Flutterby™! : DEA going after your prescription info

ACLU: The DEA Thinks You Have “No Constitutionally Protected Privacy Interest” in Your Confidential Prescription Records. This is the same factor that's impacting cloud computing right now, that a third party holds your data means, to many courts, that you have no expectation of privacy with that data:

In its latest brief, the DEA ignores these points and instead argues that the mere fact that our clients’ prescription records are held in a database maintained by a third party—the State of Oregon—means that they have somehow given up their privacy interest in the records. Courts have found that no warrant is required for information contained in some kinds of business records like electricity consumption records held by a power company or room registration information held by a motel. This is because, in theory, people have voluntarily given up their privacy interest in information when they turn it over to a third party. ...

Current employer is pretty aggressive about scrubbing data. This makes things difficult, for instance we recently talked about looking at historical email sending data to try to detect exploited accounts sending spam, but maintaining the log information that might allow us to do that is a potential security risk for customers.

This also, of course, means that the DEA and USDOJ are likely to exploit any attempts by the states legalizing marijuana to license and regulate as evidence to be used in going after growers and users.