US health and fitness apps operate outside meaningful health privacy regulation

Evidence

In the US, most health and fitness applications are not subject to health privacy laws, and the laws that do exist do not adequately take into account either new digital capabilities or the ferocity of surveillance capitalist operations. Companies are expected to self-regulate by following guidelines suggested by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other government agencies. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 775

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the self-regulatory vacuum that defines the contestable regulatory landscape for the digital economy.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: which specific health privacy laws exist and what gaps leave fitness-app data exposed? The FTC best-practices list is voluntary, so what enforcement levers actually exist?
• XREF: connects to: FDA-approved health apps have understudied data-transmission practices — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 780; Large-scale health-data aggregation can escape existing legal medical protections — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 529; Fitness trackers leak geolocation data that serves no user benefit — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 779

Broader Connections

• Large-scale health-data aggregation can escape existing legal medical protections #corroborates (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 529
• Fitness trackers leak geolocation data that serves no user benefit #exemplifies (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 779
• FDA-approved health apps have understudied data-transmission practices #qualifies (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 780