US Justice Department drops case against Texas doctor charged with leaking transgender care data

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

US Justice Department drops case against Texas doctor charged with leaking transgender care data

By JAMIE STENGLE
Updated 6:33 PM EST, January 24, 2025

DALLAS (AP) — Federal prosecutors on Friday dropped the case against a Texas doctor who called himself a whistleblower on transgender care for minors and was accused of illegally obtaining private information on patients who weren’t under his care.

The dismissal of the case against Dr. Eithan Haim in U.S. district court in Houston comes as the Trump administration in its first week has already issued executive orders rolling back transgender rights.

Prosecutors had said that Haim, a 34-year-old surgeon, took the information and shared it with a conservative activist with “intent to cause malicious harm” to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, one of the nation’s largest pediatric hospitals.

Haim pleaded not guilty in June to four counts of wrongfully obtaining individually identifiable health information, saying outside the courthouse that he had “done nothing wrong.”

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/doctor-texas-case-dismissed-transgender-care-c52dc9d0cc1a2f59d974ff6f7031bb3a

[Eugene]

2. The doctor was indicted for breaing federal law (HIPAA).

The four-count indictment alleges Haim obtained personal information including patient names, treatment codes and the attending physician from Texas Children’s Hospital’s (TCH) electronic system without authorization. He allegedly obtained this information under false pretenses and with intent to cause malicious harm to TCH.

According to the indictment, Haim was a resident at Baylor College of Medicine and had previous rotations at TCH as part of his residency.

In April 2023, Haim allegedly requested to re-activate his login access at TCH to access pediatric patients not under his care. The indictment alleges he obtained unauthorized access to personal information of pediatric patients under false pretenses and later disclosed it to a media contact.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdtx/pr/doctor-charged-unauthorized-access-personal-information-pediatric-patients-texas

The doctor gave personal medical information to a conservative vigilante group.
Even with legitimate law enforcement, that is overreach.

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Some people already trust AI to analyze persons by their appearance for this exact purpose.
Some authoritarian regimes have already implemented this. The strongest protection
against this abuse has been the DoJ - until now.