Backers of a bill that would allow police access to the Vermont Prescription Monitoring System have pulled in their horns, at least a bit. The bill had attracted a fair bit of skepticism among lawmakers, active opposition from the Vermont ACLU among others, and a bit of derision in these quarters. As you may recall, the bill would have opened police access to the state’s prescription drug database, which was designed only a few years ago for purely medical purposes — to manage patient treatment, not to give the cops access to a whole lot of confidential information.
All the skepticism, opposition and derision has apparently had an effect. Vermont Digger reports that a compromise measure will come before the Senate Judiciary Committee, that would significantly weaken the bill’s original intent. It also includes a tasty bit of bait for liberal Senators: a rider that would decriminalize possession of an ounce or less of marijuana. (I foresee a spike in the kitchen-scale market.)
Committee chair Dick Sears is shepherding the compromise, which goes something like this:
With the compromise, police would be able to access the name, age and address of a patient who they believe may be diverting prescription drugs for illegal use. Police could also receive access to the name and address of the pharmacy and doctors where the patient accessed certain scheduled drugs – generally opiates.
Using this information, the officers could then go to the actual pharmacies and ask for prescription information under a law that was passed in 1968.
The investigation would have to start from a tip from a health care provider.
While I’m encouraged that public pressure has so quickly wrought such a major change in a dubious bill, I’m also a bit confused.
From this description, I don’t see how the bill is meaningfully better for police than current law. Any access of the database would have to be aimed at a specific patient, and arise out of a tip from a provider. The only information they can get from VPMS is a patient’s name, age and address — and they can more easily get that from the tipster. They do get one shortcut: VPMS would give them a list of all the pharmacies patronized by the patient. That does save a little time and shoe leather; instead of going to all pharmacies in a given area, they’d know which ones to visit. But they’d still have to visit the pharmacies to get the prescription information. .
In short, the cops would get precious little actual information out of the database itself. Which makes me wonder if the real purpose of this bill is to get a foot in the conceptual door of police access to VPMS. Once the foot’s in the door, further leverage can be applied in a future Legislative session.
I have no evidence that this is the case. But the bill, on its own, seems like a fairly minor change. It’s certainly a far cry from the original bill. But I remain suspicious.
skills are right up there. Getting the foot in the door would be my guess also. Personally I don’t want it & there are other ways to codify as well as ID systems & clients to end script-shopping. I would like to see the ‘ridah’ pass though, cab fare ain’t cheap.
a scenario where the cops have someone under investigation for other suspected crimes but not tipped & then also check out the database to see if said individual also has scrips. A GPS AVL can be placed on their rig as the investigation proceeds.
Keep the cops out of medical information without a warrant! They can have access — all they have to do is get a damn warrant, you know, obey the constitution they are sworn to uphold!
The “compromise” compromises your rights and mine to be free of unreasonable search and seizure. The restrictions in this so-called compromise amount to no more than a nod and a wink.
Clearly the intent is to codify the principle of the cops’ ‘right’ to intrude on medical databases without even the fig leaf of a warrant.
GET A WARRANT!
NanuqFC
In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson
Just so everyone’s clear: Joe Benning and I were promised that our MJ decriminalization language would go on another bill — Senator Sears has now made the decision to put a very similar amendment on this one. But Joe and I are very, very much against this bill, and we won’t let our decrim language be used as bait — not successfully, anyway. So we plan to vote against this one, convince others to vote against it, and try our best to attach decrim to another bill entirely. Will that work? Who knows. But at least we won’t burn in the everlasting fires for encouraging this particular privacy-invading mess.
The ACLU-Vermont remains opposed to the “compromise” proposal to be offered by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding police access to information in the state’s prescription drug database. We have outlined our objections in a memo to all Senate members; the memo can be found at http://tinyurl.com/78n6446
Allowing police to access personal medical information without a warrant is a significant departure from standard legal protections. It raises significant questions about privacy safeguards in the digital age.
Indeed, this issue goes far beyond police access to prescription drug records. It goes to the much broader question of who should have access to our personal information in digital databases, and under what conditions.
Increasingly, details of our private lives are being collected in massive databases operated by government or private companies. Information in these “third-party databases” deserves the Fourth Amendment protection of the warrant requirement. Without such a requirement, our privacy is compromised.
The Fourth Amendment has worked for more than 200 years to protect individual privacy rights. It should not be dismissed lightly.
Allen Gilbert, executive director, ACLU-VT
P.S. It’s unclear when H. 745 and the Senate Judiciary amendment will come to the Senate floor. It’s on the Friday calendar, but as of 11:30 a.m. it hadn’t been taken up.
I’ve heard the Senate will take up H. 745 and the warrantless access amendment on Monday.
(Normally the legislature doesn’t meet on Mondays, but towards the end of the session, Monday sessions are used to catch up when the schedule gets heavy.)