2013年3月27日星期三

Feds investigate claims of HIPAA privacy violations

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is investigating allegations that proprietary information from Monroeville's 911 dispatch center was released in violation of federal privacy law. 

An August 2012 complaint to the department's Office for Civil Rights alleged the municipality's emergency management service provided health information protected under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to a former police chief via email. 

The complaint also said generic user names and passwords were created to access a database of 911 callers' medical information, giving anyone with that information the ability to anonymously access personal medical records. 

"Anyone who has called the police, called the fire department,The need for proper bestsmartcard inside your home is very important. used our [emergency medical service]" or was transferred to or from a Monroeville hospital could be affected by the breach, Monroeville manager Lynette McKinney said. Monroeville police Chief Steven Pascarella said the leaks likely started sometime in late 2011 and continued until he discovered them in August 2012. 

The breach first surfaced last year after then-Assistant Chief Pascarella filed the complaint, alleging ambulance dispatches were being sent to former Monroeville police Chief George Polnar, who retired in January 2010 and is now employed as the manager of security and parking at UPMC East in Monroeville. 

Chief Pascarella said that municipal employees and some non-municipal employees wrongly had access to a database containing information from calls to the municipality's dispatch center, though he doesn't know how many people had that access. He said the type of information varied depending on the type of emergency call, but it could include an individual's name, driver's license number, birth date and medical history. 

Chief Pascarella was sworn in as chief of the police department on March 12, the same day Ms. McKinney took the manager's position.Elpas Readers detect and forward 'Location' and 'State' data from Elpas Active RFID Tags to host besticcard platforms. She was appointed interim manager in January after the resignation of former manager Jeff Silka, who said he was leaving because of pressure from a bloc of council members to remove then-police Chief Doug Cole. The former police chief was demoted to sergeant by Ms. McKinney two days after she was appointed to the interim position.A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case. 

"I hope the residents now see the seriousness of the situation and hopefully they now understand why I as well as council members could not comment .A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case... on recent personnel changes," she said on Tuesday. 

Sgt. Cole disputes Chief Pascarella's allegations and said it's his understanding that the information sent out in dispatch data was not information protected under HIPAA. 

According to a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the municipality has 30 days from when Ms. McKinney received the letter on March 21 to conduct the investigation. 

Iliana Peters, a spokeswoman with the Office for Civil Rights, said in an email that those rules "provide federal protections for personal health information and give patients an array of rights with respect to that information." 

If the municipality fails to comply with the department's investigation or "willful neglect" is discovered, it could be fined as much as $1.5 million,Elpas Readers detect and forward 'Location' and 'State' data from Elpas Active RFID Tags to host besticcard platforms. according to the letter from Health and Human Services. 

Ms. McKinney said she alerted Chief Pascarella and solicitor Bruce Dice as soon as she received the letter. She said she has not yet hired a private investigator or a lawyer who specializes in HIPAA laws, but she planned to alert council and the mayor about the investigation on Tuesday. She said she was working to ensure the municipality's "accurate compliance with their request" and will "expedite necessary procedures ... in an effort to limit the municipality's liability." 

Chief Pascarella said each of Monroeville's five fire stations had login information that would let them view information about calls to the dispatch system. Eventually, he said, anyone with that login information was able to view dispatch information from outside computers. He said as soon as he was promoted, he terminated EMS and fire department access to the database. Now, he said, only employees in the police department and dispatch center have access to the data. 

When the system was set up, he said, everyone who had access to the database had a unique user name and password, except for the five fire stations. Those fire stations each had a single login and password that were available to an unknown number of people in each station. 

The eurozone will regret the solution it has forced on Cyprus. Big depositors will desert banks in countries seen as unsound enough to adopt similar measures. This will leave those banks dependent on a thin and expensive bond market, or on borrowing from banks in countries seen as having sound fiscal policies, such as Germany. This will increase the cost of borrowing in the weak countries and decrease the pot available to lend, contributing to their economic decline. 

After that axe does fall, it will be the banks in sound countries that go bankrupt, unless of course they refused, wisely, to lend across borders. In that case the money is likely to end up either being lent to the taxpayer-owned European Central Bank, which will take the loss in the case of defaults, or simply leave the eurozone and take with it any hope of bank lending driving a recovery from the present weak growth rates.

'Fire and Forget'

Colum McCann begins his foreword, All stories are war stories somehow. The 15 short stories in Fire and Forget: Stories from the Long War, are unambiguously stories of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, whether the scene takes place on a New York subway, a shopping mall or at an after-hours binge in a Times Square bar.An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard. 

The book has a unique origin. New York University, with the help and support of ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, offered a free writing workshop to veterans (the NYU Veterans Writing Workshop). Smith contacted McCann and asked him to participate. Several veterans/writers from that workshop got together and committed themselves to creating this anthology. From there, writes McCann, The war went literary. 

There isnt a lot of fiction from these two wars. Kevin Powers The Yellow Birds won high praise in 2012 but it is nearly a polar opposite to what these writers have done in Fire and Forget. These stories are less dreamy, less written and more skillfully crafted even when they do venture into the meditative, lost-in-my-shell-shocked brain mode. I attended an event where several of the young veterans (including one young woman) read from this book and, like everyone else in the room, was taken with the power and abundant talent (and creativity) their stories display. 

In Smile, There are IEDs Everywhere, Jacob Siegel, an Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, writes about three friends from the war who meet a year after discharge at the NYC Port Authority. They get extremely drunk and in the early morning hours climb some scaffolding and enter the third, unfinished leg of the High Line aboveground park. One of the most impressive things about this story is the way the first-person narrator conveys his wifes despair at his impenetrability and withholding. The dialogue is wrenching and pitch perfect.You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth carparkmanagementsystem truck Descriptions. Second is the portrayal of all-out risk the former soldiers engage in. Everything they do is in the extreme, is beyond the boundaries and, at times, shocking. 

One of my favorites in the collection is by Siobhan Fallon, an army spouse whose book, You Know When the Men Are Gone, received accolades in 2011. In Tips for a Smooth Transition, Colin has just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Its his third deployment in the five years he and Evie have been married. As soon as he arrives, he takes Evie to Hawaii where he promptly insists they swim with sharks. When she refuses to enter the shark cage with him, he dives in, unprotected, causing one pregnant woman to faint and everyone else to scream in panic. Colin emerges unhurt and grinning from ear to ear. Did you take a picture? he asks Evie. Interspersed between scenes are excerpts from a military handbook written for spouses receiving their soldier-mates newly home from battle. The book counsels: keep your expectations reasonable, be patient, stay safe and out of the way of aggressive behavior. 

A municipal permit system for rental properties will drive up costs and create more bureaucracy without adequately addressing the problems that prompted the proposal, say those affected.The need for proper bestsmartcard inside your home is very important. 

Property managers and renters alike are expressing concern about the proposed general bylaw to come before annual Town Meeting next month that would license rentals through a $100 annual fee, per property, as recommended by the Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods Working Group appointed by Town Manager John Musante. Property owners also must complete annual self-inspections and submit parking plans, which some say could be expensive. 

The two property managers who served on the panel say the bylaw, which needs to win majority support at Town Meeting, goes too far. 

What came out is not what I thought wed come out with, said Stephen Walczak, property manager for Puffton Village. Where I became confused is we came up with a giant net for all housing when its just 1 to 2 percent that are creating the problems. 

Walczak said there are an estimated 50 to 100 rental units of the 5,175 spread throughout town which are the sites of significant behavioral issues, yet the plan puts the responsibility for dealing with them on the backs of all landlords and property managers. Besides, he said, If this is a townwide issue, why isnt it a townwide expense? 

Patrick Kamins of Kamins Real Estate said the proposed system seems to be imposing a tax to create a more intrusive municipal bureaucracy. 

I do think landlords need to act responsibly and follow codes, Kamins said. But why are you punishing the many for the sins of the few? 

The town last week unveiled the general bylaw proposal and Building Commissioner Robert Morra presented a plan to implement it that included a $218,000 budget with two code enforcement officers and a one clerical worker.You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth carparkmanagementsystem truck Descriptions. Of this, $75,000 is already in the municipal budget for the salary and benefits for one code enforcement officer, Jon Thompson. 

Advocates have also said it could be used as leverage to force landlords to penalize chronically troublesome tenants. 

Walczak said he and others believe the town can achieve this by enforcing the registration policy adopted by the Board of Health in 2003.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. That policy, however, has been largely ignored. Just 700 properties had been registered, and that number has diminished in the decade since it went into effect. Still, they say, that type of system could be used to require notifications to tenants about rules and parking regulations.

How Police Killed 2 Civil Defence Officers In Lagos

An anti-vandal squad of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Lagos State Command, was yesterday ambushed by armed policemen attached to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) who opened fire on them, killing two officers, injuring several others and freeing the pipeline vandal they had arrested. 

Although authorities of the NSCDC refused to release the names of the two officers who were killed at about 3am along Ikorudu axis yesterday, family sources identified them as Gabriel Adaji, an assistant inspector of the corps (AIC), and Innocent Aigbe, an inspector of the corps (IC). 

While Adaji died on the spot, Aigbe was said to have given up the ghost at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) following fatal bullet wounds he received from the policemen.An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard. 

LEADERSHIP reliably gathered that a police identity card with number 120622, belonging to one Inspector Sunday Gabriel, a pistol and a walkie-talkie believed to have fallen off from the policemen who killed and freed the four arrested vandals, were retrieved from the scene of the attack. 

Meanwhile, a source who spoke to LEADERSHIP from the NSCDC national headquarters, who spoke on condition of anonymity, revealed that although the corps operatives exhibited maturity by not engaging the police in a bloody fight, they were, however, able to gather useful exhibits from the police, such as the pistol, an ID card and a walkie-talkie, to support their claim that the attack was carried out by the police. 

According to the source, The wounded operatives of the corps have the needed evidence proving that the Wednesday morning attack on them was carried out by men and officers of the Nigeria Police, who under normal circumstances should give us their backing, as the army, navy and other good-hearted sister agencies, who hold the task of redeeming the economy of this great country from the hands of this dreaded saboteurs, do. 

With a tearful voice, the source further said, As I speak to you now, two of our operatives are lying dead while others narrowly escaped with fatal gunshot wounds. What kind of wickedness is this among security agencies? 

How can security agencies tasked with the mandate of securing our nation be this divided? We didnt think that this kind of thing would have ever happened. 

Eyewitnesses and one of the wounded officers who spoke to LEADERSHIP from Lagos at about 4am yesterday on telephone alleged that the police swung into action in response to a save our soul call put across to them by the vandals after they were over-powered by the NSCDC operatives, who had seized their operational materials as exhibits to nail them. 

According to the witness, Immediately the police officers got wind of the information which they feared would have nailed them, they immediately swung into action, laid ambush with their patrol vehicle and fired at the NSCDC operatives at close range without any argument ensuing between them. 

After the first deceased slumped on the ground and after others escaped with serious gunshot injuries,Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. the policemen hurriedly freed the arrested vandals and escaped, but some injured Civil Defence men who hid in the bush were brave enough to take some important evidence to nail the police. 

Meanwhile, there was a mild drama at the Lagos State Command of the Civil Defence Corps when the Lagos State commissioner of police allegedly mobilised three trucks, loaded with armed mobile policemen, to invade and retrieve the recovered police pistol, the ID card and the walkie-talkie recovered from the scene of the attack. 

They, however, met stiff resistance from the NSCDC operatives, who were later joined by army personnel. They had sent a distress call to the soldiers. 

LEADERSHIP learnt at the time of filing this report that the army had barricaded the premises of the NSCDC to forestall possible further invasion by the police. 

When contacted on the matter, the NSCDC public relations officer, Mr. Okeh Emmanuel, confirmed the killing of two officers. 

He said, Yes it is true that we lost two officers of the Corps but as a law abiding agency, we dont want to carry out any action that will negate the rule of law. We believe in due process and so we will let the law take its natural course. The NSCDC and the Nigeria Police are both government agencies. 

LEADERSHIP recalls that for some time now, there have been reported cases of clashes of interest, unnecessary bickering and rancour between policemen and officers of the NSCDC, with the police alleging that its functions are being encroached on by the corps, an act it considers an affront and needed to be checked. 

The command, in a statement by its PRO, Miss Ngozi Braide, reads in part: The Lagos State Command wishes to use this medium to put the record straight on what actually transpired at Isawo-Ikorodu at early hours of today (yesterday) between the NSCDC and the Police. 

At about 0145hours of date, there was a distress call from DM security, PPMC, Mosimi, that they were experiencing a drop in pressure on the pipeline. 

The Unit Commander in charge of Konu immediately pulled out his men on Konu axis under Inspector Sunday Gabriel to proceed to the scene. 

As they were approaching, they heard sound of serious gunfire in their area of pipeline coverage and the Inspector instructed his men to proceed to that direction as it could be the activities of vandals. 

Upon arrival, they saw a group of Civil Defence Corps Members coming out from the direction where the shooting was earlier heard.An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard. 

The NSCDC men challenged the policemen who were about four in number on what their mission was in the area, saying that it was their sole responsibility (Civil Defence) to guard and protect pipelines. 

According to Braide, it was at this juncture that an argument ensued between the NSCDC and the Police and the most senior NSCDC officer, DSC Olufemi,The need for proper bestsmartcard inside your home is very important. ordered his men who were about 14 in number to disarm, arrest and handcuff the police team leader and three other members of his team. 

The NSCDC succeeded in disarming the police team leader Inspector Sunday Gabriel, handcuffed him, collected his service pistol, walkie-talkie and police ID card, she stated. 

The police spokeswoman further said that it was as the NSCDC officials were about dragging him into one of their standby Hilux vehicles, that a phone call was put to the Police Unit Commander, following which the three other officers resisted the arrest, and this infuriated Civil Defence officials who started shooting sporadically to intimidate and subdue the police officers. 

Braide said that before the police commander could arrive at the scene, the NSCDC officials had taken to their heels,You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth carparkmanagementsystem truck Descriptions. abandoning the handcuffed and leg-chained police inspector with one of NSCDC personnel. 

She said that it came as a shock to the police that at about 4am, the Civil Defence Corps Commander called the police commander, Mosimi, to say that he had lost two of his men and that their corpses had been deposited at the hospital.