The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater's student health center is telling patients that, because of the Patriot Act, if government officials ask for their medical records, they'll get to see them, and the patients will never know, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

The Patriot Act language was added to the health center's policy last summer, included in a seven-page policy the school's University Health and Counseling Services distributes to students.

The new policy reads: "In accordance with the Patriot Act, we may disclose your health information to authorized federal officials who are conducting national security and intelligence activities or providing protective services to the president or other important officials. By law we cannot reveal when we have disclosed such information to the government."

Charles Davis, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri who has studied HIPAA and teaches a class on information controls, told the Sentinel he has read privacy statements from hospitals across the country and has never seen a specific reference to the Patriot Act.

"I honestly have never heard that one," he told the Sentinal. "I didn't know there was anything in the Patriot Act specifically pertaining to medical data."

Anuj Desai, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the Patriot Act allows the government access to all sorts of records without the target's knowledge. Before the Patriot Act's passage, he said, government agents had to use the courts to acquire medical records about someone deemed to be a danger.

"The government could always go to a court and get the court to approve a warrant," Desai told the Sentinel. "Warrants can be secret. Prior to the Patriot Act, the government could do this anyway if the records were about the object of the investigation."

The executive director of the Whitewater campus health center, John Macek, said he has no professional opinion about the Patriot Act and that no one should read anything political into the center's new privacy statement. He also said he also hasn't had any calls from government agents seeking information.