Today I was asked for the 10th damn time to build something that could expose a small amount of HIPAA data. The last 9 times I explained how building this feature would, at the least, require a security audit, but nobody understood why I was making such a big deal.

Today, I almost said "Fuck it, if you want to make a blatantly negligent mistake then just reply to this email detailing once more how stupid this is and I'll just build it." If I get asked once more, I still might.

Does that make me an unethical money chasing individual? I dunno, maybe. And maybe I'm wrong and it's not a big deal -- I honestly don't know if that feature is a HIPAA violation or not. But most of all, I just want to keep my job and keep feeding my family.

I wouldn't be too quick to condemn the people that wrote this for Uber.

If you're a software engineer at Uber you can more than afford to feed your family, and you probably have comparable opportunities elsewhere. IMO people making $250k+ a year lose the "I just need to put food on the table" excuse used to justify their immoral job.

What boggles my mind is the notion that a potential HIPAA violation is some grand immorality. It's just information about somebody. It's nice to keep secret, but no great loss to society if it was made public.

Please let me know where you work, so I can avoid any product potentially produced by you.

Wow, you're a real piece of work.

If you can explain why it's so bad somebody's medical info gets leaked out, I'm all ears. As far as I can tell HIPAA makes medicine more expensive. That's bad!

What if you could opt in to healthcare that was 20% cheaper, but was only subject to contractual promises of medical privacy, not the HIPAA. Would you take the deal?

Do society a favor and remove yourself from the industry.

Because he suggested that people be allowed to choose between privacy and cost? For some people, 20% might be a significant cost and they don't care about medical details leaking.