Calling Mr. Orwell. Canada, as we know, has nationalized healthcare. Are they sharing the private medical information of their citizens with our DHS? Or have they decided nothing is “private” if the fed controls it? And if Canada is sharing their citizens’ health records with us, will the Fed be sharing our health records with everyone else? Besides the outrage to this one woman, this is a harbinger of what we can expect if ObamaCare isn’t killed ASAP. Once your medical information is in the government’s filthy hands, they’ll do whatever they want with it. There will be no privacy regarding any aspect of your life. None.
Ellen Richardson went to Pearson airport on Monday full of joy about flying to New York City and from there going on a 10-day Caribbean cruise for which she’d paid about $6,000.
But a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent with the Department of Homeland Security killed that dream when he denied her entry.
“I was turned away, I was told, because I had a hospitalization in the summer of 2012 for clinical depression,’’ said Richardson, who is a paraplegic and set up her cruise in collaboration with a March of Dimes group of about 12 others.
The Weston woman was told by the U.S. agent she would have to get “medical clearance’’ and be examined by one of only three doctors in Toronto whose assessments are accepted by Homeland Security. She was given their names and told a call to her psychiatrist “would not suffice.’’
At the time, Richardson said, she was so shocked and devastated by what was going on, she wasn’t thinking about how U.S. authorities could access her supposedly private medical information.
The agent gave her a signed document which stated that “system checks’’ had found she “had a medical episode in June 2012’’ and that because of the “mental illness episode’’ she would need a medical evaluation before being accepted.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection media spokeswoman Jenny Burke said that due to privacy laws, “the department is prohibited from discussing specific cases.’’
MP Mike Sullivan said what has happened to his constituent is “enormously troubling. . . . How did U.S. agents get her personal medical information?’’
He said he will be getting in touch with federal privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart “and demanding to know how this happened. We’re very concerned if Canadians’ personal medical information is being communicated to U.S. authorities.’’
Besides deep-sixing Ocare, need a law for when this type of thing happens that says an individual can request and receive their private records within 60 days for them to determine what information can be released. Privacy law is too often used against those it’s purported to protect, while nothing happens to the gov’t employee who releases thousands of names/addresses/SS nos.
It may not be that her medical records were accessed, but an alternative explanation is no less chilling. She has a blog wherein she speaks of her mental problems and attempted suicide.
http://ellenrichardson.ca/bio/index.html
It is no longer a secret that the U.S. government is sucking data from the internet, no doubt searching key words like suicide. I don’t think all the details reportedly known by the agent are on the website. I guess that still leaves the question of where that came from. Attempted suicides in Canada do generate a police record.
I think Americans are in a state of disbelief about the surveillance state our country has become. No government, even if initially well-intentioned, can resist the temptation of tyranny once the means are at hand. We are at the edge of the abyss.
Good point, Pat S. And yet, you can be a Muslim Brotherhood member advocating Jihad Death to Everyone Else, and that doesn’t seem to be a prohibition against entering the U.S. Maybe you’ll even get invited to the WH. One additional aspect of surreptitious surveillance is, what isn’t being surveyed for.
And who knows how many mentally ill people are crossing the border illegally. Government doesn’t care about that.
People with contagious diseases cross the border, legally and illegally, all the time. This is outrageous.
It also sounds like Ellen is a Christian. Could she have been targeted, or am I just being paranoid.