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WADA hack raises questions about therapeutic use exemptions, security

In releasing private medical information about dozens of Olympians over the past week, the Fancy Bears hack team has sought to reveal “dirty methods” by which athletes — specifically Americans — win their medals.

But Fancy Bears, which the World Anti-Doping Agency has said is a Russian cyber espionage group, has likely fallen short of that goal, experts agreed. Rather, the hackers have exposed other cracks in the anti-doping system — namely a lack of transparency around therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) and concerns about WADA’s ability to protect athletes’ information.

Those concerns come at a fraught time for anti-doping, as the last year has also included two investigations that revealed widespread and state-sponsored doping in Russia.