Jail Term for Employee Underscores Importance of Hawaii Employers Complying with HIPAA

[security curmudgeon <jericho () attrition org>]

http://www.sportsandrelax.com/28/06/2009/jail-term-for-employee-underscores-importance-of-hawaii-employers-complying-with-hipaa/

  Jail Term for Employee Underscores Importance of Hawaii Employers 
Complying with HIPAA
June 28th, 2009

In June 2009, a 22-year-old Honolulu mother of three young children was 
sentenced to a year in prison for illegally accessing another woman's 
medical records and posting on a MySpace page that she had HIV.

The State of Hawaii brought charges against the woman under a state 
statute criminalizing the unauthorized access to a computer; and which 
categorized the conduct of the defendant as a class B felony.

According to accounts of the incidents that led to the womans conviction, 
there was a feud between the victim and the victim's sister-in-law, a 
friend of the defendant. The defendant, who worked as a patient service 
representative at the hospital where the victim was a patient, accessed 
the computer for the victim's sister-in-law.

Over the course of approximately ten months, the defendant accessed the 
patient's medical records three times through a computer. After she 
learned of the victim's medical condition, the defendant posted on her 
MySpace page that the victim had HIV. In a second posting, she said the 
victim was dying of AIDS.

[..]
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