Yes. They committed an illegal act; now they are being sued over it.
They're being sued in civil court because this would be laughed out of criminal court.
So yes, this is a HIPAA violation, probably of unprecedented size and scope.
You don't have any idea whether or not this is a HIPAA violation, so stop pretending like you do.
1. The law makes clear exceptions for information gathered during the course of an investigation.
2. Health information is supposed to be encrypted in transit or at rest, so if the company was in compliance, there's a distinct possibility that the data isn't even accessible.
The government routinely intercepts information that it can't use
in court because of the way it was obtained. They use it as a starting
point. If someone has told their psychiatrist that they were embezzling
funds, for example, and this was in their records, they could use that
information to know where to begin looking and prosecute a crime that
they would not have otherwise known about.
Citation?
I'll leave it to the courts to determine the outcome, but I predict this is the last we hear of this.
If they knowingly took HIPAA-protected records, and the taking of those records was outside the scope of the search warrant, they violated HIPAA. You can spew your pro-government nonsense all you want, but that simple fact cannot be changed.
1. The law makes clear exceptions for information gathered during the course of an investigation.
2. Health information is supposed to be encrypted in transit or at rest, so if the company was in compliance, there's a distinct possibility that the data isn't even accessible.
Citation?I'll leave it to the courts to determine the outcome, but I predict this is the last we hear of this.