DEA Wants Inside Your Medical Records to Fight the War on Drugs

[Purveyor]

The feds are fighting to look at millions of private files without a warrant, including those of two transgender men who are taking testosterone.

Marlon Jones was arrested for taking legal painkillers, prescribed to him by a doctor, after a double knee replacement.

Jones, an assistant fire chief of Utah’s Unified Fire Authority, was snared in a dragnet pulled through the state’s program to monitor prescription drugs after someone stole morphine from an ambulance in 2012. To find the missing morphine, cops used their unrestricted access to the state’s Prescription Drug Monitor Program database to look at the private medical records of nearly 500 emergency services personnel—without a warrant.

Jones was arrested along with another firefighter and a paramedic on suspicion of prescription fraud.
--clip

Now the Drug Enforcement Administration wants that same kind of power, starting with access to an Oregon database containing the private medical data of more than a million people.

The DEA has claimed for years that under federal law it has the authority to access the state’s Prescription Drug Monitor Program database using only an “administrative subpoena.” These are unilaterally issued orders that do not require a showing of probable cause before a court, like what’s required to obtain a warrant.

In 2012 Oregon sued the DEA to prevent it from enforcing the subpoenas to snoop around its drug registry. Two years ago a U.S. District Court found in favor of the state, ruling that prescription data is covered by the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unlawful search and seizure.

more...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/10/dea-wants-inside-your-medical-records-to-fight-the-war-on-drugs.html

[ZombieHorde]

1. I wish we would end the war on drugs

and dump the DEA.

[bvar22]

2. Not going to happen until we can elect a real Democrat.

The War on Drugs is way too profitable to "private" interests that support the presumptive Dem nominee.

[chapdrum]

5. You said it.

[That Guy 888]

3. Thank god the Democratic Party will fight thi... oh, never mind.

Yes, I know the republicans are much, much, worse. That shouldn't excuse the Democratic Party from doing better than it is. Well I suppose you don't get endorsements and ca$h from the Prison Industry without making a few minor sacrifices.

[840high]

4. .....

[Bluenorthwest]

6. And yet when it says 'The State of Oregon is fighting the DEA' those are not a bunch of Republicans

in Oregon doing that.

[That Guy 888]

9. True, but the core of our Party prefers static immovable concepts

Drug War good

Even the concept of removing marijuana from the same class of drugs as highly addictive potentially lethal drugs is too much of a stretch for too many Inside-the-Beltway Dems.

It's not that I'm championing the republicans or their libertarian stalking horse, it's just that the national Democratic Party should do better. Even when they have science or the Constitution on their side they refuse to fight.

from the OP's article:

In his 2014 ruling against the DEA, District Court Judge Ancer L. Haggerty called warrantless searches of such data an egregious invasion of privacy.

“It is difficult to conceive of information that is... more deserving of Fourth Amendment protection,” Haggerty said. “By obtaining the prescription records for individuals like John Does 2 and 4, a person would know that they have used testosterone in particular quantities and by extension, that they have gender identity disorder and are treating it through hormone therapy.

“Although there is not an absolute right to privacy in prescription information... it is more than reasonable for patients to believe that law enforcement agencies will not have unfettered access to their records,” he added.
Get The Beast In Your Inbox!
Daily DigestStart and finish your day with the smartest, sharpest takes from The Daily Beast
Cheat SheetA speedy, smart summary of news and must-reads from The Daily Beast and across the Web
By clicking "Subscribe," you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

The Obama administration disagrees, and argues that since the records have already been submitted to a third party (Oregon’s PDMP) that patients no longer enjoy an expectation of privacy.

bold portion is my emphasis not in the article

[Volaris]

10. That's not unlike the argument this admin posed in the meta data fight...

'If you gave that info over to Google, then it isn't private anymore so we can have it'

Is bullshit. Google will use it to bombard me with ads for things I don't need to buy and that's about it; google isnt going to come and arrest me for not buying junk on the internet. There's no Adblocker for a wrongly-administered or Causeless federal investigation. I am happy to say that I voted for this President twice, but Obama and his pre-crime division can piss right the hell off.

[greiner3]

7. "...prescription data is covered by the Fourth Amendment’s protection;

" against unlawful search and seizure."

DUH

[jwirr]

8. This is the worst move the government has made in the so

called war on drugs since Billy Boy created the tough on crime bull.

By doing this they have effectively ended the idea of treatment for addiction in favor of more tough on crime. No one is going to enroll in a treatment program if they are going to be used to jail them.