I once did a project with the Dutch Police and this care about privacy definitely did exist.
For example, they have an app (literally "The Police App") that you can install if you want notifications from police reports in your area. Think missing persons reports, wrong-way riders, etc. Now, they could simply make a database of every app user and track their location in it to know who to send a push notification. But, even though the app requires no signup, they decided that this was too privacy-invading and they had no business tracking people's whereabouts. So for each notification, even if it was only relevant to a tiny low population town in the middle of nowhere, they'd send a push notification including some geofence data to every single app user, and then the app would locally compare that data to the current location and simply block the notification from appearing if it was outside the target region.
That's wasteful and messy, but it was very privacy conscious. I was pretty impressed.
So no, plenty government agencies care a lot about this stuff.
The Police App isn't that widely used, and there's no obvious way to find out that it's not sending your location to a central server - after all, you still need to give the app permission to read your location!
I think if they had put in a database and gone on some blarb about how the app is entirely anonymous (it is) and the location database is well secured, nobody except a few privacy extremists (akin to the author of the blog post linked here) would've thought twice about it.
They didn't do it out of fear of repercussions but because they took both the actual rules about police-citizen-privacy, and the spirit behind those rules, very seriously.
Note, though, that this app was made by the media and PR department of the police. They didn't have much to lose by respecting privacy, except maybe spending some more tax euros. There's other government agencies that don't share this attitude (eg our intelligence agency, who thinks everybody is a potential terrorist and deserves to be treated as such), and I wouldn't be surprised if even other branches of the police itself wouldn't take that whole privacy shizzle so seriously. Eg the ones occupied with catching bad guys. It's not all roses and sunshine.
Yes. HIPAA provides the government's law enforcement a large amount of conditions under which they are able to acquire an individual's medical records without a warrant.
See 45 C.F.R. ยง 164.512(f).
Furthermore, the ACLU's position is that HIPAA does not do a good job protecting people's privacy from the government and may be a violation of the people's 4th amendment rights. Unfortunately, it hasn't really been challenged Constitutionally to date, so we don't know.
What we do know is that HIPAA is probably not a good example to "dunk on" someone else, due to these concerns.
I really wish this was better understood about consumer brand capitalism. These companies would have massive loss in value if they did not preserve privacy.
I am reminded of when an airline roughly pulled a doctor off a plane -- the company lost billions in market value. They won't make that mistake again. That's moral capitalism at it's best. If it had been a government owned service, I don't think there would be such a powerful feedback cycle.
Similarly, because Google would lose billions if they didn't care for my data, I trust them more than gov't.
Note that this only works for consumer brand capitalism -- it didn't work with Equifax.
All they need to maintain are appearances. Think somehting like their customer support for their free services. You get some help when you manage to pull a social media attention, otherwise good luck. And killing someone's gmail or developer account, or adsense account is much more directly damaging, than privacy violations.
> These companies would have massive loss in value
s/value/trust/g
Companies might see a decrease in revenue because potential customers lose trust. Or more specifically, they lose trust because they stop believing that the outcome of striking a deal - purchasing a ticket for a flight - won't be as positive: either the direct outcome to themselves, or an indirect outcome towards all customers.
This is exactly the same dynamic as the public views a government. Trust matters. There's absolutely zero difference.
Members of the public trust that mandated politicians will act in their best interests. That, when given power, politicians can and will be held accountable to their personal responsibility. An election is a renewal of an exchange of value: I, as a member of a the public, will cede a part of my freedom to do whatever and submit myself to a vested authority in return for protection of rights.
However, a loss or a gain of trust doesn't necessarily translate into dire consequences for a company nor an incumbent government.
Facebook and Google keep churning happily along despite many scandals. And it remains to be seen if the current inhabitant of the White House will have to vacate in January 2021.
> If it had been a government owned service, I don't think there would be such a powerful feedback cycle.
There's a difference between public administration and party politics. The former is infrastructure, the latter are the people who manage that infrastructure and, theoretically, can be held accountable for their performance.
The primary goal of any government service isn't perpetuating it's own existence or turning a profit. It's serving the interests of the collective first and foremost. Which is vastly different from serving the interests of individual customers.
Succinctly phrased, this is how freedom, capitalism and government work: "Your right to swing your arm stops where my face starts."
Basically, a government service represents the common interests of a community. That common interest could be preventing people from getting hit in the face. So, government services reside in the space between the end of your fist and the start of my face.
Economic capitalism, however, is nothing more then just you - or anyone including Zuckerberg - wielding arms. Because that's what you want to do for whatever reason. Including a profit motive.
If your arm doesn't hit too many faces, and not too many people speak up about it, then you could happily keep swinging about, without caring what people might think.
Whereas if politicians try to curb your freedom to swing about just one bit, a vocal group will be all up in arms about it (pun intended) in no time.
Finally, let's not forget that trust doesn't follow any logic rules, and the memory of a collective is short at best:
The stock price of your airline bounced back, trading above the original price just 5 days after the incident. Which isn't surprising since analysts have stated consumers don't have a choice due to consolidation anyway.
For example, they have an app (literally "The Police App") that you can install if you want notifications from police reports in your area. Think missing persons reports, wrong-way riders, etc. Now, they could simply make a database of every app user and track their location in it to know who to send a push notification. But, even though the app requires no signup, they decided that this was too privacy-invading and they had no business tracking people's whereabouts. So for each notification, even if it was only relevant to a tiny low population town in the middle of nowhere, they'd send a push notification including some geofence data to every single app user, and then the app would locally compare that data to the current location and simply block the notification from appearing if it was outside the target region.
That's wasteful and messy, but it was very privacy conscious. I was pretty impressed.
So no, plenty government agencies care a lot about this stuff.