Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - Monday, 14 October 1996
Sarah Tippit, Reuter

William Calvert III, an investigator with the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS), was fired Wednesday for what state officials called the nation's largest ever security breach of AIDS information.

The case has thrown a spotlight on new threats to medical confidentiality as computer networks, insurance databases and hackers pry out the most intimate details of people's lives.

Calvert's job involved collecting names as part of a national network tracking AIDS cases. He is accused of removing a list of local residents who are HIV-infected or have AIDS from a computer database and using it to look up names of potential dates for himself and his friends.

The list, which Calvert admitted using, included the names of nearly 4,000 people with AIDS and HIV around Tampa Bay.

An anonymous letter sent with the names on computer disks to HRS accused Calvert of circulating the list in a bar and offering to look up names for friends who wanted to screen potential partners for HIV infection.

The list also was sent anonymously to two Tampa Bay newspapers, the Tampa Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times.

Neither Calvert nor his attorney, Lee Fugate, was available for comment today. State officials said Calvert feels he has been framed by a former business partner and is being used as a scapegoat to cover up a lax state system, which state officials denied.

"If the system is lax, it was his job to see that it was defended and made as tight as possible," said HRS health services administrator Richard Hosking. "I don't believe the system was lax. I believe it was an exceptionally good system."

Calvert was given confidentiality training and was required to sign a confidentiality pledge, Hosking said.

Calvert, a veteran HRS employee with three masters degrees, had been put on paid administrative leave for three weeks after allegations about the HIV list arose, and had until Wednesday to answer the charges, HRS officials said.

Investigators were trying to find out whether AIDS information may have been published on the Internet or whether there is a network of AIDS information brokers, said Larry Sams, the lead investigator on the case for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. "There's more than one person who knows about this," he said. "That's what our criminal investigation will show when it's completed."

Wherever the information was circulated, experts said the case illustrates the damage one unscrupulous employee could do.

"Ultimately, it's up to the integrity of the person handling the information," said Harry Rhodes, a spokesman for American Health Information Management Association in Chicago, which develops security measures for medical records for health care facilities and insurance companies.

Experts stressed that such breaches did not apply just to HIV patients and that increased computerization has given more and more workers access to medical records.

National databases record personal health histories just as credit bureaus compile credit histories. More than 700 insurance companies subscribe to these services, Rhodes said.

More stringent national laws have been passed recently to combat unethical or illegal use of medical information. Calvert's alleged actions took place before the laws were passed, and he faces very little jail time and possibly a small fine or probation.

Local AIDS assistance agencies fear fewer people will come forward for testing as a result of the scandal, said Donna Olmstead, spokeswoman for the Tampa AIDS Network.

HRS, with guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has begun new measures to tighten security, Hosking said.
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