Question

Dartmouth College professor M. Eric Johnson, in collaboration with Tiversa, Inc., a company that monitors peer-to-peer networks to

 provide security services, wrote an article titled "Data Hemorrhages in the Health-Care Sector." In preparing the article, Johnson and Tiversa searched the networks for data that could be used to commit medical

 or financial identity theft. They found a document that contained the Social Security numbers, insurance information, and treatment codes for patients of LabMD, Inc. Tiversa notified LabMD of the find in order to solicit its business. Instead of hiring Tiversa, however, LabMD filed a suit in a federal district court against the company, alleging trespass, conver- sion, and violations of federal statutes. What do these facts indicate about the security of private information? Explain.

 How should the court rule? [LabMD, Inc. v. Tiversa, Inc., 2013 WL 425983 (11th Cir. 2013)] (See Copyrights in Digital Information.)

 

Answer 1

It can be known from the facts of the case that security of private information was violated by Eric Johnson and Tiversa .They downloaded a P2P software exposing some patient information on the file-sharing network in the form of a 1,718-page file containing personal information about 9,300 patients. They wrote an article regarding data sharing in the health sector which deals with how data networks are used to commit medical or financial identity theft and then used the data of LabMD to prepare for the article. In contrast, there is also a case here on the information security side where LabMD is vulnerable to risks of their own privacy policy that would likely to cause substantial injury to consumers.