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by biturd 3773 days ago
What about other large semi tech companies. Starting with Tesla, but GE, paypal, Asus, Linksys, Cisco, Sun, Bay Networks, Coca-Cola, IBM, FedEx, Starbucks, Procter and Gamble and all medical HIPAA institutions, schools and Universities, McDonalds, Disney, Pixar, Amex, Visa, MasterCard, Costco, Caterpillar, Target, Nike, UPS, USPS, Exxon, Pepsi, Samsung, AT&T, t_mobile, Verizon, Sprint, Oracle, General Mills, Wells Fargo, Investment banking companies, etc.

They all have a stake in tech, and they all would not like to have their tech backed up by a system, that anyone can get into if one person leaks it out. DMV, the police, all those poorly secured systems that are now basically a new RFC that is for publicly routable address space that everyone treats like private address space, but just insert your special gummy bear finger print copy, and bam, you are in.

Get all those companies behind this, and people will think the FBI are crooks and theives.

3 comments

I wonder if they could make a case that it violates the HIPAA, since your heartbeat/activity tracker info is on the device? Kind of a weak argument, but HIPAA is a pretty contentious subject.
I might be wrong, but my understanding is that HIPAA privacy rules only apply to healthcare providers like hospitals and their employees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Portability_a...

This is correct. We ran a website for diabetics where users volunteered health data and HIPAA didn't apply to us. If it coordinated data exchange with doctors directly then it would be different.
What about doctors using an iPhone to check a patient's files? Would apple have to make a secure HIPAA compliant version for hospital use? What about government use? I bet all those FBI agents are talking to each other with iphones...
> I wonder if they could make a case that it violates the HIPAA, since your heartbeat/activity tracker info is on the device?

HIPAA privacy protections only apply to data held by HIPAA "covered entities", which are mostly insurers, health care providers, and their business associates, and they restrict disclosures by those covered entities.

AT&T is basically a full voluntary partner in the surveillance state.
your right