Dear Bureaucrat, my job wants me to lie
I was recently at a medical office (this is in the US), and they had replaced their system, so I had to re-sign the variety of forms that they make you sign, HIPAA disclosure, etc.<p>They gave me an electronic signature pad and asked me to sign. I pointed out that I did not have a document in front of me, and they said that they would give me a copy of the signed form after I signed it. I once again attempted to point out that I was being asked to sign a form that I couldn&#x27;t read, and they said, &quot;oh, it&#x27;s just a privacy disclosure&quot;.<p>A superviser (who was overseeing the migration to the new system) came by and asked what the issue was, and I said I was being asked to sign a form without seeing what I was signing. They very patiently explained to me that it was a HIPAA disclosure, and I said that if I could sign their description, I would be happy to, but I&#x27;m not going to sign a more formal document having only been given a summary of it. They further explained that if I wanted, they could print out a copy of the form after I signed it for my records.<p>Nobody at the office seemed to understand here what my objection was. I overheard other patients saying things like &quot;I&#x27;m not signing something I haven&#x27;t seen&quot;, so I know that I wasn&#x27;t crazy.  Eventually I convinced the person I was working with to turn their monitor around so that I could read the documents before signing them.<p>The thing is that everyone knows that these forms are completely meaningless anyway. I probably would have been better off just signing the forms so that if they ever came up in a court case I could just honestly say that I had never seen the form before.