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

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