[incr_me]

HIPAA was introduced to support the massive expansion of the healthcare market (privacy accountability is a very minor aspect of HIPAA). In the name of profit, amidst the chaos, why not try to eschew what was once politically necessary? This move probably hurts humanity more than it benefits it, but that was the case with the healthcare market in the first place. I wonder what will become politically necessary around AI. Probably not much.

[mentalgear]

I'd like to see the sources on your claims. you make it sound like privacy and possible protection from harm where just some token throw-ins to hide a mostly for-profit certification which doesn't sound very convincing.

[observationist]

Most regulation is more or less suggestions to prevent widescale exploitation, to give the system a means of holding bad actors liable after the fact. They aren't deeply considerate, domain competent, principle based policies designed with the best interests of individuals, they're compromises between power brokers. Even things that might be explicitly illegal aren't enforced in practice unless there's a political advantage to expending resources on a particular issue.

They dress up the legislation in fancy names like the Patriot act and sell you on bits put in place for public consumption, but the meat and potatoes of US governance is the never ending, unstoppable expansion of power over and presence in every life.

HIPAA is as much or more about regulatory capture as preventing abuses of privacy or protecting individual rights. In practice, there's not even a standard, just a loose handful of suggestions for protecting data, and when massive breaches occur, data that should be protected under HIPAA gets released, institutions and businesses get a slap on the wrist. Depending on the party in power and the politics of the offender, they might not even get a slap on the wrist, they'll just get more contracts and less press coverage until the public forgets.

Anything touting benefits to individuals or citizens is probably being used as a Schelling point for a broader strategy.

These problems get fixed with a proper return to 1st, 4th, 5th Amendment rights, a relitigation of copyright and personal privacy and liberty, legislated as a digital bill of rights. We don't need new amendments or even really new laws, we just need proper enforcement and interpretation of existing ones. Privacy and liberty are inextricable. Anonymity and fungible identity in public communications are non-negotiable.

The whole situation is an exercise in picking the policies that do the most good and the least bad - exactly the type of gray area modern politicians love, because it means they have plenty of cover and fog of war to get away with shit.

[whatever1]

We can debate about the legislation separately.

But it should not be on the implementer whether they follow the law or not.