Hearing of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law - Protecting Minnesotans' Consumer Rights and Privacy

Statement

Today, Chairman Al Franken (D-Minn.) exposed gaps in health privacy laws and their enforcement during a hearing in his Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. The lack of security poses a mounting problem as more institutions move away from paper medical records to electronic records.

Kari Myrold, the Privacy Officer for the Hennepin County Medical Center, testified on the challenges of protecting electronic health records and the difficulties surrounding the implementation of federal privacy laws in a clinical setting.

Chairman Franken also discovered gaps in the implementation of the laws designed to protect health information and urged representatives from the Department of Justice and Health and Human Services to improve enforcement of the laws and make the enforcement process more transparent.

"Breach after breach of health data has shown us that when it comes to health information, our right to privacy is not being protected," said Chairman Franken. "The same wonderful technology that has revolutionized patient health records has also created very real and very serious privacy challenges. I think that we can do more to protect our health information-both in terms of the laws we have on our books and the way we're enforcing them. So there is work to be done here."

The Judiciary subcommittee hearing, titled "Your Health and Your Privacy: Protecting Health Information in a Digital World," also focused on what the federal government can do to better protect health information privacy. You can read Chairman Franken's opening statement below.

Protecting Minnesotans' consumer rights and privacy has been a priority for Chairman Franken since he came to the Senate. Most recently, Chairman Franken led a bipartisan group of senators in calling on key federal agencies for an investigation into mobile phone "stalking apps." In September, after Chairman Franken urged OnStar to reverse its decision to track the locations of its customers and potentially sell that information to third parties even after those customers had terminated their service plans with the company, the company reversed its policy.

In May, Chairman Franken held his first hearing as the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law with top officials from Apple and Google to ensure that emerging mobile technologies do not jeopardize the privacy and safety of mobile device users whose locations and other information can be tracked while they use smartphones or similar devices. Following the hearing, Chairman Franken introduced legislation to protect consumer privacy on mobile devices. In April, he asked the U.S. Department of Justice to clarify its interpretation of a critical federal law that protects personal data after a security breach at Epsilon Data Management and allegations that several popular smartphone applications were gathering and disclosing users' private information without their knowledge or consent.

Last year, Chairman Franken pressed Attorney General Eric Holder to incorporate an analysis of geotags-information about a person's location that is embedded in photos and videos taken with GPS-equipped smartphones-into an updated stalking victimization study connected to the National Crime Victimization Survey. This March, Chairman Franken also led several of his Senate colleagues in urging Facebook to stop plans that would have permitted third party application providers to access users' home addresses and phone numbers.

The Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law was created at the beginning of the 112th Congress. Sen. Franken was appointed Chairman of the subcommittee shortly thereafter.

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