Legal Aid Society of San Mateo CA Suffers Data Breach Including Health Info

On October 10, 2013, the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County, California sent out a letter notifying potential victims of a data breach suffered by the Society. As the letter states,

On the night of August 12, 2013, our office was burglarized and ten of our laptops were stolen. The stolen laptops were used by our attorneys to assist individuals in getting services. We believe that your personal information may have been stored on the stolen laptops. The personal information believed to be stored on the stolen laptops includes your name, Social Security number, date of birth, medical and health information.

What makes this data breach particularly noteworthy is that, although it occurred at a legal aid organization, the information stolen reportedly included health information. The notice does not discuss how and why health information might have been collected and stored by LASSMC; it may relate to the Society's health advocacy services.

Beyond the immediate impact on the LASSMC clients and others whose stolen personal information may be misused, this incident serves as a reminder that even non-medical professionals may hold, and must keep safe, health information. Even where the formal privacy and security requirements of HIPAA may not directly apply, organizations may still need to comply with HIPAA's Business Associates rules as well as general consumer protection obligations. Attorneys in particular should be aware not only of these requirements, but of their ethical obligations to keep client information confidential, which may further be relevant in a data breach situation.

The California Attorney General's list of reported data breaches may be found here; the LACSSMC letter and information is at this link.

Photocopier Hard Drives Cause Breach Yielding $1.2 Million HIPAA Settlement

On August 14, 2013, the Office of Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS OCR") announced a $1.2 million settlement with Affinity Health Plan for violations of the privacy and security rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA"). According to the HHS OCR press release, the violation arose when Affinity disposed of photocopiers with built-in hard drives which still contained images of patient records that had been photocopied on the devices:

Affinity filed a breach report with the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on April 15, 2010, as required by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, or HITECH Act. The HITECH Breach Notification Rule requires HIPAA-covered entities to notify HHS of a breach of unsecured protected health information. Affinity indicated that it was informed by a representative of CBS Evening News that, as part of an investigatory report, CBS had purchased a photocopier previously leased by Affinity. CBS informed Affinity that the copier that Affinity had used contained confidential medical information on the hard drive.

Afinity estimated that up to 344,579 individuals may have been affected by this breach. OCR’s investigation indicated that Affinity impermissibly disclosed the protected health information of these affected individuals when it returned multiple photocopiers to leasing agents without erasing the data contained on the copier hard drives. In addition, the investigation revealed that Affinity failed to incorporate the electronic protected health information (ePHI) stored on photocopier hard drives in its analysis of risks and vulnerabilities as required by the Security Rule, and failed to implement policies and procedures when returning the photocopiers to its leasing agents.

The Affinity resolution agreement may be downloaded here.

Beyond the substantial size and number of individuals' records involved in this case, it is notable that the breach in question was from a device not typically thought of as prone to privacy problems: a photocopier with an internal hard drive. Most users don't consider the built-in storage in printers and photocopiers, but these devices can and do retain previously printed and scanned information. The FTC and NIST offer useful information for organizations on improving security and privacy of digital printers and copiers.