The Australian government is releasing sensitive medical records to police, raising privacy concerns for lawyers and health privacy advocates, the Guardian reports. The Department of Human Services uses internal guidelines to determine how and when to release information to police upon request. No warrant or court order is necessary. The guidelines, which have not been made public, were obtained by The Medical Republic publication through a freedom-of-information request. DHS confirmed it granted 2,677 police requests from September 2017 to 2018. Isaacs Chambers' Peter Clarke called the process “the antithesis of proper privacy protections.”
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