Blumenthal Objects To Product Safety Commission Demanding Identifiable Medical Data

by Donald Eng

A tool intended to help safeguard consumer safety is being transformed into a massive data mining and surveillance operation with unknown objectives, according to about a dozen federal lawmakers, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-CT.

The group last week wrote the Peter Feldman, acting chair of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, about reports that the commission was using the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) to gather personal and identifiable health information from millions of Americans.

“We have significant concerns about the necessity and legality of this initiative, the adequacy of its privacy protections, and the purposes to which this trove of sensitive data may ultimately be put,” the group wrote.

The commission is typically tasked with protecting Americans from unreasonable risk associated with consumer products through safety standards and recalls, among other actions.

The NEISS system has been active for over half a century, and is used by hospitals to report injuries caused by consumer products like toys and appliances to establish patterns of products causing injury to consumers.

But the legislators, citing published reports, said the commission was pressuring hospitals to submit all records, including names, birthdates, addresses, and diagnoses, of every emergency department patient.

“There is no plausible justification for requiring the name, birthdate, and home address of every emergency department patient, collected proactively and in bulk, when NEISS has operated for decades without this information,” the group wrote. “The Commission is clearly unmoored from its mission and exceeding its jurisdiction over consumer products.”

The legislators argued that there was no credible reason for “the agency charged with regulating lawnmowers and coffeemakers” to be requesting identifiable records of injuries with no association to consumer products.

“The Trump administration’s broader pattern of amassing Americans’ sensitive data and repurposing it to advance political priorities, from immigration enforcement to vaccine misinformation, casts serious doubt that the Commission intends to use these records exclusively for product safety,” they wrote. “Even if the Commission uses these records solely to advance consumer protection, creating a federal database of identifiable medical records gives an administration that has repeatedly sought access to Americans’ sensitive data another powerful tool for surveillance and misuse.”

The commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to its communications director.

The legislators demanded Feldman answer a series of questions, including what authority the commission is relying on to require hospitals to participate in the update Even if the Commission uses these records solely to advance consumer protection, creating a federal database of identifiable medical records gives an administration that has repeatedly sought access to Americans’ sensitive data another powerful tool for surveillance and NEISS requirements, privacy protections, limits on sharing data and more.