Trump’s Data-Sharing Plan With Big Tech Draws Continued Backlash
Consumer advocates on Thursday continued to sound the alarm over the White House’s plans to work with tech companies in building a health data-sharing system.
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced partnerships with more than 60 companies, including Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, Oracle and Athenahealth. There will be no “centralized government-run database,” and the entire system will be “opt-in,” he said during a news conference with company representatives, administration officials and Senate Republicans. This data-sharing agreement will allow companies to predict health conditions and allow patients to make informed decisions about their health, diet and exercise, he added.
Trump noted that people are “very concerned” about their personal records, and it’s “their choice” not to share information with the companies. The arrangement will allow users to “easily transmit” data from one doctor to another, he said. It will ultimately save “time, money and lives.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) criticized the plan Wednesday (see 2507300067). Center for Democracy & Technology slammed the proposal in a statement Thursday. "The U.S. doesn’t have a general-purpose privacy law, and HIPAA only protects data held by certain people like healthcare providers and insurance companies,” said CDT Senior Counsel Andrew Crawford. “Many health and AI apps, including some being promoted by the Trump Administration, are typically not covered by HIPAA. That could put sensitive information in real danger."
The Trump administration “has routinely challenged long-standing privacy norms, and getting access to data held by private health apps would take that to a whole new level," Crawford added.
New York Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal (D) told Privacy Daily on Wednesday that the White House plan increases the urgency for enacting her health data privacy bill that passed the state legislature in January (see 2507310030).