Laura Hoffman

@lahoff.bsky.social

522 Followers 298 Following

Then: Former health tech lobbyist for the AMA, focused on protecting privacy and opposing data-based personal surveillance Now: travel pro, cat mom, and immigrant Trained in public health, human rights, & law

The declaration does not create a binding international enforcement mechanism. But it
places AI-generated intimate imagery squarely within existing privacy mandates and signals that authorities already investigating generative AI systems are operating within a broader, coordinated frame.
The statement reminded organizations that AI content generation systems must comply with applicable data protection and privacy laws, noting that the creation of non-consensual intimate imagery "can constitute a criminal offence in many jurisdictions."

Images of sexual violence against children, racist policing, family separation, and mass killing aren’t simply “news” or “content” that informs us, but rather knowledge that is rewiring us. The triggers might differ, but the wounds inflicted by the content we are consuming are the same: emotional distress and plunging people into the risk of trauma—insidious, secondary, and vicarious—and, for millions, re-traumatization. These responses aren’t aberrations; they’re humane and predictable responses to witnessing horrors.

Statistics are sometimes used to express the scale of the destruction in Sudan. About 14 million people have been displaced by years of fighting, more than in Ukraine and Gaza combined. Some 4 million of them have
fed across borders, many to arid, impoverished places-Chad, Ethiopia, South Sudan—where there are few resources
to support them. At least 150,000 people have died in the conflict, but that's likely a significant undercounting. Half the population, nearly 25 million people, is expected to go hungry this year. Hundreds of thousands of people are directly threatened with starvation. More than 17 million children, out of 19 million, are not in school. A cholera epidemic rages. Malaria is endemic.

To this day, only a few scholars of the Holocaust, and no institution dedicated to researching and commemorating it, has issued a warning that Israel could be accused of carrying out war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing or genocide. This silence has made a mockery of the slogan "Never again," transforming its meaning from an assertion of resistance to inhumanity wherever it is perpetrated to an excuse, an apology, indeed, even a carte blanche for destroying others by invoking one's own past victimhood.

From AHA's Vision and Mission section on its website's "About Us" page.

The AHA vision is of a just society of healthy communities, where all individuals reach their highest potential for health.

Mission

To advance the health of all individuals and communities. The AHA leads, represents and serves hospitals, health systems and other related organizations that are accountable to communities and committed to equitable care and health improvement for all.

Excerpt from H.R. 748—96, stating:

"(1) CONSENT.—The following shall apply with respect to
the contents of any record referred to in subsection (a):
"(A) Such contents may be used or disclosed in accordance with the prior written consent of the patient with respect to whom such record is maintained.
"(B) Once prior written consent of the patient has been obtained, such contents may be used or disclosed by a covered entity, business associate, or a program subject to this section for purposes of treatment, payment, and health care operations as permitted by the HIPAA regula-tions. Any information so disclosed may then be redisclosed in accordance with the HIPAA regulations. Section 13405(c) of the Health Information Technology and Clinical Health Act (42 U.S.C. 17935(c)) shall apply to all disclosures pursuant to subsection (b)(1) of this section.
"(C) It shall be permissible for a patient's prior written consent to be given once for all such future uses or disclosures for purposes of treatment, payment, and health care operations, until such time as as the patient revokes such
consent in writing.
"(D) Section 13405(a) of the Health Information Technology and Clinical Health Act (42 U.S.C. 17935(a)) shall apply to all disclosures pursuant to subsection (b)(1) of this section."

HHS fact sheet discussing major changes to the Part 2 rule. It states, "The final rule includes the following modifications to Part 2 that were proposed in the NPRM:

Patient Consent
• Allows a single consent for all future uses and disclosures for treatment, payment, and health care operations.
• Allows HIPAA covered entities and business associates that receive records under this consent to redisclose the records in accordance with the HIPAA regulations."

Excerpt from comments to HHS from the American Hospital Association, stating, "Eliminate 42 CFR Part 2 requirements that protect patient privacy under HIPAA but hinder care team access to important health information, specifically, separation of records pertaining to substance use disorder information."

FTC Commissioner Andrew N. Ferguson will be a huge step back for progress in privacy law enforcement and ending bias and discrimination in AI.

Project Nimbus provides advanced cloud and AI capabilities to the Israeli government, to target civilians under pervasive surveillance in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The surveillance has reportedly led to detentions killings and the systematic oppression of journalists, healthcare workers aid workers, and ordinary families.

Poem text reads:
Sharp indigo angles infect your room like worms creeping up
on you at night, ruining dreams by crawling through sunken eyes.
Your fall last night left a ripe grape bruise on your forehead: malignant cells of spiders beg to escape entrapment while pilled blankets cocoon you from dangerous floors.
All that is left of you is a carcass of thin silver hair and a sharp needle piercing your arm to make the pain stop.

Small gray cat in a purple sweater exploring the inside of her cat backpack carrier while outdoors.

Small gray cat snuggled with human companion while napping

“A second Trump administration could be disastrous for many of our most fundamental freedoms,” Toomey says.

The administration may not even need to come up with a justification for surveilling Americans without a warrant, because it could simply purchase scores of people's personal data. The federal government has been known to purchase data from private brokers in the past, and doing so doesn’t require a warrant.

“We are just awash in data, and data brokers can just collect and sell these data,” Vagle says. “Law enforcement or quasi-law enforcement can collect that information.”

Surveillance can be done in secret so that the people being surveilled don’t realize they’re being surveilled, or it can be done openly as a way to stifle free expression, Vagle says. The government might tell you they’re keeping an eye on people, and then you might be less likely to speak out.

Picture of man throwing leaves in the air to entertain two cats sitting in mesh backpacks on a beautiful autumn day