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September 28, 2021

Ring Ring, Get Your Vaccine: Personal Data, Free Will, and Governance

Ring Ring, Get Your Vaccine
BY: TARTLE

Alaska’s Health Department in Trouble

One of our big seven things we really care about at TARTLE is government and corporate transparency. Normally, when this topic comes up, we are calling one or the other out for their lack of transparency. Today, we actually get to go the other way for once. 

That is thanks to the governor of Alaska who recently ordered the justice department to investigate the state’s health department. If that sounds unusual, it is. Governments typically don’t publically announce that they are investigating themselves.

What could have prompted the unusual action? It turns out Alaska’s Health Department has been using data in ways that not the governor disapprove of, they may also have violated federal HIPAA laws. As with so many other things in the last year and a half, the situation was prompted by COVID. What they did was set a program to call senior citizens in Anchorage and enquire as to their vaccination status. The health department also outsourced that particular activity to third party contractors. The program was begun to help people understand and take advantage of the availability of the COVID 19 vaccines. However, there are several questions to be asked. Did the seniors of Anchorage actually need any help with this? Did they ask for it? Did the health department actually ask them? What about the data? Whether or not a person has a particular vaccine is sensitive medical data, data that should not be getting shared with a third party, the ones doing the actual work. Finally, one has to wonder just what the state was doing with that data in the first place. Public emergency or not, the government should not have that kind of information about individuals. How did they acquire it and for what reason did they do so? 

Once data starts to get shared like that, from one group to the next, it becomes harder and harder to track exactly what is being done with it. The sovereignty over the data has been lost and anonymity in this case is obviously also compromised. From those third parties a patient’s data could be sold virtually anywhere, including their identity. 

Fortunately, once news of the program got out (thanks to one of Anchorage citizens blowing the whistle), the governor stopped it and ordered the investigation. In at least this instance, Governor Mike Dunleavy showed real leadership. Not only did he shut down the program, he ordered the investigation, and even more importantly, did so publically. And it gets better. Dunleavy ordered a full review of all the data sharing agreements for the state, promising to put policies in place that would prevent such a thing from ever happening again. It isn’t often you see this kind of transparency coming from the government. For that he should be commended.

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Summary
Ring Ring, Get Your Vaccine: Personal Data, Free Will, and Governance
Title
Ring Ring, Get Your Vaccine: Personal Data, Free Will, and Governance
Description

One of our big seven things we really care about at TARTLE is government and corporate transparency. Normally, when this topic comes up, we are calling one or the other out for their lack of transparency. Today, we actually get to go the other way for once. 

Feature Image Credit: Envato Elements
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For those who are hard of hearing – the episode transcript can be read below:

TRANSCRIPT

Alexander McCaig (00:08):

Somebody's getting called out.

Jason Rigby (00:10):

Uh-oh. Here we go. What's their big seven? What is number six?

Alexander McCaig (00:15):

Government and corporate transparency.

Jason Rigby (00:17):

This is what we advocate, and all of you that are a part of TARTLE, and when we say government transparency, we always think negative, but we have a story here that we want to talk about.

Alexander McCaig (00:29):

And we would like to congratulate, in the Alaska news over here, Anchorage Daily News, Governor Dunleavy ordered the investigation of state health department for unauthorized data sharing over municipal COVID-19 vaccine calls to Anchorage seniors. Okay, so let's talk about what actually happened here.

Jason Rigby (01:01):

News release hit-

Alexander McCaig (01:03):

Yeah. A news release hit-

Jason Rigby (01:04):

From the governor's office Thursday, and it directed the Alaska Department of Law to investigate the Alaska State Department of Health and Social Services, and they haven't got real specific, because it's under investigation but, of course, you're not going to say everything.

Alexander McCaig (01:17):

But they shared names and contact information with contractors.

Jason Rigby (01:24):

Municipal contractors. So who are contractors?

Alexander McCaig (01:26):

Contractors are private third-parties that come and do work for the government because government doesn't have the ability to do it itself.

Jason Rigby (01:33):

Whenever you're giving data that should have just belonged to the state, and you're giving it to a third-party contractor, what happens then to the sovereignty of that data?

Alexander McCaig (01:43):

It's no longer in the hands of the person who created it. First of all, this is a HIPAA issue. You're just going to hand over all this identifiable info to third-parties, and you didn't even make the people aware of the info? Did you ask them? You didn't do any of these things.

Jason Rigby (01:58):

TARTLE would have solved this problem.

Alexander McCaig (02:00):

You wouldn't have had an issue if you just used TARTLE.

Jason Rigby (02:02):

Yeah. You could have used TARTLE, said, hey seniors, all the seniors in Alaska, would you like to sell your data to a third-party municipal contractor?

Alexander McCaig (02:10):

We have plenty of senior citizens on TARTLE here. Stop with the nonsense. The action occurred outside an established data sharing agreement between the state and Anchorage Health Department. Uh-oh, you did a big no-no. This is where bad stuff happens, is in prospective times of crisis, people think that they can bend the law or it's okay to do things. That's when you need to be buckling down and not allow people to take some sort of authoritative control-

Jason Rigby (02:48):

Force.

Alexander McCaig (02:49):

Or force and say, deem it for national security, national emergency, or whatever it might be.

Jason Rigby (02:55):

And shout out to the Anchorage resident. I don't know if you see that part on there, the Anchorage resident, Andre Mackeloid?

Alexander McCaig (03:01):

McLeod, yeah.

Jason Rigby (03:02):

McLeod said she got a call from a municipal contractor last Sunday that raised red flags related to privacy, not vaccines. She was stunned when she picked up the phone and find contractor, AM Trace, asking if she'd been vaccinated. She said she hung up.

Alexander McCaig (03:17):

Who the heck gave AM Trace her info to go be doing this?

Jason Rigby (03:20):

Her phone number and her name.

Alexander McCaig (03:21):

Yeah, and health record information about vaccination.

Jason Rigby (03:26):

These are cell phone numbers.

Alexander McCaig (03:27):

They were calling to verify her vaccination. Who are you? Who gave you the right to go even do that? It's a mess. This is a mess. People will be like, you know it's important in times of COVID. No. You need to respect sovereignty.

Jason Rigby (03:41):

Right.

Alexander McCaig (03:42):

If somebody doesn't want to share it, they don't want to share it.

Jason Rigby (03:44):

She sent letters. She reached out to voice. This is shout out to the people. This is what I love. I love when you have an individual that creates a catalyst to hold government or corporates responsible. This is a power that you have as a people, because she reached out to the governor's office and the governor's office said, okay, we'll pick this up.

Alexander McCaig (04:02):

Yeah. This was, if we have-

Jason Rigby (04:04):

She sent an email. An email.

Alexander McCaig (04:05):

If we have seven billion data champions across the world, keeping people honest and accountable, that's pretty awesome. She had called AM Trace back and asked them, she asked the contractor, she's like, how'd you get my name and phone number? The supervisor from AM Trace repeatedly told her the company got its call lists, which apparently contained cell phone numbers, from the Anchorage Health Department. Anchorage Health Department just figured they could just give all this stuff away? I don't think so. That don't fly. Don't fly with us, don't fly with her.

Jason Rigby (04:41):

The Anchorage Health Department said this in an email, they had a spokeswoman say this, "Requested that we help the vaccination effort by connecting with seniors in Anchorage who might need assistance signing up for a vaccine appointment."

Alexander McCaig (04:53):

That is a-

Jason Rigby (04:53):

It always sounds good.

Alexander McCaig (04:54):

It's not. What do you mean assistance? What's your clear definition of assistance? Did they tell you they wanted assistance? Just because they're old, they can't speak and think for themselves? You don't need to assist unless the person asked for the assistance. If their life is legitimately threatened, then you can go in and help them, but right now-

Jason Rigby (05:14):

You just gave Am Trace, this call marketing firm, you just gave them all the senior citizens names and cell phone numbers, so do you not think-

Alexander McCaig (05:25):

No respect for the elderly again.

Jason Rigby (05:27):

Do you not think that these faults warranty companies that call and say, your warranty's running out on your Subaru [crosstalk 00:05:34].

Alexander McCaig (05:35):

You need to pay the IRS blah, blah, blah.

Jason Rigby (05:35):

Do you not think that it's these same people that got that third-party data from the state, and they're not going to turn around and hit you with 20 other different things?

Alexander McCaig (05:42):

Yeah. Or sell it off. Who knows what they're going to do with it.

Jason Rigby (05:46):

That's bullshit, Anchorage Health Department.

Alexander McCaig (05:48):

Yeah. It's crap.

Jason Rigby (05:50):

Because now you just put-

Alexander McCaig (05:52):

Own up to the fact that you screwed up and you didn't respect someone's right.

Jason Rigby (05:56):

That there's sovereignty of data. We talk about this all the time.

Alexander McCaig (05:58):

You own up to the fact that you absolutely did not respect their right, not one bit of it. [inaudible 00:06:06] ever walked into the Anchorage Health Department, and I said, I want all the employees in here, give me all your information. I'm going to go hand it over to the American public. They'd be like, oh, hell no. Oh no, but it's cool for you to just make the decision for all these other human beings here in Alaska? You can make that because you're just some sort of centralized authority that determines that for them?

Jason Rigby (06:24):

It's also not your determination to whether somebody wants to get vaccinated or not.

Alexander McCaig (06:28):

Precisely correct, and you never even asked them.

Jason Rigby (06:29):

You can educate people.

Alexander McCaig (06:30):

Sure.

Jason Rigby (06:31):

The government can educate people on why it's important to get vaccinated. I'm vaccinated. Very important to get vaccinated. I get it. I'm educated, but you cannot impose on somebody's free will through data. We have to stop this practice. It would have been so simple, this health department could have come to us and said, hey, we want to remind these people that they need to get vaccinated. We want to help educate them. TARTLE could have helped them so easily. They could have got paid for their data, it could have been done ethically, and on top of that, it would not be any violation whatsoever.

Alexander McCaig (07:11):

Of their right.

Jason Rigby (07:11):

Of their right.

Alexander McCaig (07:11):

Yeah. You could have done it in under 24 hours, and you wouldn't have had to hire all these outside contractors with their call centers.

Jason Rigby (07:19):

Yeah. It's so simple. We just want to shout out to the governor's office there. They're going to do internal review on all their departments. They're going to look at the sharing agreements again.

Alexander McCaig (07:27):

Can we give a gold star to Dunleavy?

Jason Rigby (07:29):

Yeah. He said they're going to report back to him with new policies and procedures that will prevent this from happening again.

Alexander McCaig (07:36):

This is Alaska. It's half the size of the United States.

Jason Rigby (07:43):

[crosstalk 00:07:43].

Alexander McCaig (07:43):

Why is the governor of Alaska on top of it?

Jason Rigby (07:47):

They said this too, this is awesome, senior leadership has just learned of this, and the governor wanted to act quickly to let the public know, transparency. Oh, hey, because the governor, he's the leader. This is an example to other leaders. He is the leader. The health department is under him.

Alexander McCaig (08:09):

Yeah. What are they doing just like-

Jason Rigby (08:11):

But him being so transparent where he's saying, we as a government made a mistake and I'm on this quickly, swiftly, and we're going to take care of this, people, and we apologize, and we're going to make sure this never happens again. That is great leadership.

Alexander McCaig (08:27):

That's how leadership should be.

Jason Rigby (08:29):

I don't care if he's Republican, Democrat, libertarian, anarchist, I don't care what he is. It's just great leadership, and he's showing government transparency.

Alexander McCaig (08:35):

If you're telling me you're respecting human rights, I'm right here for you. Hey, do you know what it reminds me of? Have you ever seen Spaceballs?

Jason Rigby (08:42):

Yes. [crosstalk 00:08:43] I digress.

Alexander McCaig (08:45):

You know the opening scene where the guy comes in and Lord Helmet's standing there, he's like, "You went over my helmet?"

Jason Rigby (08:53):

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (08:54):

The guy in this authority structure here said, "You went over in the helmet?" And the guy's like, "No, sir. It was a little more to the side." He immediately takes care of it by using his ring. That's what governor Dunleavy's doing right now. He's Lord Helmet, and Lord Helmet is making sure that the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services isn't overstepping their bounds by not respecting human rights.

Jason Rigby (09:23):

Yeah. It's just so great though, because we're always hammering on this stuff.

Alexander McCaig (09:27):

I already see the meme.

Jason Rigby (09:28):

Exactly.

Alexander McCaig (09:29):

No, Governor Dunleavy, I didn't go over your helmet, it was more to the side.

Jason Rigby (09:33):

Yeah. That's a great meme.

Alexander McCaig (09:35):

Yeah. No, not there. Yes, there.

Jason Rigby (09:39):

No. Just shout out to any leader, and this is an example of how to handle a situation that happens in your organization. Stop covering shit up.

Alexander McCaig (09:47):

Don't cover it up.

Jason Rigby (09:48):

Be transparent. Admit it.

Alexander McCaig (09:50):

Something screwed up under my watch, I need to go talk about this immediately, nip it in the bud. Be public about it, because we have to. That's our responsibility, and then regain your trust.

Jason Rigby (10:03):

If this guy's demonstrated this a whole bunch of times, then Alaska, you have a great leader, regardless of what it is.

Alexander McCaig (10:08):

Good for you Alaska. Good for you and your giant chunk of landmass, making us all look puny.

Speaker 3 (10:20):

Thank you for listening to TARTLE cast, with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and the source data defines the path. What's your data worth?