How do I compellingly advocate for my privacy with doctors and other healthcare professionals?

PurpleDime:

My next step is to contact privacy lawyers to see if they can provide me with an answer. I’ve already reached out to some of them, and none have responded so far. My impression of privacy lawyers is that if they don’t smell money, they are not going to bother.

I don’t know how lawyers (any kind) work in your country, but over here, you usually pay them per consultation, so they’re likely to take your case regardless of the chances of winning (should you continue to sue).

PurpleDime:

But I would like to believe that a lawyer can answer a simple question about privacy laws without charging me.

I don’t know it if would even be legal. In jurisdictions I’m aware of, you need to become their client before they can give you legal advice; otherwise they can be disbarred.

And becoming their client usually involves giving them money (unless in rare cases when they smell the blood and agree to work “pro bono”, expecting much bigger payout from certain-to-win case. But unless you’re going to sue, it is unlikely they’d agree to work pro bono. Doesn’t hurt asking, though).

PurpleDime:

The challenge is, when I reached out to them via email, I did it anonymously.

Yeah, I don’t think asking anonymously is going to work. I wouldn’t “ask them a question” , that sounds like a wrong approach.

You’d need to file a case with them by enumerating how exactly a doctor violated your privacy rights, and require them to take action to force doctor to compliance. You’d need good knowledge of law (or preferably privacy lawyer) to draft that. And you would need to reveal your identity and exact circumstances, with exact timing, copies of unencrypted email etc.

Thus DPA would (should) then be forced to either:

• take action (if in their own interpretation the law has been broken), or

• answer you that the doctor hasn’t broken the law (again with their own interpretation) and that they aren’t going to take action.

That being said, I personally would change a doctor after that. Unless you’re confident that their upholding of Hippocratic Oath is not going to be budged by financial loss and other trouble your complaint has made them.