confidential communications

A guide to electronic privacy for librarians that discusses identity theft protection, threats from the business world, protecting children and teenagers, government surveillance, RFID systems, the Patriot Act, and other related topics.

Hidden to consumers, patient medical data has become a multibillion-dollar worldwide trade industry between our health-care providers, drug companies, and a complex web of middlemen. This great medical-data bazaar sells copies of the prescription you recently filled, your hospital records, insurance claims, blood-test results, and more, stripped of your name but possibly with identifiers such as year of birth, gender, and doctor. As computing grows ever more sophisticated, patient dossiers become increasingly vulnerable to reidentification and the possibility of being targeted by identity thieves or hackers.

"In the digital age, journalists have to be concerned about privacy and security like never before. This book teaches students of media about this brave new world. Journalists today need to protect their information and sources in unprecedented ways. Readers also learn how data encryption works. When using the Internet to do research, there’s always the potential for hacking. Finally, an interview with cyber security expert Brock Wood gives readers a sense of real-world threats to their privacy and security. This book is an indispensable resource to students of journalism in a cyber world."--Publisher description.