On Sunday’s episode of HBO’s Veep, a medical breach takes place within in the White House, releasing private medical data and social security numbers of patients. Sound slightly familiar?
In this particular case, private information, specifically about a young girl who is HIV positive, is included in a press pack for a talk given by president Selena Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) about her “Families First” agenda. As a result, the members of the girl’s community start taking their children out of school and she is ostracized.
This is obviously different than the Anthem and Premera hacks we’ve recently had in the news, but it highlights the same privacy issues. In the show, apparently the “Medileaks” breach was the work of a White House staffer. But with so many people working on the Families First bill, it would be close to impossible to figure out who did it. So, to save face and look competent, Selena demands that they just fire somebody who seems like they could have done it but is also disposable. Sadly, it wouldn’t be very shocking if it worked that way to some degree in real life.
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Of course, the show finds ways to add humor to the whole thing. For one, two dimwitted staffers ignorantly choose the Police song “Every Breath You Take” for the vice president’s entrance on stage. The song includes the lyrics “I’ll be watching you.” As one character says, “Sting might as well be saying I’ll access your medical data.”
And later when the news of the breach becomes an even bigger focus on the news, with more private information about more children being leaked, the Director of Communications, Bill, says, “Is there no other news? Whatever happened to Ebola? I loved Ebola.”
To further complicate things, unbeknownst to the president, a direct mail campaign with pictures of Selena and babies went out specifically to recently bereaved parents using the stolen data, which is a federal crime. She basically says she will pretend she doesn’t know about it moving forward. In the end, Dan, chief counsel to the president, is let go and falsely held accountable for the whole ordeal.
With all of the hacking news and focus on HIPAA, the storyline was a relevant one, indeed. It calls into question how much we ever really actually know about what happens and who is actually responsible.
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