I'd like to point out that such things can be an invasion of privacy.
While person A might claim that person B threatened to commit suicide,
it is possible that person A wants to locate person B for other,
not so good reasons.
This will happen if all one has to say is "suicide" and everyone will
ignore their normal privacy policies.
Let me, now that things have calmed down, try to relate some lessons
learned to the general operations environment. In a separate message, I
will also forward some traffic- and spam-related information, which
actually is relevant but has me laughing so hard I find it hard to even
write, much less talk. Poor victimized cyberpromo...their AUP was
violated...the evil spammers are out to get them...
The pace of events in the emergency did not allow for an explanation of how
the individual was located. Jon's comment below is a reasonable one, and,
with some further details of how the individual was located, I can:
1) Give at least a starting point for reasonable policies of disclosure
when a possible medical emergency exists,
2) Suggest that such situations might be reasonable things to have thought
about before an emergency, such that they can be put into a carrier's
internal operational procedures.
I'd like to point out that such things can be an invasion of privacy.
While person A might claim that person B threatened to commit suicide,
it is possible that person A wants to locate person B for other,
not so good reasons.This will happen if all one has to say is "suicide" and everyone will
ignore their normal privacy policies.> > Thanks to everyone who responded. I was eventually able to reach one of
> > the providers, who was able to identify the callers through logs, and
> > passed the information to the local emergency people. The patient
is now
> > under treatment, and did not take a lethal dose.> I'd just like to point out the similarity between this event and the use
> of the phone company to track down suicide callers. This reminds me of
Ehud Gavron also commented:
To: nanog
From: Ehud
Can we just change the NANOG charter to "Let's do nothing useful for
real problems that bother providers, but if someone on IRC says they
took an overdose, or threatens to kill themselves, let's fall all over
ourselves revealing private info"?
I personally consider both situations -- the provider and the individual --
within scope. I would like us to consider the general case in both
situations,with an eye to reasonable provider policies, as opposed to being
stuck in speeific cases.
1. Operational Details of the Case
Howard,
Thank you for the excellent anlysis and comentary. I am one of the
NOC staffers at MindSpring and have already put your post onto our
internal discussion list (within our NOC) for review and comment.
Your analysis was timely and clear and it prompted me to take action
within our organization that may someday save a life. I believe
we'll be establishing procedures soon to deal with this stuff.
Thank you,
Michael Diehn
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Michael J Diehn -*- mdiehn@mindspring.com
Network Management Engineer -*-
MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. -*- http://www.mindspring.com/
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