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Comment by WarOnPrivacy | Hacker News Reader

> Expecting indifferently-paid and often-overworked pharmacist assistants, clerks, etc. to stand up to law enforcement

This seems trivial to solve. Subpoenas get forwarded to corporate legal and they handle releasing of records.

It seems peculiar this isn't SOP now. Perhaps it's because pharmacists/managers cost less (in $ and accountability) than lawyers.

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This has the expectation that police wouldn't just pressure the clerk to do it themselves. The clerk says they'll forward it to corporate, the policeman tells him not to bother and hints that, you know, he is the one with the power here. How many people would ignore that and still do the bureaucratic procedure? Especially if the cop says it won't get back to legal and they'd be helping out on a case?

The standard corporate policy would be that pharmacists aren't authorized to release records. To do otherwise would risk their jobs and whatever other action follows an unauthorized release of records.

With this policy across chains, judges would be skeptical of a cop who tried to bully a local records release. Even a rogue cop could understand this reality.

Right, so we want to put brigands in prison regardless whether they are at times authorized to use the coercive force of the state.

Obviously, clerk shouldn't be able to access such data on a whim at all. Same as random "genius" in Apple Store can't access the customer iCloud data.

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