included in the 4th. Otherwise we remain in the situation where it's easy to argue that it's not part of the 4th.
So this is a good point. There is this issue for either outright volunteering information or being bullied into "volunteering". And this a trend that apparently was not much of an issue at the time (of the constitution or 4th).
Same for "constitution applies only to govt" - where now so many corporations or other groups wield comparable power. There is space for more improvements on the constitution - and then also perhaps now is not a great, constructive time to do that.
I don’t think tattletales were a recent invention. The purpose of the constitution was to prevent government overreach, because it is a document that sets government rules.
The reason other things aren’t in it isn’t because they aren’t or weren’t issues. It’s because they were out of scope for the purpose of that document.
The police don’t behave this way in most other wealthy countries. For reasons that aren’t relevant context, I have had encounters with the police multiple times in the US and in numerous countries abroad and the difference in behavior is stark and clear.
The FBI presumably has the responsibility and authority to police sheriffs departments and police departments that aren’t behaving appropriately, and the FBI is part of the Executive Branch. It would be relatively straightforward for the President to task resources to focus on this specific problem and ask the DoJ to focus on prosecuting civil rights cases.
Elsewhere someone suggest a privacy amendment to the Constitution, we already have that and it’s the 4th amendment. We don’t need more legal protections, we need to actually hold police officers and departments accountable. We need to enforce the laws we already have, most importantly the Constitution, against officers and end effectively limitless immunity.
We also need to raise hiring standards. The minimum standard to be a police officer in most civilized countries is similar to our requirements for FBI agents. Most police officers on duty in the US are uneducated, ignorant, and stupid so it is not a surprise that belligerent behavior is the norm. Only in the US did we actually have police departments placing a cap on the IQ of incoming officers. Only in the US do we have no national requirement for someone to serve as an officer. Some cities require a certification or attendance to a police academy, but there’s no national standard. Only in the US is the average cop your high school bully given a gun and a badge.
There’s a lot more that could be done here. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be blue-tinted government action, it could be red-tinted government inaction by getting prosecutors to defect from the gang and uphold the right of self defense, correctly aligned to the actual law, in matters involving the police. It is legal under the letter and color of law to use lethal force to defend yourself against unlawful conduct by the police, most especially if they are attempting to use unlawful force or make an unlawful arrest, however as a practical matter prosecutors are in the gang and will “back the blue” no matter what. We could easily make even the idiots we hire as cops think twice before busting down a door without a warrant, announcing their purpose, or just plain knocking first.
What I am very clearly not saying is any such stupidity as “disband the police”. In a well functioning society, the police serve a valuable purpose. We are not currently a well functioning society, and part of why is because the police operate like thugs.
American cops might be the worst but they are by no means the only ones that are systematically bad. Cops are detested by large swaths of the population everywhere. France?? Just this past summer? Literal entire books have been written about how routinely indian police use torture. etc etc. Even if ours are the worst (idk) the problem is hardly unique to us.
I don’t think it’s unique to the US, but it’s unique to the US among wealthy well functioning democracies. Most of the other countries where police abuse is rampant are poorer deeply corrupt countries, India is a great example in fact.
India is at least a democracy, but it’s very much still developing and has corruption at nearly every level and facet of society, including police abuses. It’s nearly the opposite of well functioning.
France? And in Canada the police are detested by indigenous people for their long and consistent history of horrific treatment for example but not limited to the "starlight tours." These are the only non-american countries I have first hand knowledge of but it's enough for me to realize the problem is not limited to the US and developing nations.
I'm not sure what your point is? Every country on Earth historically has treated their indigenous peoples badly. Most still do. I'm not trying to boil the ocean or solve racism (assuming it's even solvable) here, I'm simply saying we have existing mechanisms to hold police accountable and we've simply decided as a society to not do so, and we should instead to decide to hold them accountable and to raise our standards for being a police officer.
I'm sorry I didn't enumerate every bad thing the police have ever done in every single country on Earth. I don't really know what you're expecting from the reply you made to me?
I'm saying the bad things american cops do are also things all the non-american cops do. The bad things are part of police, not the US. We may let them go farther than is the norm in similarly wealthy countries but they don't get up to qualitatively different stuff.
Just require police to carry liability insurance so their misconduct is paid for by the insurance. If all insurance carriers drop them they cannot do police work anymore. You can even give them a raise to cover the extra insurance. Then the government would have to keep paying out for misconduct and the worst offenders would at least get booted out of the profession.
A national law would work best but even state laws would be effective.
>Just require police to carry liability insurance so their misconduct is paid for by the insurance
I consistently and strongly disagree with this. The police are a manifestation of our society. When they do bad things they do so in our name - whether or not you want them to do it. We have created a law enforcement structure that empowers these abuses to happen. Transferring the cost to them for acting the way society wants them to act is not the answer. We bear that responsibility and should bear that cost.
> When they do bad things they do so in our name - whether or not you want them to do it...Transferring the cost to them for acting the way society wants them to act is not the answer.
This _maybe_ works in some abstract way, but each police officer is autonomous and has the leeway to act any way they want.
I have autonomy as well, so I could commit a crime.
Let's say that I grew up poor, and the only opportunity in my neighborhood to make any substantial amount of money was to sell drugs. If I choose to sell drugs and get caught I go to jail.
Now at this point, we can say that we have created a societal structure that limits my opportunities (no economic development in certain areas) and empowered these drug sales (by making the drugs illegal thus increasing their value) to happen, but that does not somehow shift the blame from me to society.
I would do my prison sentence and try to move on with my life.
This apologetic stance for the abuses of the police is harmful.
Police officers are people and should have at least as many responsibilities and liabilities in the view of the law as any ordinary citizen.
In fact, as they are charged with upholding our laws, they should be held to a higher standard than an ordinary citizen. If a police officer commits a crime, then they have committed that crime _and_ they have abused the trust placed in them by the state, county, etc that they work for.
yeah, a profit-based system. I like it. Then the police should check your ID and insurance when they respond to your call and if you don't pay into the system, you don't get protection. Efficient markets and all :)
There are likely changes to incentives that could be made without disbanding or refunding the police.
Today police, DAs, and judges are all incentivized to close as many big cases as possible. We need these people to be motivated to actually protect the public and help those in need. Police funding, promotions, and recognition could be realigned to much better promote a policing system that focus on actually serving the public rather than catching and punishing as many people as possible.
Something I've been thinking about recently is making it specifically a crime for police to break laws in the absence of exigent circumstances, and then have exigency investigations for everything from police assaults (so-called "use of force incidents") to unlawfully parked patrol vehicles. Police should be held to the absolute highest standard of lawfulness, and there need to be harsh consequences for any abuse of power.
Stop raising a country on winning at all costs at sports? The jocks in the police are just carrying on with their game.
For people following in a different land, US kids are raised worshipping winning and (american) football and baseball players. And mostly in that world, winning is what matters - for individuals and for the team. Fair play is a british kind of nonsense, so is the spirit of the rules. And cheating is a means to an end (getting caught is a problem: you have let your team down). When that becomes a problem the rules are touched up so that "everyone is a winner" - but winning is still the point and anyway the kids know this is BS and that they have lost. I caricature a little but only a little.
American cops are THAT. They are there to win and everything else is for the losers. They are still playing their game - and their team.
> which is not something most people want for obvious reasons
Is this true? On sufficiently long time scales, do you really think that most people continue to imagine / desire law enforcement and public safety being mashed into the same entity(ies), and for those entities to be state agencies?
My sense is that most people recognize that this is a temporary phenomenon.
For advocates of slavery (including the current plantation-masquerading-as-corrections regime), police are of course necessary, because slavery is only economically feasible in the presence of this subsidy (which is how the current framework of police began in the USA in the first place).
But if we imagine something only slightly more utopian, like restorative and rehabilitative justice that isn't designed as a profit generator, empowered by a sufficiently democratic and highly sensitive internet, then it becomes easy to imagine relieving the police of their duties and moving to more mature and stable systems of public safety.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
As Franklin said, "A republic, if you can keep it." This requires every citizen to know the rules (the 4th amendment, in this case,) and to have the intestinal fortitude to enforce those rules.
Unfortunately, even assuming the rules are known (they aren't), "I don't agree with your statement, but I'll fight and die for your right to state it" is a lost sentiment.
It's also about closing that loophole and bringing it in line with a "Constitutional privacy amendment" (in the comment to which I originally replied). We have one of those already, what good would another do in this case.?
But critically, "polite requests" is not in that list. The 4th does not prohibit CVS from telling the police whatever they want to. Nor does it prohibit the police from asking. It only prohibits the police from taking the information by force.
A required subpoena goes a bit beyond polite request. The 4th doesn't mention force, only prohibiting "unreasonable" action.
That we've allowed "reasonable" searches to include "subpoena CVS's central database" and dilute a fundamental guarantee of privacy from federal government is a failure of the citizenry, which is what this article points out and what the lawmakers mentioned in the article are trying to correct.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38615841