#read the info and privacy policy for the app and concluded that they ask for a lot of permissions and use a lot of data

[nerdnag]

jfc i am so tired of always having to assume that there's an undisclosed, required app involved whenever i buy something these days

[badthingstrumpdidtoday]

A Summary of Bad Things Trump Did This Week, 3/26/17-4/1/17

March 26, 2017:

Trump photographed at gold course despite claims of being in meetings

Source: indy100

This trip, the 12th for Trump since he was inaugurated 9 weeks ago, came after the press pool was reportedly told Trump was in meetings at Trump National. The White House hasn’t yet commented on this trip, which carries a hefty price tag:

The White House has made no comment regarding the trip, which, according to NBC News was the US leader’s eighth consecutive visit to a Trump-owned property.

According to Politico each of these trips costs approximately $3 million (£2.4 million).

Trump’s team reportedly wiping electronic devices of evidence in the face of potential subpoenas

Source: The Independent

Members of Trump’s team and other White House officials may be cleansing devices of data and evidence that could be used in the ongoing Russian investigation. This investigation into possible collusion between Russian operatives and the Trump administration could bring on severe consequences for the president:

John Schindler, a security expert and former counterintelligence officer, said that if the US President was to face an indictment over allegations his campaign team colluded with Russia to disrupt the presidential election, it could put an end to his presidency.

Speaking to CBC radio, Mr Schindler said: "If, not just people around him, but the president himself is facing possible indictment down the road, that could be a game changer. He could be removed from office for that, whether he wants to be or not."

Bannon told Freedom Party members that they needed to vote for the proposed healthcare bill; that it wasn’t up for debate

Source: The Hill

Bannon confronted members of the House Freedom Caucus earlier this week during the White House's push for the American Health Care Act, Axios's Mike Allen reported Saturday in his newsletter.

"Guys, look. This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill,” Bannon reportedly said.

March 27, 2017:

Trump approves overturning Obama-era education regulations

Source: The Washington Post

Bills signed by Trump Monday undo regulations that included new requirements for training K-12 teachers and rules illustrating how individual states need to carry out the Every Student Succeeds act. While the Every Student Succeeds act is a bipartisan law, support and opposition for the bills Trump signed was split largely across party lines:

Leaders of the Republican majority claimed that the accountability rules represented an executive overreach by former president Barack Obama. Democrats argued that rescinding the rules opens loopholes that states can use to shield poorly performing schools from scrutiny, especially when they fail to serve poor children, minorities, English-language learners and students with disabilities.

Jared Kushner to be questioned by Senate committee regarding meeting with Russians

Source: The New York Times

Reports that Kushner will be questioned as part of the Senate’s investigations into election interference by Russia comes after news surfaced of a previously undisclosed meeting Kushner had with the chief of Vnesheconombank. Vnesheconombank was sanctioned after the Russian annexation of Crimea, and is linked to Russian oligarchs and members of government:

Mr. Gorkov is a graduate of the academy of Federal Security Service of Russia, a training ground for Russian intelligence and security forces. And as the head of Vnesheconombank, Mr. Gorkov presides over a bank whose supervisory board is controlled by members of Mr. Putin’s government, including Prime Minister Dimitri A. Medvedev. It has been used to bail out oligarchs favored by Mr. Putin, as well as to help fund pet projects like the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Around the time the Russian ambassador asked that Mr. Kushner meet with Mr. Gorkov, American intelligence agencies were concluding that Russian spies, acting on the orders of Mr. Putin, had sought to sway the election by hacking political targets, like the Democratic National Committee, and passing stolen emails to WikiLeaks.

Trump administration threatens sanctuary cities with removal of Justice Department grants

Source: Bloomberg Politics

The attorney general spoke at the beginning of the daily White House briefing, as Trump tries to reset his administration following the defeat of major health-care legislation on March 24. Sessions reiterated a policy announced in an executive order Trump signed in his first week in office. That document authorized the attorney general and secretary of Homeland Security to withhold federal grants from sanctuary cities that don’t help the U.S. government deport immigrants.

Sessions said the federal government also could "claw back" grants to jurisdictions refusing to work with the federal government, in addition to refusing to approve new grants.

Mayors of several leading sanctuary cities said they wouldn’t capitulate to Trump.

March 28, 2017:

Trump signs executive order striking down Obama-era policies on climate change

Source: The New York Times, The Independent

Along with unraveling numerous policies from the Obama administration to fight climate change, Trump directed the EPA to begin withdrawing the Clean Power Plan. This Plan would have closed down a number of coal-fired power plants and replaced them with solar and wind farms. The Clean Power Plan was a vital part of the United States’ commitment to meeting the clean energy goals set out in the Paris agreement of 2015:

With his order to move forward with the rollback, climate diplomats around the world maneuvered to fill the vacuum left by the exit of the globe’s second-biggest climate polluter.

“There are countless countries ready to step up and deliver on their climate promises and take advantages of Mr. Trump’s short-termism to reap the benefits of the transition to the low-carbon economy,” said Laurence Tubiana, the chief French negotiator of the 2015 Paris agreement, the landmark accord that committed nearly every country to take action to reduce planet-warming emissions.

Over all, the goal of the Paris deal is to keep the planet from warming more than 3.6 degrees, the point at which scientists say the earth will be irrevocably locked into a future of severe droughts, floods, rising sea levels and food shortages.

Mr. Obama pledged that the United States would cut its emissions about 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. Carrying out the Clean Power Plan was essential to meeting that target.

An article in The Independent also covers this executive order HERE, along with the responses from many groups and individuals committed to fighting climate change:

Green group Earthjustice was one of many organizations that said it will fight the order both in and out of court. “This order ignores the law and scientific reality,” said its president, Trip Van Noppen.

Given that private sector investment in the renewable energy industry hit $350 billion in 2016 globally, outpacing new investment in the oil and gas sector for the first time, Ms Kelly said she expects the “marketplace is going to go forward regardless of what the White House does.”

Several of the country’s largest pension funds, accounting for tens of billions in investment, have already begun divesting money from oil and gas companies in order to ensure a more profitable future for their investors.

Congress votes to overturn Obama-era rules requiring internet providers to get customer permission before selling their browsing data

Source: The Verge

This resolution is now on it’s way to the President’s desk. If Trump signs it, internet providers will be allowed to sell personal data on users without their permission:

It’s hard to see this as anything but a major loss for consumers. While reversing the FCC’s privacy rules will technically just maintain the status quo — internet providers have actually been able to sell your web browsing data forever (it’s just not a thing we think about all that much) — they were about to lose permission to keep doing it, unless they got explicit consent or anonymized the info.

This is an increasingly important issue as Americans spend more and more time online — and keep more and more devices with them at all times. Internet providers can see what sites you visit and what apps you use, and they can see how long you’re using them for. That information is extremely revealing, and it’s easy to imagine most people would prefer to keep their reading habits private.

“The consequences of passing this resolution are clear: broadband providers like AT&T, Comcast, and others will be able to sell your personal information to the highest bidder without your permission,” said Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA) on the House floor this afternoon. “And no one will be able to protect you, not even the Federal Trade Commission that our friends on the other side of the aisle keep talking about.”

Trump administration will not include LGBTQ people on the 2020 census

Source: Out Magazine

This decision has large implications on the stance the government is taking on the LGBTQ population. Inclusion on the census would help gather data on people of different sexual orientations and gender identities in the United States, which could then aid in the creation of legislation to improve the lives of LGBTQ people in America:

Last year, various federal agencies urged the Census Bureau to include sexual orientation and gender in their data as it was crucial to their role in enforcing the law. The survey, which has been conducted every ten years since 1790, includes a wide range of questions designed to gather data on everything from languages spoken to household plumbing facilities. The current census, however, only allows for a snapshot of same-sex households, but Democrats in Congress had pushed for more specific questions around sexual orientation and gender identity to improve results. The logic was simple: With more focused questions law makers would be better equipped to ensure appropriate legislation to improve the lives of LGBTQ citizens.

Trump proposes additional cuts to the National Institution of Health

Source: NBC News

These cuts would affect many federal programs, including those that support medical research, and would take away $1.2 billion in funding. This article also contains a list of health and science programs across various government agencies that would also see budget cuts.

March 29, 2017:

Trump calls for domestic budget cuts in order to pay for border wall

Source: ABC7

Trump has proposed cuts of $18 billion dollars from U.S. programs in order to pay for the border wall. This undermines his previous claims that Mexico would pay for the wall construction - with these cuts in funding, U.S. taxpayers would be footing the bill. ABC7 provides coverage of some of the proposed cuts, which would include some popular, bipartisan programs:

The latest Trump proposal, disclosed Tuesday, would eliminate $1.2 billion in National Institutes of Health research grants, a favorite of both parties. The community development block grant program, also popular, would be halved, amounting to a cut of $1.5 billion, and Trump would strip $500 million from a popular grant program for transportation projects. Some of that money would help pay for parts of the wall.

[...]

Other cuts include $434 million to immediately eliminate a program to encourage community service opportunities for senior citizens, eliminating $372 million in remaining funding for heating subsidies for the poor, and cutting $447 million in transit grants.

March 30, 2017:

Reports surfacing that Russia hired 1,000 people to generate fake news on Hillary Clinton in key states during Presidential election

Source: The Independent

Senators Mark Warner and Richard Burr, a Democrat and Republican respectively on the Senate committee investigating claims of Russian election interference, presented this information at a recent press conference:

[Sen. Warner:] “It’s been reported to me, and we’ve got to find this out, whether they were able to affect specific areas in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, where you would not have been receiving off of whoever your vendor might have been, Trump versus Clinton, during the waning days of the election, but instead, ‘Clinton is sick’, or ‘Clinton is taking money from whoever for some source’ … fake news.

“An outside foreign adversary effectively sought to hi-jack the most critical democratic process, the election of a President, and in that process, decided to favour one candidate over another.”

The key states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania which Mr Warner named all fell narrowly - and unexpectedly - to Donald Trump.

Trump threatens to change libel laws, go after The New York Times

Source: The Hill

Image Source: Donald Trump’s Twitter account

Trump previously mentioned changing libel laws during the campaign. He vowed in February 2016 to “open up” laws in order to sue media outlets that write “purposely negative” and “horrible” articles about him.

“I’m gonna open up our libel laws, so when they write purposely negative and horrible, false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money,” Trump said at a rally in Fort Worth, Texas.

“We’re going to open up those libels laws, so that when The New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money.

[...]

Despite Trump's threats, there are no federal libel laws on the books. Suits are decided at the state level under current law.

Trump reportedly feels “great” about Mar-a-Lago visits, despite resistance he’s facing over cost of the trips

Source: The Independent

Despite claims he made on the campaign trail that he would rarely be leaving the White House as president, Trump has spent numerous weekends over the past months at Mar-a-Lago. In addition to security concerns, including that sensitive information could be accessed or overheard by other Mar-a-Lago guests, the trips add up to a hefty bill:

The projected cost of security for Mr Trump’s visits over a four year presidential term was reported to be an estimated to be $600 million. This is just over the amount his administration plans on cutting for social, education and cultural programmes.

March 31, 2017:

Sessions admits crime is close to a historic low amid criticism from community activists

Source: The Guardian

Sessions spoke mainly to law enforcement during a visit to St. Louis, MO where he acknowledged that crime rates have been falling. His statements, which only briefly touched on the subject of crime prevention programs, raised eyebrows of community activists:

“One outreach worker can do more to reduce crime in a neighborhood than five police officers can,” said James Clark, vice-president of community outreach for the St Louis not-for-profit group Better Family Life.

“If we continue to lay the issue of crime and violence at the feet of the police department, then that’s a very short-sighted, not well thought-out approach.”

The St Louis city alderman Jeffrey Boyd added: “Let’s remind ourselves of when Ronald Reagan came into office and there was this war on drugs campaign, and then Bill Clinton came in with ‘three strikes you’re out’. It didn’t help the African American community or the poor community. It ended up being a disaster generations later,” Boyd said, noting the disproportionate impact that mass incarceration has had on the black community.

Boyd lost three male relatives to gun violence in 2015 alone and represents the area of the city the Guardian identified in January as the most violent neighborhood in the nation.

April 1, 2017:

Trump tells NBC to stop talking about Russia, start talking about wiretapping allegations

Source: The Hill

Image Sources: Donald Trump’s Twitter page

The president has frequently decried coverage of the investigations into Russian meddling as "fake news."

Trump last month claimed in a series of tweets that Obama “wiretapped” him before the election. He did not supply any evidence.

FBI Director James Comey says he knows of “no information” validating Trump’s accusation. Trump has stood by the allegations, and the White House has said the comment refers to the Obama administration’s surveillance activities more broadly.

Want to learn more about how we can stop more bad sh*t from happening?

Donate to charities dedicated to fighting against the Trump agenda.

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Attend peaceful political protests and know your rights as a protestor.

Support organizations dedicated to investigative journalism and protecting our First Amendment rights.

Be sure to follow for more Bad Things Trump Did Today.

[maxihealth]

Most Virtual Care Consumers, Satisfied With Visits in the COVID Era, Expect It for Future Care

Within days of the coronavirus pandemic emerging in the U.S., health care providers set up virtual care arrangements to convene with patients. Three months into the COVID-19 crisis, how have patients felt about these telehealth visits?

In Patient Perspectives on Virtual Care, Kyruus answers this question based on an online survey of 1,000 patients 18 years of age and older, conducted in May 2020. Each of these health consumers had at least one virtual care visit between February and May 2020.

The key findings were that:

Engaging in a virtual visit was a new-new thing for 72% of people

Patients’ experiences with virtual care were generally positive, with over 75% of consumers reporting being very or completely satisfied

3 in 4 consumers expect virtual care as an option for their own health care, believing that providers should scale telehealth as part of an overall portfolio of visit types in the future.

The top reasons health consumers sought virtual care were for wellness check-ins and routine check-ups, among 41% of virtual care consumers. This reason for seeking telehealth was particularly popular among Baby Boomers, 45% of whom south virtual care for a wellness visit or check-up. More Boomers were likely to seek virtual care across all categories surveyed except for mental/behavioral health, most commonly sought by Millennials at a rate of two-to-one compared with the general adult population (41% versus 21% overall).

Thirty percent of people sough virtual care for dealing with a chronic condition (e.g., COPD, diabetes, hypertension), 24% for an acute need like pain, and 21% for mental/behavioral health needs.

14% of consumers sought virtual care to address COVID-19 symptoms such as cough, fever, or shortness of breath.

Over one-half of consumers learned about virtual care options through an online search like Google or Bing (“Calling Dr. Google!”), and another one-third through a patient portal, hospital system, or urgent care website. One-quarter of people found virtual care info via an insurance company site or third-party channel like ZocDoc.

To arrange care, most patients did so through their health care providers: 58% overall, and 73% Boomers. Younger people were more likely to use other sources to organize virtual care. Regardless of channel to organize care, the vast majority of people found doing so easy to organize. Only 4% four it “somewhat difficult.”

Most consumers of virtual care also found their insurance covered or would cover all of the cost: 56% among commercial payors and 68% of public payors said their visit was totally covered. 32% of people covered by commercial insurance found the plan to cover “some” of the cost, compared with 18% of those on a public plan.

Most consumers of virtual care in the first months of the pandemic were satisfied with their visits, including 77% of Boomers, 69% of Millennials, and 89% of Gen Xers. Key satisfaction drivers have been convenience, safety of having care at home, and speed of access. As a sign of satisfaction, 70% of consumers would be likely (very or extremely) to recommend virtual care to friends or colleagues.

Among satisfaction deflectors were perceived quality of care, an impersonal experience, and technical issues.

Regarding technology, it’s interesting to look at Figure 8 from the report, showing that only 34% of consumers in the study accessed healthcare specific apps for their virtual care visit such as Amwell and Teladoc, both of which fast-scaled by early March. Commercial conferencing platforms like Zoom (23%), Facetime (17%), and Skype (9%) were also stood up by clinicians touching base with patients for telehealth encounters.

Going forward, based on overall satisfaction with their virtual visit during the pandemic, most consumers expect virtual care in their personal portfolio of health care service options.

Most people who had had a virtual visit during the early pandemic era would welcome telehealth across a range of medical needs, from wellness and routine check-ups to caring for a chronic condition and following up a surgical procedure.

One-half of consumers would also be very or extremely likely to use mental and behavioral health services via virtual platforms in the future.

Kyruus concludes the survey report noting the opportunity to improve care coordination and drive patient retention by “closing the loop” through building processes that keep patients in the medical family — that is, the health system’s provider network.

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  The Kyruus study spoke to the “demand side” of telehealth — the patient’s point of view. What about physicians? Are they as enthusiastic about supplying virtual care to their patients once COVID cools and physicians get back to some sort of “normal?”

A new study from Sage Growth Partners and Black Book Research demonstrates some ambivalence among physicians — especially among medical and surgical doctors. The most bullish clinicians about providing telehealth visits as an on-going alternative to in-office visits are behavioral/mental health providers and primary care physicians, 93% and 62% of whom expect to provide more telehealth to patients. Note that the survey question SGP asked assumed physicians would be ‘fairly reimbursed,’ so payment was taken out of this question as a potential barrier to providing virtual care.

Earlier in the SGP report, physicians listed key problems with telehealth, which included privacy (explaining policies to patients), cybersecurity risks, lack of data for care continuity, patient literacy with digital technology, and to be sure, reimbursement and payment parity, among other challenges.

The bullish forecasts we now read in analysts’ reports must be tempered with the doctors’ and other providers’ points-of-view. Virtual care has indeed been a boon and gift in the COVID-19 pandemic to scale care and provide access to patients in their quarantine and risk-management journeys. Physicians, too, benefited from some work-flow and encounters to help financial buoy medical practices and serve up care to their patients. But privacy, security, pricing, and regulatory challenges must be ironed out if telehealth is to scale everywhere it needs to be to benefit U.S. health citizens and their providers.

The post Most Virtual Care Consumers, Satisfied With Visits in the COVID Era, Expect It for Future Care appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

Most Virtual Care Consumers, Satisfied With Visits in the COVID Era, Expect It for Future Care posted first on https://carilloncitydental.blogspot.com

[goarticletec-blog]

British Parliament seizes Facebook docs that American court had sealed

New Post has been published on https://www.articletec.com/british-parliament-seizes-facebook-docs-that-american-court-had-sealed-2/

British Parliament seizes Facebook docs that American court had sealed

British Parliament has seized a cache of documents that Facebook has spent months fighting in a California court to keep sealed, the latest effort by the U.K. to force the social media company to answer questions over privacy and the spread of “fake news.” The documents are part of a lawsuit in which a small app developer is suing Facebook.

The app developer, Six4Three, and media outlets have long sought to make the documents public. A San Mateo, California Superior Court judge has ruled the documents sealed. Now a Parliament committee has them, and will decide soon what to do with them. 

The founder of Six4Three, Ted Kramer, was in London last week when Parliament asked for the documents in a letter from Damian Collins, Chair of Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. 

“We are requesting these documents because we believe that they contain information that is highly relevant to our ongoing investigation into disinformation and fake news,” read the letter. “In particular, we are interested to know whether they can provide further insights to the committee about what senior executives at Facebook knew about concerns relating to Facebook users’ data privacy, and developers’ access to user data.”

Collins said in an email to CBS News that Kramer didn’t comply with Parliament’s request at first.

“We did not threaten him with fines or imprisonment but reminded that failure to comply could lead to him being investigated for being in contempt of parliament,” Collins wrote. “I have reviewed the documents and the committee will make a statement next week on how we intend to proceed,” Collins said.

In a tweet Sunday, Collins noted that his committee has the right to publish the documents.

The @CommonsCMS has received the documents it ordered from Six4Three relating to Facebook. I have reviewed them and the committee will discuss how we will proceed early next week. Under UK law & parliamentary privilege we can publish papers if we choose to as part of our inquiry

— Damian Collins (@DamianCollins) November 25, 2018

The Observer newspaper in London first reported on the document seizure Saturday. It is not clear what the documents show. 

Before suing Facebook, Six4Three created an app called Pinkini, which allowed Facebook users to search their friends’ photos for them wearing bikinis. The company sued Facebook after the social media site changed its policies in 2015, effectively eliminating the Pinkini app’s access to data it needed to operate.

In the lawsuit, Six4Three claims Facebook threatened to shut down data access to companies unless they complied with tough demands. Among them: That they purchase “advertising services from Facebook” or that a developer feed “all of its data back to Facebook.”

A Facebook spokesperson called the lawsuit “entirely meritless” when asked to comment on Parliament’s decision to seize the documents. 

“Facebook has never traded Facebook data for anything and we’ve always made clear that developer access is subject to both our policies and what info people choose to share. We operate in a fiercely competitive market in which people connect and share,” the Facebook spokesperson wrote. “For every service offered on Facebook and our family of apps, you can find at least three or four competing services with hundreds of millions, if not billions, of users.”

On Tuesday, Collins will lead an unprecedented “international grand committee” of lawmakers from seven countries investigating Facebook and the spread of “fake news.” 

The group, which includes representatives from the U.K., Canada, Ireland, Argentina, Brazil, Latvia and Singapore will question Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president of policy solutions, before signing a set of “International Principles for the Law Governing the Internet.”

The lawmakers have repeatedly tried to get testimony from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has steadfastly refused to appear before Parliament. Facebook has pointed to Zuckerberg’s appearances before Congress and the European Union Parliament, arguing that he can’t visit every legislature investigating Facebook.

Allan noted in a letter to Collins Sunday that Six4Three is challenging Facebook’s efforts to restrict access to user data. Facebook provided his letter to CBS News.

“We have faced extensive criticism over the last few months for the fact that the app ThisIsYourDigitalLife, which your committee has looked at extensively, was able to access data shared with an installer of the app by their friends. We explained that we moved to restrict such access to friend data when we updated the API used by 3rd party developers over the period 2014 to 2015,” Allan wrote. “This change was a significant one affecting thousands of applications and was communicated to them clearly and in advance. On earlier occasions, your Committee appeared to endorse this more restrictive approach. If this has now changed, it would be useful to understand why.”

Allan said in the letter that while he expects to be questioned about Six4Three files during the “grand committee” hearing Tuesday, he is “also mindful that this matter is sub judice before a court in California,” meaning that it is under judicial consideration.

Collins responded to Allan’s letter in an email, which was also provided to CBS News.

“As you know, we have asked many questions of Facebook about its policies on sharing user data with developers, how these have been enforced, and how the company identifies activity by bad actors. We believe that the documents we have ordered from Six4Three could contain important information about this which is of a high level of public interest,” Collins wrote. “We are also interested to know whether the policies of Facebook, as expressed within these documents, are consistent with the public statements the company has made on the same issues.”

The seizure of documents and “grand committee” hearing comes just weeks after a Nov. 5 report in which Britain’s Information Commissioner concluded “Facebook… failed to keep [users’] personal information secure because it failed to make suitable checks on apps and developers using its platform.”

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