No LE agency can expect officers to use their personal devices to carry out official duties. Much less so when those official duties need to hold up in court.
If people want LE to accept digital IDs instead of plastic, those folks are essentially asking for billions of tax $ to go towards equipping LE with readers. I know I personally would prefer such sums go toward equipment that actually makes LE better at catching criminals, not doohickeys that solve a non-problem.
I have the app on my phone but never had an opportunity to use it.
I try to avoid carrying my wallet whenever I can. I have a prescription at a Costco pharmacy that requires an ID. I have a photo of my driver’s license stored in the Notes app, but when I show it to the pharmacy staff, I get told they cannot accept a photo and I must show them the physical license. They have known me for years, but act as if they’ve never seen me before. I know they’re following the rules but it’s still aggravating.
I never carry a wallet, my license is tossed in the door pocket of my car when I go out (which does cause problems since I drive multiple cars and sometimes forget to take it out of the car). I mean, I’ve lost my license in my wallet in the past, so even that is not foolproof for me.
Diane
What makes you believe that they aren’t issued phones that are meant to be used for official business?
A device managed by the police department’s IT department shouldn’t have any such problems. IT could easily mandate that critical apps be installed and integrated with the department’s other systems, including sufficient permissions, backup and audit procedures to let it hold up in court.
Because i don’t need to believe. I know. From previous work I have a couple of beat cop friends and across several CA LE agencies (CHP, UCPD, and local PDs) none of them have been issued department devices. I do know of one agency that issues all their deputies department phones and that’s a SO in AZ.
C’mon, I know it’s en vogue to dump on LE, but these departments are not idiots. If they all had already spent hundreds of millions on iPhones to gift to their officers and deputies, they’d likely also know that a simple app they could procure for substantially less would solve this issue once and for all. They’re not idiots. They are however usually subjected to extremely tight budgets.
There are three types of departments right now: those that issue department smartphones for official use, those that attempt to manage their officers’ devices through MDM programs, and those that pretend their officers aren’t using their personal devices for official duties. The second two categories will probably dwindle away as time goes on.
This happens every day. In some cases, sure, some would-be evidence might be open to challenge in court – but this ain’t Law and Order; rarely is that even an issue.
LEOs in my town get $50,000 SUVs with $10,00 worth of upfitting; they get $2000 ruggedized laptops, $1500 rifles and $700 pistols, $1000 body-cams, and hundreds more worth of less-lethal weapons, medical kits, and PPO for daily carry.
But a $1000 smartphone would be too much for taxpayers to stomach?
No way. The public understands that cops need a basic set of tools, and a smartphone is a very basic tool for everyone these days. Obvious use cases abound – just being able to do a quick records search without having to radio it in, or go outside to their patrol vehicle, for example. Messaging specifics to other officers in the field, without relying on noisy radios. Real-time location sharing. Sharing photos of suspects in the field.
Obviously, as you note, this should be on a platform with management and records retention.
The NYPD and LAPD are already issuing smartphones (iPhones, no less) to officers. No surprise – they’re well-funded, and big-city officers are often away from their cruisers and their in-dash laptops. But expect every department to follow suit in the coming years – you can’t expect LEOs on the street to be without the technical resources that middle schoolers take for granted.
Speaking as a former pharmacy technician, I can tell you that ID rules for picking up medications are inflexible. It must be a physical ID, and how well they know you is irrelevant. In most places that require ID, the ID itself will be scanned and logged, which rules out using a digital ID unless the pharmacy has the right NFC interface to log the digital ID in their system (which is going to take time to get in place, if any pharmacies decide it’s worthwhile to do).
I agree that such requirements can be aggravating, but these rules are in place to protect you, the patient. The vast majority of places that require ID to pick up prescriptions do so only on controlled substances, and it’s done to curb diversion to street markets. It also protects you from having to pay full price for your medication if your prescriptions were picked up by someone you didn’t authorize, as having the ID of the person who picked them up logged provides evidence to the insurance company that you didn’t receive the medication, so that they will pay for redispensing.
Just another one of those things that pharmacy workers are dealing with behind the scenes that the customers aren’t normally aware of, and yet another of the reasons that they can’t just pull your pills off the shelf and hand them to you when you bring in the script.
Many digital IDs use a QR code display rather than an NFC. For example, my medical plan ID does so. Amusingly, my Walgreens discount ID uses NFC, while my CVS ID uses a QR code.
Speaking as a former pharmacy technician, I can tell you that ID rules for picking up medications are inflexible. It must be a physical ID, and how well they know you is irrelevant. In most places that require ID, the ID itself will be scanned and logged, which rules out using a digital ID unless the pharmacy has the right NFC interface to log the digital ID in their system
This does bring up some privacy concerns that typical pharmacy people can’t answer. Since the personal ID info is sensitive, as well as the well known HIPAA Reg related data, security pros have reasonable questions. Do you have any insights on these issues:
The iPhone supposedly does a good job of protecting the data internally, but what happens after the pharmacy scans the info off a phone screen or an actual card?
Is it already or immediately encrypted? (I’d hope it would be stored encrypted.) Can it be read/copied/written-down by the technician? Is it used at all by the local pharmacy in ID verification? Who has access to it in the local or national pharmacy database(s)? How long is it retained? What organizations is the info shared with? You mentioned insurance companies may need to look at it (and I’d guess possibly other LE orgs) – is a warrant required?
Stuff like that. Or did I sign away all my privacy rights scribbling on the little screen with my finger?
True, but in Ohio, at least, most pharmacies are not typically equipped to read the codes on the back of Ohio drivers’ licenses. They instead run the magnetic stripe through a swiper. Ohio law doesn’t require logging an ID for controlled substances, but some chains have that as a corporate policy, and IDs must be logged for all purchases of pseudoephedrine products.
Not every 2D code is technically a QR code—we just tend to use that as a generic term for them. QR codes are a specific format of 2D scannable code, but there are several others (just as there are several formats for 1D bar codes). The 2D code on the back of Ohio drivers’ licenses does not use the QR format—it’s not even a square code—and the software would need to be equipped to read the particular format they use. The only systems I know for certain are equipped to read it are those used by law enforcement in Ohio.
Even more amusing is that the Giant Food (grocery chain) app, when adding a card to the iOS Wallet, simply adds a card with the same bar code that the corresponding physical card has. Not even QR.
But it works fine with the store’s scanner, which was designed for the physical card.,
Does it resemble one of these:
The one on my Virginia license is PDF417, which is a standard used by DHS for RealID-compliant ID cards.
An example of PDF417 (from Wikipedia, not my driver’s license) is:
(Warning: This gets a bit long and potentially tedious.)
Data privacy in pharmacies (and I’m speaking specifically of the area that dispenses prescription medication, not the rest of the store) is almost exclusively governed by HIPAA, including ID logs, and HIPAA is quite comprehensive.
Every pharmacy employee is required to undergo HIPAA training before they can start working behind the counter, and periodic refresher training is standard. HIPAA violations are taken very seriously in pharmacies. You are generally not going to be at risk of having any information leaked by pharmacy staff, and if any is, the person who does it will be penalized, often severely; for the most egregious offenses, the worker is blacklisted from employment in pharmacy (in addition to other penalties). Jail time is even sometimes involved for the worst cases.
I don’t know the technical details of the security involved, but I would be surprised if modern prescription data isn’t encrypted at every stage. Robust data encryption is mandated for receiving electronic prescriptions (the default these days). Pharmacies still have to maintain physical files for prescriptions received on paper (uncommon now, but still a measurable amount of traffic, especially in less urban areas), but access to those is restricted to HIPAA-trained pharmacy staff, and physical access to these files is rarely needed. And once the prescription information is entered into the computer, it is subject to the same protections as that received electronically.
When ID verification is required, it is logged by computer. There is no actual validation of the card info; it is simply logged. For prescription pickup, the card data is re-accessed only when there is reason to question who picked something up. The ID logs for pseudoephedrine are sent to a state-level database to ensure that people cannot violate quantity limits by going to multiple stores, but it is still subject to all applicable HIPAA provisions.
The only access to any of this data is by pharmacy staff, corporate staff (still requiring HIPAA training), and law enforcement (only when appropriate, not as a matter of course). Normally, when this data is provided to law enforcement, it is most often the pharmacy that determines law enforcement needs to be involved, not the other way around, so warrants are not commonly involved. If law enforcement approaches the pharmacy for this data, most pharmacies will be cooperative, because it’s in their best interests to do so—they can be liable for prescriptions dispensed to unauthorized persons. So while warrants are not unheard of, they’re not commonly used or needed for this.
Insurance companies do not have access to ID logs unless law enforcement determines it is necessary; to prove to insurance that an unauthorized person picked up a prescription normally requires only that the person who picked it up have been properly logged, not that the actual log data be provided to the insurer. Such verification of logging would normally be conducted by phone, not via electronic messaging, and the actual log data isn’t seen by the insurance company unless the law requires it (which usually happens only in the event of legal proceedings of some sort). The statement that an unauthorized person picked up a prescription is normally going to be taken at face value by insurance personnel, unless the patient has a history of early refills (actual or attempted), so it’s usually just a matter of the pharmacy staffer getting an override to a “refill too soon” rejection.
There are no “pharmacy databases” in the sense that you appear to mean. Pharmacy data belongs to the individual store (and to corporate, if it’s a chain), and is not accessible from outside the company except by going directly through a staff member of the store or chain in question. In many cases, only limited data is accessible to other stores in the same chain, and ID logs are not normally part of that. (This is all excepting pseudoephedrine logs, which are required by law to be accessible to law enforcement and other pharmacies.) The only time such data is shared outside the chain of care is if a prescription is transferred between pharmacies or if a pharmacy is permanently closed. In the former case, only the data relating to the transferred prescription(s) and the specific patient is shared, again HIPAA-protected; this is considered under HIPAA to be an extension of the chain of care. In the latter case, the data is purchased in toto by another pharmacy in the area so that the prescriptions are not lost, and is also protected by HIPAA. As for length of data retention, retention of ID logs varies by state. Other prescription data may be retained indefinitely, as a patient’s prior medical history is relevant at least until their death (and, usually, settlement of their estate).
The “chain of care” involves doctors, insurers, pharmacies, other medical providers, and patients, and all data transferred between these entities is subject to HIPAA. (In the case of patients, they are technically not subject to HIPAA restrictions, as the patient and their designee(s) are the only persons authorized by the law to grant access to their own medical data outside the chain of care. It is by legal definition impossible for a patient to violate HIPAA with regard to their own data.)
It is of course possible, and actually not that uncommon, for pharmacy staff to write down on paper any information they have access to on the computer, but that doesn’t absolve them of HIPAA requirements. Waste paper in retail pharmacies is typically collected in shred bins that are periodically taken by third-party shredding contractors (Iron Mountain is a commonly used one) and the contents made unreadable prior to final disposal. Accidental disclosures are possible when anything is written down, but in practice that rarely happens because of the strength of HIPAA.
It is important to not underestimate the power of the HIPAA law. No other personal data in the US is subject to as stringent privacy laws as that which is protected by HIPAA. While the law does not mandate specific technological practices in detail, the non-specific requirements are fairly comprehensive, and most of the details are codified in supplementary laws and regulations (often at the state level). These requirements are continually being updated as technology advances.
So no, you aren’t signing away any privacy rights when you sign for your prescriptions. You’re affirming them.
At minimum, Ohio drivers’ licenses would use whatever is mandated for RealID for those IDs compliant with RealID. My own license is RealID compliant, and the format matches the start and stop patterns of the one you shared. (The actual code is much lengthier and taller than that.)
I don’t have access to a non-compliant ID, as both mine and my spouse’s are compliant, so I can’t readily verify whether the same format is used on non-compliant IDs, but I imagine it would be, since using a different format for non-compliant IDs would needlessly complicate matters.
You said that PDF417 is “a” DHS standard. That implies to me that there is more than one format DHS accepts for RealID. Is this the case?
Thanks for the details, very informative. But yet shows more massive caches of personal data that need to be carefully protected from malicious access, release, and ransom.
I only wish this were true. We can start with:
Layer in the places to which your pharmacy sells “anonymized” (but not really) prescription records.
Add in dozens of anecdotes I have from my 25 years in medical practice, including one time when I was walking through a Walgreens and the pharmacist recognized me and shouted across the crowded pharmacy waiting area “hey, Dr. Risley, I have a question about Jane Smith’s Zyprexa prescription.”
In my experience, pharmacies will pay a lot of lip service to HIPAA compliance (and HIPAA itself has loopholes you can float a supertanker through), but they’ll sell out patient privacy for a nickel if they can do so and remain “compliant.”
I remain cautiously optimistic about smartphone-enabled government photo ID. On the one hand, poorly implemented it could result in many more entities having access to much more information than they need with just an instantaneous scan, but done right they can affirm identity without over-disclosing.
Mine too. The sample I shared is from the Wikipedia page, not from a driver’s license. I just wanted to show an example of the format, so you and others could recognize it.
That was a typo. I was citing the Wikipedia page for PDF417, which says:
Of course, requiring ID for prescriptions varies by state. In NY, pharmacies do not require IDs – you can pick up a prescription by simply giving your address or phone number.
Yes, I mentioned this. In the states that do require an ID for pickup, most require it only for controlled substances. A relative few require it for all prescriptions, and this is continually changing (to the degree that I’m not sure that any states require ID for all prescriptions at this particular moment).
However, ID is required nationally for all purchases of pseudoephedrine products, whether prescription or OTC. This is why such products are kept behind the pharmacy counter. This is, of course, due to pseudoephedrine’s popularity as a component of street meth.
Nope, ID is required (and scanned) in NY for controlled substances, and you can’t get a CS prescription for more than 30 days, or with any refills. So scanned (into a database somewhere) every month. Privacy threat.
My home state of New York could appear on that list soon, too,
Add Illinois to the “coming soon” list.