>From ACLU, for those interested. Teo1000
To: ACLU Action Network From: Penny Crawley, ACLU Cyber Organizer Date: March 12, 1999 1. Medical Privacy Bills Introduced 2. Defend Your Data Privacy Campaign 1. Saying that it is a strong proposal that will accomplish much to protect the privacy of health care consumers, the American Civil Liberties Union has endorsed medical records privacy legislation introduced in both the House and Senate this week. The Medical Information Privacy and Security Act, sponsored by Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) in the Senate and Edward Markey (D-MA) in the House, offers the best approach to creating a national policy for protecting medical records privacy. The Kennedy-Leahy-Markey bills would create a strong floor of privacy protection, but would not preempt state laws that take even stronger steps to safeguard medical privacy. The bills would require an individual's informed consent before his or her records were disclosed to third parties except under carefully outlined circumstances, and greatly limit law enforcement access to medical records. Take action to protect your medical privacy! Send a FREE FAX to your members of Congress urging them to support the Medical Information Privacy and Security Act from the ACLU web site at: http://www.aclu.org/action/medprivacy106.html 2. Urging netizens everywhere to defend their data, the American Civil Liberties Union has launched a special website to focus public attention on the threat to personal privacy through the collection and widespread distribution of personal data. The new web collection features several interactive elements, including: ---A complaint form where individuals can spell out their privacy horror stories. ---A tool that shows individuals just what can be learned about them on the web. ---A survey and postcard utility. ---Faxable letters to Congress. ---A discussion forum. The web collection marks the ACLU's increasing efforts to protect individual privacy in America. "We clearly have our work cut out for us to derail what has been an endless stream of proposals that attack our privacy rights," said ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser. "And although many believe widespread dissemination of our data is harmless, the ACLU believes that what they do know, can hurt us." You can find the Defend Your Data Privacy campaign on the ACLU web site at: http://www.aclu.org/privacy Please consider sending an electronic postcard to your family, friends and colleagues about this exciting new web site. The e-postcard feature can be found at: http://www.aclu.org/forms/postcards/postcard.html --- You are currently subscribed to action as: [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] To unsubscribe, forward this message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Some email programs allow you to click on a web address and automatically go to the site. Others, like AOL, do not. If you use an email program that does not provide for clickable web addresses, copy the URL and paste it into your web browser.
