I don't doubt the EFF, but I am automatically skeptical of anyone who tries to get me to take action without bothering to post the bill or even relevant excerpts.
Well, you could use a site like this:
https://localbitcoins.com/
but then again doing hundreds of these cash transactions in person seems like it would be stressful.
HIPAA means a little more than that. I spent years as a pharmacy technician and can attest to all the shredding, blacking out of names, etc. Disclosing PHI (Personal Health Information) without a reasonable need for it was a very serious offense. HIPAA also forces providers to give you access to all of the PHI related to you that they maintain. Obviously HIPAA doesn't solve patient privacy entirely, as in your fax tray example, but I like to think it does help.
I think the HIPAA comment is likely referring to users being able to talk to healthcare professionals. I very much doubt that line was talking about surgeons, etc. asking for advice.
I usually enjoy Schneier's postings but this is a little bit silly. There's no evidence that "government monitoring" had anything to do with this incident. Someone noticed the tweets and informed Hayden. We don't seem to have any further information so jumping to conclusions seems silly.
It seems likely that the seized funds were taken from SR's escrow accounts. It matches up roughly with the amount of money said in the FBI complaint to be stored in escrow. I can only assume that they have no idea where his personal Bitcoin stash is, otherwise they would have hyped up seizing ~80mil.
I notice it's stated that around 3.6 million USD worth of bitcoins were seized in the arrest, taken from Silk Road's wallets. Am I correct in assuming that because it came from SR's wallet it was the escrow fund? The FBI complaint posted earlier states the escrow fund held around 2.2 million USD at some earlier date (page 15). Why aren't they mentioning the ~80 million USD generated in commisions? I can only assume because it was not seized.