Firefighters face backdraft of controversy in privacy fight
Emergency Management Alert, October 16, 2007
Last week, the Boston media was ablaze with stories revealing that two firefighters who died in a Beantown fire in August were allegedly impaired. According to autopsy reports, one had ingested more than three times the legal limit of alcohol and a second had traces of cocaine in his system. What followed was a call for an investigation of the department by the mayor of Boston, accusations of character assassination, and legal wrangling between the media and the firefighters' union, which said that information from the autopsy reports should never have been leaked by a local television station.
At the same time, Wisconsin firefighters were absorbing the news that, as per a decision made by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, they could not use HIPAA's privacy rules as a reason to withhold basic public information about ambulance calls.
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