Kaiser agrees to $49-million settlement for illegal disposal of hazardous waste, protected patient information

Gabriel San Roman

Los Angeles Times

Originally posted 9 September 23

Here are two excepts:

“The illegal disposal of hazardous and medical waste puts the environment, workers and the public at risk,” Bonta said. “It also violates numerous federal and state laws. As a healthcare provider, Kaiser should know that it has specific legal obligations to properly dispose of medical waste and safeguard patients’ medical information.”

The state attorney general partnered with six district attorney offices — including Alameda, San Bernardino, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Mateo and Yolo counties — in the undercover probe of 16 Kaiser facilities statewide that first began in 2015.

Investigators found hundreds of hazardous and medical waste items such as syringes, tubing with body fluid and aerosol cans destined for public landfills. The inspections also uncovered more than 10,000 pages of confidential patient files.

During a news conference on Friday, Bonta said that investigators also found body parts in the public waste stream but did not elaborate.

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As part of the settlement agreement, the healthcare provider must retain an independent third-party auditor approved by the state and local law enforcement involved in the investigation.

Kaiser faces a $1.75-million penalty if adequate steps are not taken within a five-year period.

“As a major corporation in Alameda County, Kaiser Permanente has a special obligation to treat its communities with the same bedside manner as its patients,” said Alameda County Dist. Atty. Pamela Price. “Dumping medical waste and private information are wrong, which they have acknowledged. This action will hold them accountable in such a way that we hope means it doesn’t happen again.”

The info is here.

Twitter Exec Defends Restoring Account That Shared Child Sex Abuse Material

Matt Novak

Forbes Magazine

Originally published 9 AUG 23

Executives at X, the company formerly known as Twitter, testified in front of an Australian Parliament hearing late Wednesday, and defended the restoration of an X account after it shared child sexual abuse material in late July. The incident attracted widespread attention because X owner Elon Musk personally intervened to reinstate the account after a violation that would normally result in a permanent ban from the social media platform.

Nick Pickles, the head of global government affairs at X, was asked about the incident by an Australian senator late Wednesday ET, early Thursday Australian local time, after Pickles first suggested there was a zero tolerance policy for child sex abuse material before seeming to contradict himself. Pickles said the offending account in question may have been sharing the content “out of outrage.”

“One of the challenges we see is, for example, people sharing this content out of outrage because they want to raise awareness of an issue and see something in the media,” Pickles testified, according to an audio livestream.

“So if there are circumstances where someone shares content but, under review, we decide the appropriate remediation is to remove the content but not the user,” Pickles continued.

There’s nothing in the X terms of service that says it’s okay to share child sexual abuse material if a user is doing it because they’re outraged over the images or looking to “raise awareness.” It’s generally understood that sharing child sex abuse materials, regardless of intent, is not only a federal crime in the U.S. and Australia, but re-victimizes the child.

The information is here.

The article highlights how this decision contradicts ethical principles and moral standards, as sharing such harmful content not only violates the law but also goes against the norms of safeguarding vulnerable individuals, especially children, from harm. Twitter's move to restore the account in question raises concerns about their commitment to combatting online exploitation and maintaining a safe platform for users.

By reinstating an account associated with child sexual abuse material, Twitter appears to have disregarded the severity of the content and its implications. This decision not only undermines trust in the platform but also reflects poorly on the company's dedication to maintaining a responsible and accountable online environment. Critics argue that Twitter's actions in this case highlight a lack of proper content moderation and an insufficient understanding of the gravity of such unethical behavior.

The article sheds light on the potential consequences of platforms not taking immediate and decisive action against users who engage in illegal and immoral activities. This situation serves as a reminder of the broader challenges social media platforms face in balancing issues of free expression with the responsibility to prevent harm and protect users, particularly those who are most vulnerable.

This article points out the company's total and complete failure to uphold ethical and moral standards.

Clarence Thomas Has Reportedly Been Accepting Gifts From Republican Megadonor Harlan Crow For Decades—And Never Disclosed It

Alison Durkee

Forbes.com

Originally posted 6 APR 23

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been accepting trips from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow for more than 20 years without disclosing them as required, ProPublica reports—including trips on private jets and yachts that could run afoul of the law—the latest in a series of ethical scandals the conservative justice has faced amid calls for justices to follow an ethics code.

Key Facts

• Thomas has repeatedly used Crow’s private jet for travel and vacationed with him including on his superyacht and at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks, where guests stay for free, ProPublica reports, citing flight records, internal documents and interviews with Crow’s employees.

• The justice has stayed at Crow’s resort “every summer for more than two decades,” according to ProPublica, and reportedly makes “regular use” of Crow’s private jet, including as recently as last year and for as short as a three-hour trip from Washington, D.C., to Connecticut in 2016.

• While Supreme Court justices are not bound to the same code of ethics as lower federal court judges are, they do submit financial disclosures and are subject to laws that require disclosing gifts that are more than $415 in value, including any transportation that substitutes for commercial transport

• Experts cited by ProPublica believe Thomas may have violated federal disclosure laws by not disclosing his yacht and jet travel, and that the stays at Crow’s resort may also have required disclosure because the resort is owned by Crow’s company rather than him personally.

• Thomas’ stays at Crows’ resort also raise ethics concerns given the other guests Crow—a real estate magnate and Republican megadonor—has invited to the resort and on his yacht at the same time, which ProPublica reports include GOP donors, ​​executives at Verizon and PricewaterhouseCoopers, leaders from right-wing think tank American Enterprise Institute, Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo and Mark Paoletta, the general counsel for the Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget who now serves as Thomas’ wife’s attorney.

The info is here.

Ernst & Young to Pay $100 Million Penalty for Employees Cheating on CPA Ethics Exams and Misleading Investigation

Largest Penalty Ever Imposed by SEC Against an Audit Firm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2022-114

Washington D.C., June 28, 2022 —

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Ernst & Young LLP (EY) for cheating by its audit professionals on exams required to obtain and maintain Certified Public Accountant (CPA) licenses, and for withholding evidence of this misconduct from the SEC’s Enforcement Division during the Division’s investigation of the matter. EY admits the facts underlying the SEC’s charges and agrees to pay a $100 million penalty and undertake extensive remedial measures to fix the firm’s ethical issues.

“This action involves breaches of trust by gatekeepers within the gatekeeper entrusted to audit many of our Nation’s public companies. It’s simply outrageous that the very professionals responsible for catching cheating by clients cheated on ethics exams of all things,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division. “And it’s equally shocking that Ernst & Young hindered our investigation of this misconduct. This action should serve as a clear message that the SEC will not tolerate integrity failures by independent auditors who choose the easier wrong over the harder right.”

EY admits that, over multiple years, a significant number of EY audit professionals cheated on the ethics component of CPA exams and various continuing professional education courses required to maintain CPA licenses, including ones designed to ensure that accountants can properly evaluate whether clients’ financial statements comply with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

EY further admits that during the Enforcement Division’s investigation of potential cheating at the firm, EY made a submission conveying to the Division that EY did not have current issues with cheating when, in fact, the firm had been informed of potential cheating on a CPA ethics exam. EY also admits that it did not correct its submission even after it launched an internal investigation into cheating on CPA ethics and other exams and confirmed there had been cheating, and even after its senior lawyers discussed the matter with members of the firm’s senior management. And as the Order finds, EY did not cooperate in the SEC’s investigation regarding its materially misleading submission.

The entire press release is here.

"Without Her Consent" Harvard Allegedly Obtained Title IX Complainant’s Outside Psychotherapy Records, Absent Her Permission

Colleen Flaherty

Inside Higher Ed

Originally published 10 FEB 22

Here are two excerpts:

Harvard provided background information about how its dispute resolution office works, saying that it doesn’t contact a party’s medical care provider except when a party has indicated that the provider has relevant information that the party wants the office to consider. In that case, the office receives information from the care provider only with the party’s consent.

Multiple legal experts said Wednesday that this is the established protocol across higher education.

Asked for more details about what happened, Kilburn’s lawyer, Carolin Guentert, said that Kilburn’s therapist is a private provider unaffiliated with Harvard, and “we understand that ODR contacted Ms. Kilburn’s therapist and obtained the psychotherapy notes from her sessions with Ms. Kilburn, without first seeking Ms. Kilburn’s written consent as required under HIPAA,” the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which governs patient privacy.

Asked if Kilburn ever signed a privacy waiver with her therapist that would have granted the university access to her records, Guentert said Kilburn “has no recollection of signing such a waiver, nor has Harvard provided one to us.”

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Even more seriously, these experts said that Harvard would have had no right to obtain Kilburn’s mental health records from a third-party provider without her consent.

Andra J. Hutchins, a Massachusetts-based attorney who specializes in education law, said that therapy records are protected by psychotherapist-patient privilege (something akin to attorney-client privilege).

“Unless the school has an agreement with and a release from the student to provide access to those records or speak to the student’s therapist—which can be the case if a student is placed on involuntary leave due to a mental health issue—there should be no reason that a school would be able to obtain a student’s psychotherapy records,” she said.

As far as investigations under Title IX (the federal law against gender-based discrimination in education) go, questions from the investigator seeking information about the student’s psychological records aren’t permitted unless the student has given written consent, Hutchins added. “Schools have to follow state and federal health-care privacy laws throughout the Title IX process. I can’t speculate as to how or why these records were released.”

Daniel Carter, president of Safety Advisors for Educational Campuses, said that “it is absolutely illegal and improper for an institution of higher education to obtain one of their students’ private therapy records from a third party. There’s no circumstance under which that is permissible without their consent.”

The info is here.

U.S. judge tosses $4.5 B deal shielding Sacklers from opioid lawsuits

Brendan Pierson & Mike Spector, Maria Chutchian

Reuters

Originally posted 16 DEC 21

A federal judge overturned a roughly $4.5 billion settlement that legally shielded members of the Sackler family who stand accused of helping fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic, a decision that threatened to upend the bankruptcy reorganization of their company, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon said in a written opinion on Thursday the New York bankruptcy court that approved the settlement did not have authority to grant the Sacklers the legal protection from future opioid litigation that formed the linchpin of Purdue’s reorganization.

Purdue said it would appeal the decision.

"While the district court decision does not affect Purdue’s rock-solid operational stability or its ability to produce its many medications safely and effectively, it will delay, and perhaps end, the ability of creditors, communities, and individuals to receive billions in value to abate the opioid crisis," Purdue Chairman Steve Miller said in a statement.

The Sacklers had insisted on the legal shields, known as nondebtor releases because they protect parties that have not filed for bankruptcy themselves, in exchange for contributing $4.5 billion toward resolving widespread opioid litigation.

The Sacklers threatened to walk away from the settlement absent the guaranteed legal protections.

Representatives for the Sacklers did not immediately respond to a request for comment late on Thursday.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement he was pleased with the ruling.

"The bankruptcy court did not have the authority to deprive victims of the opioid crisis of their right to sue the Sackler family," Garland said.

The info is here.

Note: If you have not watched Dopesick on Hulu, please do.  Excellent portrayal of the level of harm and psychopathology with members of this family.

Surprise: 56% of US Catholics Favor Legalized Abortion

Dalia Fahmy

Pew Research Center

Originally posted 20 Oct 20

Here are two excerpts:

1. More than half of U.S. Catholics (56%) said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while roughly four-in-ten (42%) said it should be illegal in all or most cases, according to the 2019 Pew Research Center survey. Although most Catholics generally approve of legalized abortion, the vast majority favor at least some restrictions. For example, while roughly one-third of Catholics (35%) said abortion should be legal in most cases, only around one-fifth (21%) said it should be legal in all cases. By the same token, 28% of Catholics said abortion should be illegal in most cases, while half as many (14%) said it should be illegal in all cases.

Compared with other Christian groups analyzed in the data, Catholics were about as likely as White Protestants who are not evangelical (60%) and Black Protestants (64%) to support legal abortion, and much more likely than White evangelical Protestants (20%) to do so. Among Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – those who say they are atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – the vast majority (83%) said abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

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6. Even though most Catholics said abortion should generally be legal, a majority also said abortion is morally wrong. In fact, the share who said that abortion is morally wrong (57%), according to data from a 2017 survey, and the share who said it should be legal (56%) are almost identical. Among adults in other religious groups, there was a wide range of opinions on this question: Almost two-thirds of Protestants (64%) said abortion is morally wrong, including 77% of those who identify with evangelical Protestant denominations. Among the religiously unaffiliated, the vast majority said abortion is morally acceptable (34%) or not a moral issue (42%).

The info is here.

Trump Shatters Ethics Norms By Making Official Acts Part Of GOP Convention

Sam Gringlas
www.npr.org
Originally posted 26 August 20

Here is an excerpt:

As part of Tuesday night's prime-time convention programming, Trump granted a presidential pardon from the White House. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared from Jerusalem, where he was on official state business, to make a campaign speech with the Old City as backdrop. First lady Melania Trump delivered a speech from the White House Rose Garden. And acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf performed a naturalization ceremony on television as Trump looked on.

The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from engaging in most political activity inside federal buildings or while on duty. Though the president and vice president are exempt from the civil provisions of the Hatch Act, federal employees like Pompeo, Wolf and any executive branch employees who helped stage the events are not.

Ethics watchdogs harshly criticized Trump's merging of official and campaign acts during the Tuesday night telecast.

"The Hatch Act was the wall standing between the government's might and candidates. Tonight a candidate tore down that wall and wielded power for his own campaign," tweeted Walter Shaub, the former head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Shaub left the office in 2017 after clashing with the Trump administration over the president's failure to divest from his businesses.

This summer, Pompeo and top State Department officials sent memos to employees reminding them they must be careful to adhere to the Hatch Act. Another memo said, "Senate-confirmed Presidential appointees may not even attend a political party convention or convention-related event." That description also applies to Pompeo.

Richard Haass, the longtime president of the Council on Foreign Relations who has served in several Republican administrations, said it's inappropriate for a secretary of state to appear at a political convention while serving as the nation's top diplomat.

The info is here.

FDA and NIH let clinical trial sponsors keep results secret and break the law

Charles Piller
sciencemag.org
Originally posted 13 Jan 20

For 20 years, the U.S. government has urged companies, universities, and other institutions that conduct clinical trials to record their results in a federal database, so doctors and patients can see whether new treatments are safe and effective. Few trial sponsors have consistently done so, even after a 2007 law made posting mandatory for many trials registered in the database. In 2017, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tried again, enacting a long-awaited “final rule” to clarify the law’s expectations and penalties for failing to disclose trial results. The rule took full effect 2 years ago, on 18 January 2018, giving trial sponsors ample time to comply. But a Science investigation shows that many still ignore the requirement, while federal officials do little or nothing to enforce the law.

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Contacted for comment, none of the institutions disputed the findings of this investigation. In all 4768 trials Science checked, sponsors violated the reporting law more than 55% of the time. And in hundreds of cases where the sponsors got credit for reporting trial results, they have yet to be publicly posted because of quality lapses flagged by ClinicalTrials.gov staff.

The info is here.

Psychologist Who Waterboarded for C.I.A. to Testify at Guantánamo

Carol Rosenberg
The New York Times
Originally posted 20 Jan 20

Here is an excerpt:

Mr. Mohammed’s co-defendants were subject to violence, sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation and rectal abuse in the prison network from 2002, when the first of them, Ramzi bin al-Shibh was captured, to 2006, when all five were transferred to the prison at Guantánamo Bay. They will also be present in the courtroom.

In the black sites, the defendants were kept in solitary confinement, often nude, at times confined to a cramped box in the fetal position, hung by their wrists in painful positions and slammed head first into walls. Those techniques, approved by George W. Bush administration lawyers, were part of a desperate effort to force them to divulge Al Qaeda’s secrets — like the location of Osama bin Laden and whether there were terrorist sleeper cells deployed to carry out more attacks.

A subsequent internal study by the C.I.A. found proponents inflated the intelligence value of those interrogations.

The psychologists were called by lawyers to testify for one of the defendants, Mr. Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi. All five defense teams are expected to question them about policy and for graphic details of conditions in the clandestine overseas prisons, including one in Thailand that for a time was run by Gina Haspel, now the C.I.A. director.

Mr. al-Baluchi’s lawyer, James G. Connell III, is spearheading an effort to persuade the judge to exclude from the trial the testimony of F.B.I. agents who questioned the defendants at Guantánamo in 2007. It was just months after their transfer there from years in C.I.A. prisons, and the defense lawyers argue that, although there was no overt violence during the F.B.I. interrogations, the defendants were so thoroughly broken in the black sites that they were powerless to do anything but tell the F.B.I. agents what they wanted to hear.

By law, prosecutors can use voluntary confessions only at the military commissions at Guantánamo.

The info is here.

French Executives Found Responsible for 35 Employees' Deaths by Suicide

Katie Way

vice.com

Originally posted 20 Dec 19

Today, in a landmark case for worker’s rights and workplace accountability, three former executives of telecommunication company Orange (formerly known as France Télécom) were charged with “collective moral harassment” after creating a work environment which was found to have directly contributed to the death by suicide of 35 employees. This included, according to NPR , 19 employees who died by suicide between 2008 and 2009, many of whom “left notes blaming the company or who killed themselves at work.”

Why would a company lead a terror campaign against its own workers? Money, of course: The plan was enacted as part of a push to get rid of 22,000 employees in order to counterbalance $50 million in debt incurred after the company privatized—it was formerly a piece of the French government’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, meaning its employees were granted special protection as civil servants that prevented their higher-ups from firing them. According to the New York Times, the executives attempted to solve this dilemma by creating an “atmosphere of fear” and purposefully stoked “severe anxiety” in order to drive workers to quit. Former CEO Didier Lombard, sentenced to four months in jail and a $16,000 fine, reportedly called the strategies part of a plan to get rid of unwanted employees “either through the window or through the door.” Way to say the quiet part loud, Monsieur!

The info is here.

Duke agrees to pay $112.5 million to settle allegation it fraudulently obtained federal research funding

Seth Thomas Gulledge
Triangle Business Journal
Originally posted March 25, 2019

Duke University has agreed to pay $112.5 million to settle a suit with the federal government over allegations the university submitted false research reports to receive federal research dollars.

This week, the university reached a settlement over allegations brought forward by whistleblower Joseph Thomas – a former Duke employee – who alleged that during his time working as a lab research analyst in the pulmonary, asthma and critical care division of Duke University Health Systems, the clinical research coordinator, Erin Potts-Kant, manipulated and falsified studies to receive grant funding.

The case also contends that the university and its office of research support, upon discovering the fraud, knowingly concealed it from the government.

According to court documents, Duke was accused of submitting claims to the National Institute of Health (NIH) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) between 2006-2018 that contained "false or fabricated data" cause the two agencies to pay out grant funds they "otherwise would not have." Those fraudulent submissions, the case claims, netted the university nearly $200 million in federal research funding.

“Taxpayers expect and deserve that federal grant dollars will be used efficiently and honestly. Individuals and institutions that receive research funding from the federal government must be scrupulous in conducting research for the common good and rigorous in rooting out fraud,” said Matthew Martin, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina in a statement announcing the settlement. “May this serve as a lesson that the use of false or fabricated data in grant applications or reports is completely unacceptable.”

The info is here.

St. Cloud psychologist gets 3-plus years for sex with client

Nora G. Hertel
Saint Cloud Times 
Originally published June 14, 2018

Psychologist Eric Felsch will spend more than three years in prison for having sex with a patient in 2011.

Stearns County Judge Andrew Pearson sentenced Felsch Thursday to 41 months in prison for third-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony. He pleaded guilty to the charge in April.

Felsch, 46, has a St. Cloud address.

It is against Minnesota law for a psychotherapist to have sex with a patient during or outside of a therapy session. A defendant facing that charge cannot defend himself by saying the victim consented to the sexual activity.

Sex with clients is also against ethical codes taught to psychologists.

The information is here.

A psychologist in Pennsylvania can face criminal charges for engaging in sexual relationships with a current patient.

Facebook employs psychologist whose firm sold data to Cambridge Analytica

Paul Lewis and Julia Carrie Wong
The Guardian
Originally published March 18, 2018

Here are two excerpts:

The co-director of a company that harvested data from tens of millions of Facebook users before selling it to the controversial data analytics firms Cambridge Analytica is currently working for the tech giant as an in-house psychologist.

Joseph Chancellor was one of two founding directors of Global Science Research (GSR), the company that harvested Facebook data using a personality app under the guise of academic research and later shared the data with Cambridge Analytica.

He was hired to work at Facebook as a quantitative social psychologist around November 2015, roughly two months after leaving GSR, which had by then acquired data on millions of Facebook users.

Chancellor is still working as a researcher at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters in California, where psychologists frequently conduct research and experiments using the company’s vast trove of data on more than 2 billion users.

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In the months that followed the creation of GSR, the company worked in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica to pay hundreds of thousands of users to take the test as part of an agreement in which they agreed for their data to be collected for academic use.

However, the app also collected the information of the test-takers’ Facebook friends, leading to the accumulation of a data pool tens of millions strong.

That data sold to Cambridge Analytica as part of a commercial agreement.

Facebook’s “platform policy” allowed only collection of friends’ data to improve user experience in the app and barred it being sold on or used for advertising.

The information is here.

Facebook Woes: Data Breach, Securities Fraud, or Something Else?

Matt Levine
Bloomberg.com
Originally posted March 21, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

But the result is always "securities fraud," whatever the nature of the underlying input. An undisclosed data breach is securities fraud, but an undisclosed sexual-harassment problem or chicken-mispricing conspiracy will get you to the same place. There is an important practical benefit to a legal regime that works like this: It makes it easy to punish bad behavior, at least by public companies, because every sort of bad behavior is also securities fraud. You don't have to prove that the underlying chicken-mispricing conspiracy was illegal, or that the data breach was due to bad security procedures. All you have to prove is that it happened, and it wasn't disclosed, and the stock went down when it was. The evaluation of the badness is in a sense outsourced to the market: We know that the behavior was illegal, not because there was a clear law against it, but because the stock went down. Securities law is an all-purpose tool for punishing corporate badness, a one-size-fits-all approach that makes all badness commensurable using the metric of stock price. It has a certain efficiency.

On the other hand it sometimes makes me a little uneasy that so much of our law ends up working this way. "In a world of dysfunctional government and pervasive financial capitalism," I once wrote, "more and more of our politics is contested in the form of securities regulation." And: "Our government's duty to its citizens is mediated by their ownership of our public companies." When you punish bad stuff because it is bad for shareholders, you are making a certain judgment about what sort of stuff is bad and who is entitled to be protected from it.

Anyway Facebook Inc. wants to make it very clear that it did not suffer a data breach. When a researcher got data about millions of Facebook users without those users' explicit permission, and when the researcher turned that data over to Cambridge Analytica for political targeting in violation of Facebook's terms, none of that was a data breach. Facebook wasn't hacked. What happened was somewhere between a contractual violation and ... you know ... just how Facebook works? There is some splitting of hairs over this, and you can understand why -- consider that SEC guidance about when companies have to disclose data breaches -- but in another sense it just doesn't matter. You don't need to know whether the thing was a "data breach" to know how bad it was. You can just look at the stock price. The stock went down...

The article is here.