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The UCSF Hospital outsources its medical transcription work to a company in Sausalito. That company maintains a roster of subcontractors, including a woman in Florida named Sonya Newburn. Ms. Newburn also used subcontractors, including a man in Texas named Tom Spires. Spires also used one or more subcontractors, including a woman in Pakistan named Lubna Baloch.

With me so far? Well, it seems that in early October Ms. Baloch took exception to the fact that she hadn't been paid by Spires and couldn't contact him and did what, to her, was an eminently reasonable thing. She wrote the following to UCSF:

"Your patient records are out in the open to be exposed, so you better track that person and make him pay my dues or otherwise I will expose all the voice files and patient records of UCSF Parnassus and Mt. Zion campuses on the Internet."

I wonder how often things like this are going to happen before it dawns on people that sending sensitive intellectual property (including not only this kind of thing, but tax returns, company finance information, and key software) out to people who are likely to send it on to God-only-knows-who in who-knows-where is not really a very bright idea.