Matt McDonald reports that “piles and piles of medical records, court documents and other personal files” were found in an open dumpster in Taylorsville, Utah yesterday morning.  The documents were found by a dentist, who called the police.

As we’ve heard too many times, police investigated but determined that it would be difficult to pursue any criminal charges. McDonald reports:

It appears the records come from Positive Adjustments, an out-of-business drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic.  The clinic was in a building at 4548 South Atherton, adjacent to the dumpster.  According to other tenants in the building, the clinic has been empty for at least six months.

State workers retrieved the records, but what happens next is anyone’s guess. It would be great if HHS and/or FTC aggressively pursued one of these dumping  cases, to send a strong message that you cannot just close your business and dump sensitive information.

So how about the state of Utah protecting its residents and pursuing this? The state requires retention of records and proper disposal of records. How about they do something?

Or we could all just shrug and let people get away with this once again.