While doing research on another subject, ran across this on the ACLU’s website...
Quote
The pitch by that company, Hu-manity.co which is so effective its Oregon bill was introduced with more than 40 co-sponsors — is that patients’ health information is being sold for big money without their consent and without providing them any compensation. The solution these bills propose is to prohibit such information from being sold without patients’ permission and without giving them a cut of the profits when their information is sold.
Sounds like a big win for privacy and consumers.
...real goal is to use state legislation to create a new way for data sellers to profit off of consumers’ personal information. The current bills being pursued are limited to medical patients, but future iterations are likely to cover a broader range of consumers.
Currently, profits on the sale of patient information are captured when the information is initially sold by a health care provider to a data broker, marketer, or other user and again if the information is resold. While the overall market for personal consumer information, which is predicted to hit $203 billion by 2020, is huge, it is also fairly saturated with existing data mining and selling companies.
So the company instead is casting itself as deeply committed to advancing consumer privacy. In a creative maneuver worthy of George Costanza, even the company’s “humanity” name, and its framing of their work as addressing a “human rights” issue, suggests the company is a nonprofit or some other type of public-good focused entity. It is not.
Unquote
Quote
The pitch by that company, Hu-manity.co which is so effective its Oregon bill was introduced with more than 40 co-sponsors — is that patients’ health information is being sold for big money without their consent and without providing them any compensation. The solution these bills propose is to prohibit such information from being sold without patients’ permission and without giving them a cut of the profits when their information is sold.
Sounds like a big win for privacy and consumers.
...real goal is to use state legislation to create a new way for data sellers to profit off of consumers’ personal information. The current bills being pursued are limited to medical patients, but future iterations are likely to cover a broader range of consumers.
Currently, profits on the sale of patient information are captured when the information is initially sold by a health care provider to a data broker, marketer, or other user and again if the information is resold. While the overall market for personal consumer information, which is predicted to hit $203 billion by 2020, is huge, it is also fairly saturated with existing data mining and selling companies.
So the company instead is casting itself as deeply committed to advancing consumer privacy. In a creative maneuver worthy of George Costanza, even the company’s “humanity” name, and its framing of their work as addressing a “human rights” issue, suggests the company is a nonprofit or some other type of public-good focused entity. It is not.
Unquote
