In today’s WaPo, Spencer Kim, the father of James Kim, the father of two who died of hypothermia after his family became lost in an Oregon park, notes the effect that privacy laws and liability concerns had on the search:
Congress should change the law so that most recent credit card and phone-use records can be immediately released to the next of kin in the event of an emergency. Privacy laws are important to safeguard personal information, but there needs to be provision for exceptional access to information by relatives when it is critical to a family member’s survival.
Four days passed before we even knew James and his family were missing. But because my family was unable to confirm credit card and phone-use information until days after their absence was discovered, the start of the search was needlessly delayed. Precious time and a precious life were lost. Privacy concerns kept both the hotel where James and his family last stayed and the restaurant where they last dined from sharing credit card records, thus denying us for days important clues that would have helped narrow the initial search area.
4 Comments
The area where Mr. Kim died was Federal land, not a park of any description.
The way it’s posed infers that any of Oregon’s state parks might be unsafe to the unwary, which is usually not the case unless the unwary happen to be screwing around on the beach at high tide.
I’ll cease promoting tourism now.
Fine a course should be provided for the newbies amongst us about the Donner party and the Sierra Neveda range PRIOR to getting a drivers license!
Does that help?
100% of the cops for sure had access to such, had Kim desired his family to have such, he would have provided them with logins for such, all by himself!
Have we not seen enough of our rights wiped off the face of the earth this year already? I think we have!
Young Kim was not totally stupid, but he did indeed do some very dumb things, his first was taking that road, his second was leaving it. That is what led to his death as he seemed to wander to a location very close BACK at the car and no closer to rescue or any sort of main road.
I can almost not believe there is not a dumb enough attorney in CA to take this one on. Oh but time has been short, one will surface I’m sure of that!
Short lesson, the road that led to an impossible position is the same road that will lead you out. I’ll add that anybody searching can see that road as well.
Oh wait, the legal approach, “next of kin” such does not actually exist until someone is proven dead right? At which point they come of the actual status of “next of kin”.
I could be wrong.
Yeah, because if we substantially weakened privacy laws the new access would be used for search and rescue as opposed to spam, focus marketing, stalking, tracking your wife/husband for fear of affair, tracking celebrities, etc, etc. Because SAR that would be helped by Mr Kim’s proposal happens frequently. NOT!
One of the more awkward things US Embassy employees have to deal with is contacts from people in the US seeking ‘whereabouts and welfare’ of Americans abroad.
Privacy laws prohibit providing any information beyond ‘Alive’ or ‘Can’t find him/her’. The presumption is that the traveler (absent any documented and particular mental health condition) has the right to determine who knows where and how s/he is. Anything further is intrusive.
The same goes for Americans under arrest or in hospitals overseas. They have to sign a privacy waiver form that identifies who can be notified: family, Congress, media, anyone, named individuals, or no one.
Perhaps a exception should be made for clear emergencies, but who gets to define ‘clear’?