se STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

 

STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Department of Genetics

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 e (415) 321-1200

Honorable Cornelius E. Gallagher
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Representative Gallagher,

February 4, 1970

I note your remarks at E 398 of the Congressional Record for
January 27. This leads me to continue a discussion of great concern
to both of us, namely, the need for legal definitions of and
protection of privacy. I do not think that we are very far apart
on the urgency of developing the kind of law that will continue to
protect individual freedom in the face of extremely efficient tools

for intrusion.

I write you now then to call your attention to an extremely

urgent problem in this area.

This is the confidentiality of medical, particularly psychiatric,
information furnished to selective service boards on behalf of
prospective inductees. Many men have obtained deferments on the
basis of physical or psychological disabilities regarded as sufficient
cause either by the local board or in accordance with the standards
established by the services. I need hardly paint in detail the
worrisome picture of the possibility that such personal information
might be leaked from these files at some future time in a way that
would violate the most elementary principles of human decencies.

I am aware that such information is now labeled as strictly
confidential by the administrative regulations of the selective
service system. However, these regulations have little if any
teeth in them and I would urge upon you the importance of making
the confidentiality of such material a subject of statutory law
with clearcut criminal penalties. The purpose of such an act would
be not only to increase the odds of deterring an inappropriate release
of such information but to leave no doubt that this is a criminal
act deserving of no condonation whatever from the community.

I am not suggesting that representations made in these appeals
be kept beyond the recourse of actions for fraud or other mis-—
representations but such exceptions to the strict confidence of
medical and psychiatric information about registrants should be
clearly spelled out in the law and appropriate procedures set up

for dealing with them.

' over

 

LT, J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY

DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE

7 a
Honorable Cornelius E. Gallagher -2- 2/4/70

The act should also provide for a well defined procedure
for the safe-keeping or regulated destruction of such records in
order to avoid the confusion of responsibility that attend the dis-
graceful leak of District Attorney Garrison's records. This one
example should be enough to illustrate the potentiality for abuse
that is connected with the deposit of this kind of information.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JIL/rr