Confidentiality

WASHINGTON -- If you want to keep a secret, it's best not to tell it in your doctor's office.Medical records routinely end up in the hands of insurance companies, employers, police officers, researchers and drug firms. It's easier to protect the titles of last weekend's video rentals than your test results.That's because Congress has protected the right to privacy when it comes to video rentals. No federal law protects the confidentiality of personal medical information.But Congress is hoping to change that.

Kenneth Starr's quest for lawyer's notes threatens vital 0) trustsThe request by Kenneth Starr to invade the attorney-client privilege between the late Vincent Foster and his lawyer is truly inappropriate ("Court cool to Starr's request," June 9).As a practicing psychologist for the past 38 years, I have participated in the process of confidentiality between client and professional. The purpose of this process is obviously to allow an atmosphere for the client to fully trust the professional with anything that the client wishes to convey.

THE BUSINESS OF child welfare is cloaked in confidentiality for good reason. Ethically, people who seek or accept help in the most intimate areas of their lives have a right to expect that such matters will be private. This is as sacred a tenet in social work as in medicine and psychiatry.Practically, the ability of social service caseworkers to help children who reportedly have been mistreated hinges on trust. Caseworkers depend on people being willing to report a suspicion of abuse, trusting that their identities will be protected.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening is entitled to "some privacy" and confidentiality in conducting state business and may shield certain telephone, calendar and scheduling records from public scrutiny, an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge has ruled.But, Judge Lawrence H. Rushworth wrote in an opinion filed yesterday, the governor does not have a blanket executive privilege.He ordered the governor's office to turn over records it believes are privileged, with justification, for him to review in private.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening is entitled to "some privacy" and confidentiality in conducting state business and may shield certain telephone, calendar and scheduling records from public scrutiny, an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge has ruled.But, Judge Lawrence H. Rushworth wrote in an opinion filed yesterday, the governor does not have a blanket executive privilege.He ordered the governor's office to turn over records it believes are privileged, with justification, for him to review in private.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening is entitled to "some privacy" and confidentiality in conducting state business and may shield certain telephone, calendar and scheduling records from public scrutiny, an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge has ruled.But, Judge Lawrence H. Rushworth wrote in an opinion filed yesterday, the governor does not have a blanket executive privilege.He ordered the governor's office to turn over records it believes are privileged, with justification, for him to review in private.

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court broadly expanded the cloak of secrecy over internal White House papers yesterday, ruling that the privilege of confidentiality extends below the president to his top advisers and their staffs.For "executive privilege" to apply to White House documents, the president need not have seen those papers or have discussed them, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here decided."Presidential advisors," the court said, "do not explore [policy] alternatives only in conversations with the president or pull their final advice to him out of thin air -- if they do, their advice is not likely to be worth much."

TODAY IS YOUR first day at your new job. You're given the typical forms to fill out.You complete a questionnaire about your current state of health, including questions about family medical history and allergies. What happens to that information after you provide it? What happens if you confide in a company health professional at your workplace about a worsening ulcer, a difficult pregnancy or a chronic ailment?Most individuals assume that their personal health information will be kept confidential, but few laws exist to protect this kind of information.

PLENTY OF things deserve the protection of confidentiality. Parking fines are not among them.When parking spaces are as rare as they are at University of Maryland College Park, the competition for finding one can be as fierce as an NCAA basketball play-off.So imagine how students, faculty and administrators must have felt to learn a couple of years ago that a basketball player had found his own way of shutting out the competition by parking pretty much as he pleased -- accumulating more than $8,000 in fines in the process.

The state's hospital rate-setting commission approved new regulations yesterday allowing collection of detailed outpatient data.The regulations include some confidentiality safeguards, after opponents worried that patient privacy might be compromised. Still, opponents said they would continue to battle for protection, perhaps through legislation in next year's General Assembly session.The additional safeguards "are a step in the right direction, appreciating our concern that the information can be personally identifiable.

For starters, I sympathize with major league baseball players who took the so-called survey drug test back in 2003 with the understanding that the results would be confidential. However, that promise of confidentiality evaporated as the test results have passed through apparently scores of hands, including - inevitably - those of the media. Yesterday a contrite Alex Rodriguez told ESPN that he took PEDs for three years while with the Rangers. The Yankees superstar decided to go with the Andy Pettitte-like confession instead of stony Mark McGwire-like silence.

MARYLAND Child tracking system flawed A test run of a new state computer system designed to track the nearly 10,000 Maryland children in foster care has uncovered serious flaws. Dubbed "Chessie," the system is nearly three years behind schedule and its original price tag of $26 million has ballooned to $67 million. pg 1b Victim's family plans to sue Relatives of a Brooklyn man who was fatally shot by a Baltimore police officer as he fled a suspected drug deal contended yesterday that police used excessive force.

WASHINGTON -- Judith Miller, The New York Times reporter who has been jailed since July 6 for refusing to testify in the CIA leak case, was released from a Virginia detention center yesterday afternoon after she and her lawyers reached an agreement with a federal prosecutor to testify before a grand jury investigating the matter, the paper's publisher and executive editor said. Miller was freed after spending more than 12 weeks in jail, during which she refused to cooperate with the criminal inquiry.

HE COULD have had us at "Hello" ... but that was 10 days ago. Rafael Palmeiro could have stood up on the day he was suspended and made a clean breast of it - either that or delivered some kind of explanation that passed the smell test and put to rest some of the nagging questions that continue to cast a cloud over his great career. If he had done so, instead of hiding behind that bogus confidentiality pledge that blew up in his face the next day, a huge mass of national media might not have been pressed around him yesterday straining to hear the few noncommittal words he delivered upon his return to the Orioles' active roster.

ANAHEIM, Calif. - There is an empty locker between Sammy Sosa and Miguel Tejada in the visitors' clubhouse at Angel Stadium, and it shouldn't be too difficult to guess whose nameplate was supposed to be above it. Save the real guessing for Major League Baseball's steroid policy, which was supposed to restore confidence in the sport in the wake of the BALCO scandal and a string of other troubling revelations, but - with this latest shocking development -...

WASHINGTON - Attention, fellow journalists: Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has blown our cover. In his argument for why New York Times reporter Judith Miller should be jailed until she tells a grand jury who revealed the name of a CIA operative to her, Mr. Fitzgerald stated that "journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality. No one in America is." He's right. But what's really troubling is how the right of reporters to keep sources confidential has eroded in recent years.

THE SUPREME COURT'S decision not to consider the cases of reporters Judith Miller and Matt Cooper is disappointing. Both now face jail time for refusing to testify before a grand jury in the investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent. From the start, this has been a difficult and troubled case. Typically, reporters protect the anonymity of whistleblowers or people who have provided them with useful information that someone else, in a position of power, doesn't want to see published.

Confidentiality protects people who report abuse Articles that criticize the confidentiality of child welfare records consistently miss the reasons it is so essential for us to protect the privacy of children in state care and their families ("Critics aim to reduce secrecy in foster care," April 17, and "Confidentiality used to conceal pattern of abuse," letters, April 21). Social service caseworkers charged with protecting the safety of our children rely on good information about incidents of abuse and neglect to make solid decisions about placement and treatment.

Confidentiality used to conceal pattern of abuse I am writing in praise of Jonathan Rockoff's article on how the Department of Human Resources and the juvenile court system have conspired to twist the privilege of confidentiality into a way to conceal the daily abuses and deadly mistakes that damage the abused and neglected children in state custody ("Critics aim to reduce secrecy in foster care," April 17). The privilege of confidentiality belongs to the child, not to the agency, just as the doctor-patient privilege belongs to the patient, not to the doctor.

Justice Department employees involved in the investigation of biological weapons expert Steven J. Hatfill will be asked to sign a form waiving any confidentiality agreements with reporters, a move proposed by his attorneys to help determine the source of government leaks identifying him as a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, who has criticized government officials for leaks about Hatfill, agreed to the unusual request in court yesterday. "I am not prepared to leave this at a status quo," Walton said.