Once again, a solitary citizen has acted on his conscience and taken an action that should inspire us all to step up and pitch in.

John Nirenberg, a 60 year old retired academic, a man who had never considered himself an activist, realized that he could no longer abide the general state of depression and shame that he felt as an American being “represented” by the Bush administration’s policies of torture, aggressive war and trampling on civil liberties.

Realizing that impeachment is the only way that this cabal can be stopped, and understanding that the Constitution requires impeachment in such times, Nirenberg has embarked on a walk from Boston to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office in Washington D.C., where he will tell the Speaker to put impeachment back on the table.

In fact, Pelosi has abused her office by thinking that she had the prerogative to take it off of the table in the first place. While she and her Democratic cohorts have proven themselves submissive and subservient to Bush/Cheney, whom they were elected to oppose, they have shown themselves remarkably cavalier about ignoring the Constitution, to which they took an oath of office to uphold and defend.

John decided to take this walk entirely on his own, with no organization or infrastructure supporting the journey or helping to publicize it. But within days, activists, citizens and organizations came on board and have helped him to connect with a network of Americans who will be joining him in their towns when he comes through.

And this is where you can help out. Go to John’s website www.marchinmyname.org and add your name to the thousands calling for impeachment that he hopes to dump on Pelosi’s desk when he arrives in early January. In addition to your name, John wants photos and testimonials that he can deliver – items that can’t be discarded with the touch of a delete button. You can mail them to PO Box 17, South Newfane VT 05351, and I will get them to him before he reaches D.C.

John is walking along U.S. highway 1 following the coast until he heads inland to D.C. Check out his itinerary and spread the word to anyone you know who lives along the east coast. If people can shake off some of their lethargy and hopelessness, we could make this into a major peoples’ march that our sniveling and cowardly politicians won’t be able to ignore.

Reactions posted on his website show that, although the vast majority of Americans who know about this are excited and appreciative, there are those who see him as a traitor and would like to see his project come to a bad end. We must mobilize ourselves to stand with John, and show him that those who have the courage to oppose illegal and immoral government will enjoy the support and assistance of the American people. Only if we pitch in and add our voices, will John be able to realize his goal of making a difference in changing the course of this failing democracy.

UPDATE: Based on confirmation from law enforcement sources, pharmacies that were approached by the State Police on Friday November 30th and from legal sources representing people affected by State Police conduct last Friday, GMD can add the following to the reporting that has occurred already.

Kudos to Dan Barlow who published a well-balanced and thorough article about Fishing Derby Friday. – odum

It’s always good to start with the constitution, this time from Amendment IV:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Yesterday, Green Mountain Daily scooped all the Vermont news outlets by publishing a story about state police collecting pharmacy records across the state.  You can find the original piece here.

A summary, after the jump

per Odum’s post from yesterday:

GMD has learned that State Police representatives are going to Vermont Pharmacies and demanding complete dumps of all information about patients with Schedule II prescriptions (the class of medications that include prescription drugs with street value). After talking to a few pharmacists, I found one in Franklin County that confirmed they had been approached, and had been advised by the state that they did, indeed need to comply with the request. Needless to say, he wasn’t too happy about it.

What’s even more disturbing? When I asked if he knew of any other pharmacies that were being mined for data in this way, he responded that it was his understanding that this was a process that was to take place across the state.

So here’s what we’ve found since:

1. it appears as though this is a broad-reaching sweep of medical records.  I.e., if you receive schedule II (restricted narcotic) medications and you also receive Prozac or Viagra or anything else that you thought was private, you were wrong;
2. there appears to be no mechanism in place to notify people when their records have been turned over to state police;
3. there appears to be no mechanism in place to warn people that their records may be turned over to state police.

This does not come without its irony.  As Doug Hoffer posted in the comments at GMD:

the state should NOT be carrying out warrantless searches. And pharmacists should not be required to participate. Indeed, this is happening at the same time the state is considering a suit against the phone companies for turning over records to Homeland Security.

We are definitely through the rabbit hole.

But it turns out there’s an interesting background to this story.  A few weeks ago, Vermont Public Radio produced a piece about violent crime and drug use.  Some choice quotes:

…Vermont police are also seeing enormous problems with illegal pharmaceuticals, especially oxycontin.

This comes at a time when Baker says all law enforcement agencies in the state are understaffed.

(Baker) “The local police departments are carrying around 60 vacancies. The state police are carrying somewhere around 20 vacancies. And some of that’s attributed to financial reasons. But in many cases it’s about recruiting and the inability to find qualified individuals.”

(Host) Baker says modern-day police candidates need computer and problem solving skills-skills that can earn them higher salaries in other industries.

Baker says the state has already started talking about long-term solutions to these problems. Meanwhile, he says police are working on short-term strategies to combat crime more effectively with the resources they have.

So here’s the burning question: is this one of their creative solutions?  Instead of targeting criminals, target everybody who has ever had contact with one of these medications?

I want to mention a couple quick items here about this before I close:

1. this is a great example of the power of blogs and web-based media.  We found the story.  We researched the story.  We got it out there.  As far as I can tell so far, no one else is reporting it, which means that asking the other Vermont media why they’re not covering it might be a good idea;
2. this diary is built almost entirely upon the work of people who are not me.   I’m posting it here to keep the story in the public view and to see if we can get broader coverage of it, but it is not my own research or work that discovered any of it.

As usual, we have choices here.  Pharmacies are, as far as we can tell, complying with the state police.  

As citizens, we do have the right to call our pharmacies and ask if our records have been released and to whom.

As citizens, we do have the right to sue pharmacies which release our records without valid medical purpose.

As citizens, we do have the right to speak out about this and publicize it whenever possible.  

Or, of course, we can just hope nothing bad happens.

Databases aren’t just places to collect information.  They’re places to lose information.  In 2006,  an employee at the Vermont State Colleges system lost a laptop containing social security numbers, payroll information and other data.  This isn’t just about the police collecting data.  It’s about an underfunded department securing it and keeping it out of the wrong hands.

So I’ll end with a few questions:

Who do you think controls this data and where do you think it will be stored?  

Do you think the state police have the resources to keep it all in house, or do you think they’ll end up privatizing the information?

Do you think that everyone who comes into contact with this information will keep all of it private?

UPDATED with link to the full report. 2:33 p.m. JMc.

Following up on yesterday’s report below; it may or may not be the case that Pharmacists are required by state law to provide the prescription records of all Schedule II medications to State Police as is being demanded of them.

The Pharmacist I spoke to contacted the Secretary of State’s office and was advised to comply, however that advise would seem to be in conflict with a report the state Department of Health submitted to the legislature this year specifically in reference to the law which gives police their authority to examine such records (18 VSA 4218). From the report:

“HIPAA contemplates that state laws may conflict with its terms and has been written to address those situations.  HIPAA, by its terms, preempts provisions of state law that are contrary to HIPAA, unless state law affords greater privacy protection.  When state law affords greater protection than HIPAA, the state law is not preempted and the covered entity must follow state law.

HIPAA regulations provide that a state statute is “contrary” to HIPAA if it is impossible for the covered entity to comply with both HIPAA and the state law or if the state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment of the full purposes and objectives of HIPAA.  45 C.F.R. § 160.202.  Applying this standard, conflicts between HIPAA and section 4218 of Title 18 must be resolved by the covered entity on a case-by-case basis.  The pharmacy, as a covered entity, must determine whether HIPAA permits the requested disclosure to DPS, and that determination will depend on the circumstances of the request for the protected health information.  As in the examples above, there are circumstances where complying both with HIPAA and section 4218 would not be impossible and the disclosure would be permitted.

In the event the pharmacist determines that HIPAA does not permit the disclosure, he/she is required by HIPAA to refuse disclosure.  Since HIPAA would preempt state law in this case, section 4218 of Title 18 would not control and the pharmacist would not be in violation of section 4218 for refusing to disclose.

For these reasons, VDH and DPS conclude that section 4218 is not contrary to HIPAA.  Correspondingly, since the pharmacies are bound by HIPAA and may disclose information only as permitted by HIPAA, any medical privacy concerns are addressed by HIPAA and no revision of section 4218 is necessary.”

HIPAA, again, is the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act – the federal law which sets down strict guidelines on the privacy of medical records.

This would seem to put pharmacists on the hot seat in a big way. They’ve got the State Police demanding they dump these records in an unprecedented (and unconstitutional) way, the Secretary of State’s office advising them they must comply – but the Department of Health telling the legislature it’s really up to the Pharmacist to make a judgment call on whether or not the request violates HIPAA, as the State law is not supposed to supersede the federal regime.

If I were a pharmacist, I’d be pissed off. Obviously, if I were a patient, I’d be pissed off.

Another fiasco brought to us by Vermont’s executive branch…