
DEA Wants Inside Medical Records to Fight the War on Drugs - rosser
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/10/dea-wants-inside-your-medical-records-to-fight-the-war-on-drugs.html
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sathackr

      The Obama administration disagrees, and argues that
      since the records have already been submitted to a third
      party (Oregon’s PDMP) that patients no longer enjoy an
      expectation of privacy.
    

This follows the same(so far, legally defensible) reasoning of the phone
records -- since you voluntarily gave your phone records to your phone
company, you don't have an expectation of privacy regarding them. You could
chose not to use a phone, but you didn't.

So by that logic, if I want to maintain my expectation of privacy regarding my
prescriptions, I can either A) Not have them filled (so that I don't
'voluntarily' give them to a 3rd party) or B) source them illegally.

Seems like great options to me.

~~~
rayiner
Not quite the same: there are strong legal protections on the privacy of
medical records that don't exist as to phone records.

I'll also quibble about this part:

> since you voluntarily gave your phone records to your phone company

You didn't "give your phone records to your phone company." You never had any
phone records. Your phone company created those records. That's another
distinction with the case here: Oregon's PDMP didn't create those records. It
received them with strict federal requirements as to how to handle them.

~~~
serge2k
> You never had any phone records. Your phone company created those records

Pretty sure that was the entire point of the post.

~~~
rubyfan
You could always stop using the phone company. Maybe setup two tin cans and a
string.

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onetwotree
Oh well, another reason to switch to heroin. The FBI can't access your
dealer's records.

Seriously though, this is bad for privacy, bad for addicts, and bad for
patients who need painkillers.

Who thinks of this shit? Aging drug warriors I suppose.

~~~
kazinator
> _The FBI can 't access your dealer's records._

Oh yes they can; the very reason he's even retaining them is to have some
plea-bargaining material.

~~~
ryanlol
Unless you regularly buy kilos from your dealer, those records aren't exactly
plea-bargaining material.

~~~
lsiebert
I think if you sell to famous/powerful people, it can be. At least high class
prostitution seems to work that way from what I've read.

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Clubber
"So we’re doing this to help you.” ... "with 14 felony counts"

In the US, I think having a crippling drug addiction is better than 14 felony
counts. What's that? 30 years in prison? Life? No chance of gainful employment
for life? Shit paid public defender, or $300,000 to fight it? I thought we
were getting more sensible about this stuff?

Absurd. Write or email your congressman. It's the only thing that will do any
good.

~~~
llamataboot
Writing and emailing congresspeople may be better than nothing, but not by
much. The only things that have consistently created change in this country
are large groups of people, mostly working on the outside with a diversity of
tactics (read: in the streets, and some violent/confrontational), some allies
on the inside, and a lot of agitation.

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gozur88
We should probably get rid of the DEA. The amount of damage the agency does
outweighs the benefits.

~~~
cm3
Shouldn't they have a stock symbol for all the money they appropriated through
the years? It's a publicly funded institution, so maybe it should be traded
publicly as well.

~~~
cynwoody
The stock symbol DEA is already taken†. It belongs to Easterly Government
Properties, a REIT which leases commercial property to federal agencies, such
as "the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
the Internal Revenue Service ...". Market cap $616m.

†[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ADEA](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ADEA)

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cbanek
This is really scary. Next thing you know, a positive drug test (for a job, or
anything) will actually just take you in or be the probable cause for a
search... makes me crave a poppyseed muffin.

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e40
Yet more reasons to fear and hate the war on drugs. Jesus, this insanity needs
to stop.

~~~
trbvm2
If we are all of the same mind on this then it seems like we should start
brainstorming ways to make it stop.

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vinceguidry
Looks like the safest approach to managing health conditions in the US whose
treatments involve politically-sensitive drugs is to obtain a diagnosis, so
you know what's wrong with you, and then to manage your own treatment using
gray-market pharmaceuticals. If it's for pain, I would seriously consider just
not treating it.

Health care in the US is already such a shit-show that I would seriously
consider moving out of the country if I developed a serious condition
requiring constant treatment. I certainly won't have any expensive procedures
done here.

~~~
bp_throw
I'm Canadian and I have done this. After trying to deal with bipolar disorder
for years I decided I'd finally try medication. I'd seen psychologists off-
the-record before to diagnose. Seeing how family members have been treated for
having mental issues makes me afraid of getting an official treatment. So I
source lamotrigine (Lamictal), titrated myself up and seem to be doing OK. I
saw a psychiatrist under an assumed named to verify my understanding of things
(hint: unfortunately, most of their psych treatments are guesswork and playing
medical roulette).

I was a bit nervous as this medicine can make your skin die and fall off
(SJS), so I found a private dermatologist to go to just in case. Fortunately
it's working fine for me. No more days spent moping in bed. And no official
diagnostic that I'm not sane. Costs me about $2000 a year. Small price to pay
to not be treated like a child and having my volition called into question.

~~~
DenisM
> Seeing how family members have been treated for having mental issues makes
> me afraid of getting an official treatment.

How were they treated? Seems surprising to me, given how prevalent mood
disorders are.

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broahmed
> The DEA has claimed for years that under federal law it has the authority to
> access the state’s Prescription Drug Monitor Program database using only an
> “administrative subpoena.” These are unilaterally issued orders that do not
> require a showing of probable cause before a court, like what’s required to
> obtain a warrant.

Related topic: I always get uneasy when law enforcement skirt around getting a
warrant. Do we have any data showing that we're safer (e.g. accurate arrests
are made more quickly) when law enforcement doesn't need a warrant?

~~~
trhway
Even when warrants involved - mentioned today on radio - 2/3 Oakland drug
related warrants are based on false info.

~~~
lsiebert
Yes but since they have to be based on probable cause and taken before a
judge, there is a higher bar. But really, pain killer abuse should, in a
perfect world, be a health matter, not a DEA matter, unless you are getting
enough medication to have to be selling it. I think there is the argument that
an individual could go to multiple doctors, or a doctor could write
prescriptions for fake patients.

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znpy
Considering how much information the NSA has collected and how regularly, i
think they should have been able to stop drug sales and bust most if not all
drug-dealers a long long ago, without any need for accessing medical data.

~~~
WildUtah
The NSA can know where drugs are and who is using them. That doesn't mean the
NSA knows how to stop them. Drug users and dealers and importers have an army
and are willing to fund it with whatever level of resources necessary to keep
free commerce flowing.

And if the national government took the measures necessary to significantly
reduce drug use, their resources would be cut off because voters wouldn't
stand for the much heavier and pettier and more expensive police state
tactics.

So the best bet for the government is burn vast amounts of money to randomly
hurt random people without ever seeking any kind of improvement in the
situation. More information doesn't affect that calculation.

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Illniyar
Unrelated, but "gender identity disorder"? Is that a politically correct term
or an homophobic one (or whatever you call it when it applies to transgender)?

I really can't tell, I thought it was no longer ok to refer to homosexuality
as a disease. Is it ok now to treat "feeling like you are in the wrong sex" as
a disease that can be treated?

~~~
jrapdx3
Gender Identity Disorder is _not_ homosexuality, and it's now called Gender
Dysphoria (GD) in the most recent diagnostic manuals.

Homosexuality is not consider an illness, and does not require treatment, in
fact no treatment is known. OTOH GD is the distress an individual has when
biological status is inconsistent with internal experience of the "correct"
gender. It's an uncommon condition occurring at a population rate of about
0.005%, affecting more males than females.

Treatment of GD is available though complex. In most cases appropriate
counseling is provided, and treatment possibly includes hormone and other
medications, and reconstructive surgery.

~~~
lsiebert
American Psychiatrist Association changed being gay to not be a mental illness
in 1973. And for people who have Gender Dysphoria, probably more accurate to
say affecting more people assigned male at birth then people assigned female
at birth.

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rubyfan
Is it long past time for congress to act to clarify privacy rights that are
being abused by the third party doctrine argument?

It seems silly that this legal theory is so broad and convenient a tool that
there is virtually no limitation on its powers to access information.

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meeper16
The DEA + RIAA = DEARIAA

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serge2k
> Jones was hit with 14 felony counts but all of them were later dropped

that is fucked on multiple levels. 14 counts? 14!

and all dropped because they were ridiculous to begin with. ugh.

