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Comment by JshWright | Hacker News Reader

I am far from an apologist for law enforcement, but this is a completely reasonable effort that I would fully support.

As an example, cops show up on most EMS calls around here. I must admit, I find it a bit disquieting when a cop wearing a camera walks in while I'm providing care... Especially since HIPAA does not cover cops, so there is no legal protection for the information that ends up on the camera, only department policy. I would feel much better if I at least knew it was going to be automatically redacted, with the original video only available under a subpoena.

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When I started reading I expected to be upset by this, and expected it to be some kind of abuse, to hide bad behavior by cops.

I was glad to see it's actually quite reasonable.

That said, I'm not sure how it could ever be completely automated, short of accurate face recognition software trained with everybody in the region.

Why would it need to be everybody in the region? Why not redact everyone by default, except for folks who have been whitelisted (cops, mostly... though I would have no problem with other emergency services workers being whitelisted as well).

Obviously this is far from a simple task (how would you know if someone was on duty, etc), but it's certainly not impossible.

Just trying to wrap my head around what you're saying. Are you in favor of this because it can also cover you from legal scrutiny for mistakes made while providing care?

He's saying that it's not in the public interest for his patients medical issues to be easily available.

I'm thinking it's more about ensuring the patient gets medical privacy. Medical information in the wrong hands can wreak havoc.

Patients expect and deserve their medical privacy, which would get violated when a police camera records them receiving treatment. He is in favor because patient's private medical records shouldn't be automatically made part of the public record just because a cop walks in the room.

It is ingrained in my head that the patient's privacy is of utmost importance (second only to the actual care I'm providing).

Having a camera in the room just runs counter to that idea, and makes me uncomfortable.

I was the sysadmin for a small medical practice for a while. Patient privacy was the one reason I was (and remain) dead se against storing practice medical records on the cloud.

If anything every got out, I would have been liable. I fully accepted that. But I had full control.

If anything stored in the cloud ever got out, I still would have been liable, but I wouldn't have had any control. For sure, the cloud storage provider would have disclaimed liability and I'd still be the man on the spot.

You are making all sorts of assumptions when the views of others were clearly expressed in previous comments. You seem hell bent on your own talking point regardless of that the actual comment's point was. Either you are being dense or you are trolling...

After all that's been happening, your first thought is still how to protect the cops from looking bad on camera?

Then we'll just get to a point where the situation with the camera recording is actually worse than what we have now, because the cops we'll get only recording that benefits the cops, and none of the recording that doesn't.

It seems the government can "swing the pendulum" as much as it wants against the People, but it seems nobody wants to swing the pendulum against the government too much. God forbid the People get "too much power".

He is talking about the privacy of the patients, not of the cops.

I don't follow how you interpreted what I said as wanting to "protect the cops from looking bad on camera".

I am a paramedic. I take care of people in very compromising positions (most people don't worry about getting dressed if they're having a heart attack at 2am). I worry that _their_ privacy needs to be protected.

This also isn't simply about 'modesty'. There are many ways medical information could be used against someone (denied a job, denied housing, denied various forms of insurance, etc...). There are many reasons personal medical information needs to be protected.

And how is medical information any different from financial information? Financial information can be used to do exactly everything you said about leaked medical records, yet no one worries if their bank/identity has been compromised.

Because people dont ascribe the same level of importance to that.

It may seem trivial, but most people would be less shy about most of their transactions going out in the world than naked pictures of them in compromising situations.

I guaranty you would feel differently if you had AIDS and didn't know it.

I don't follow...

If I didn't know it, why would I care?

If I did know it, then I would care a great deal, as HIV is still very much a stigmatized infection.

Considering that would still be medical data, and my original point is to shield someone's medical data (in that specific case, privacy to not have your nudes on the internet), I dont think I would, sounds like something I would be super private about!

Up until recently your insurance could change over night based on medical status and when the insurance company finds out. Financial information is completely different. Also medical information is protected under a specially designed law. It's not just private information, it's your medical condition.

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