The law in most places in the U.S. (Virginia in my case) is the patient owns the content, the doc owns the paper its recorded on, and the doc may exclude only certain pieces (mostly psychiatric observations). The principle issue is the cost of having the doc's office reproduce the records. It doesn't matter what the docs think--it's settled law.

Actually the state has a very limited say as well. In the U.S., once the cell phone companies, or the WiMAX companies, or just about anyone else has their federal license to use the airwaves, every other government level must reasonably accommodate the licensee. This attempt at NIMBY will fail miserably as soon as it hits federal court. The losers here are the whiny taxpayers who enrich lawyers to argue cases they cannot win.

USAA allows account holders to take a picture of a check with an iPhone and has for about a year. Now if I only had an iPhone... .

The call to the police is what happens when you entrust the education of your children to a bunch of underachieving liberal arts majors. The extraordinarily poor journalism is yet another monument to the very best in liberal arts education. The only good thing to come of this: it will definitely push the obviously bright 11-year-old and his cohorts into the hard sciences and engineering. That's one mark for the good guys.

C'mon now--an American thinks 300 DAYS is a long long time... .