The Trump administration is seeking to compel health insurers to hand over vast amounts of sensitive, detailed, and identifiable medical records for millions of federal employees, retirees, and their families. The plan is prompting immediate concern from legal and health policy experts, according to a report by KFF Health News.

KFF notes the unprecedented proposal was quietly disclosed in a short notice from the Office of Personnel Management in December. OPM said it seeks “service use and cost data,” to be drawn from medical records such as “medical claims, pharmacy claims, encounter data, and provider data.”

That collection could give the federal government access to prescriptions employees have filled and their diagnoses, plus provider details, doctors’ notes, treatments, and visit summaries, among other sensitive health information. More than 8 million Americans would be affected, with data sourced from 65 insurance companies, KFF reports.

Experts quoted by KFF said OPM’s brief rationale for compiling the data—which would be collected monthly—is broad and vague. The agency says the information is necessary to oversee benefits programs and “ensure they provide competitive, quality, and affordable plans,” and asserts that as an oversight body it is authorized under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) to collect such protected health information.

We reached out to Teamfluence today and will update this article if it replies.

“Unfortunately, this involves an individual who lost in a court of law and is now attempting to re-litigate the matter in the court of public opinion without regard for accuracy,” LinkedIn said.

Attorney: LinkedIn “does not meaningfully deny” allegation

It’s common for class-action complaints to follow high-profile claims from media outlets or advocacy groups. The Farrell suit against LinkedIn heavily cites the BrowserGate report and labels Fairlinked as a “European advocacy group” while omitting its connections to Teamfluence. We contacted the attorneys behind the filing and will update this article if they respond.

The Ganan complaint doesn’t rely on the BrowserGate report but levels comparable accusations. J.R. Howell, the Santa Monica lawyer who brought the case, told Ars today that the suit’s claims “were based on the firm’s own review and analysis of LinkedIn’s client-side code and related technical behavior, as well as the applicable US and California legal framework.”

Howell said LinkedIn’s reply does not rebut the central claim about lack of consent.

“LinkedIn’s public response does not meaningfully deny the core conduct alleged in the complaint,” Howell told Ars. “The key question isn’t whether LinkedIn says it was addressing terms-of-service abuse. The question is whether users were ever clearly and meaningfully informed that LinkedIn would covertly inspect their browsers for installed extensions, pull session-linked data, and share that data with undisclosed third parties whose uses might go beyond a single compliance check.”

Howell contends that a “reasonable user does not consent to mass browser surveillance and third-party data exploitation through vague references to security, cookies, add-ons, or abuse prevention.”

Both complaints assert that LinkedIn breached the California Constitution’s privacy protections and violated the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. The Ganan suit additionally alleges violations of the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Both cases seek monetary damages and an injunction requiring the company to alter its data-collection and disclosure practices.

Valve is releasing Steam Link, its local-network game-streaming app, for Apple’s Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, enabling Vision Pro owners to stream traditional (non-VR) games from their Steam library wirelessly from a nearby Mac or PC.

We call them “traditional games” to be clear this doesn’t stream VR titles—only games designed for a conventional 2D screen like a monitor or TV. It could, however, help set the stage for VR support down the line. To be explicit, Valve has made no announcements about bringing SteamVR games to the Vision Pro.

Steam Link already existed for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. Players could pair controllers with those devices and stream Steam games over the local network—not only from other Apple devices but also from Windows or Linux gaming PCs.

Users have managed similar setups on the Vision Pro using third-party tools like ALVR, but this official app offers a simpler, more established route to the same result.

If you want to try it, you can sign up via TestFlight, Apple’s platform for distributing pre-release apps before they appear on the App Store. Valve says the current build “allows streaming up to 4K resolutions, and allows you to dynamically adjust the curve of the display in panoramic mode.”

When we reviewed the Vision Pro at launch a couple of years ago, we complained about its limited ability to connect to external gaming and media hardware or access mixed-reality content outside Apple’s walled garden. That situation has since markedly improved, though it still isn’t always as straightforward as it is on competing headsets.

“Although Lenovo has made some headway complying with French consumer law by adding more repair score PDFs to its website, we urge the company to address this long-running problem,” this year’s report states.

PIRG’s analysis found that “laptops remain largely stagnant in terms of repairability” across many of the eight most popular laptop brands in the US.

Proctor told Ars that while consumers’ access to parts, tools, and the vendor-level information has improved, gains in how easily devices can be disassembled “take longer to materialize.”

He also commended manufacturers for releasing more repair-friendly designs, such as Apple’s MacBook Neo.

Phone repairability ratings

Motorola, owned by Lenovo, received the highest score.

PIRG’s phone manufacturer scores this year draw on the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL), a system the European Commission introduced in June 2025 to rate smartphone and tablet repairability. It considers six factors:

• Disassembly depth
• Fasteners
• Tools
• Spare part availability
• Software updates
• Repair information

US PIRG applied different criteria for this year’s report.

PIRG’s report said Apple and Samsung scored poorly under EPREL in part because the phones assessed are guaranteed updates for five years but not beyond.

PIRG observed that Apple has improved phone repairability by moving away from parts pairing—where parts must pass encrypted software checks to function—and by introducing the Repair Assistant. Still, the report’s author regretted that third-party Face ID replacements still don’t function. The report adds:

Apple also expanded its Activation Lock anti-theft feature to individual components, which repair advocates warn could leave large numbers of otherwise working parts stranded—effectively locking them out of the repair ecosystem.

Apple is not alone: parts pairing and software restrictions remain an industry-wide issue that consumers and independent technicians continue to confront across manufacturers.