William A. Jacobson
Legal Insurrection
10/24/2011
Creating a centralized electronic medical record is one of the primary goals of the Obama administration (and Bush before that, although not funded) under the theory that a centralized record will lead to greater efficiencies.
Don’t worry, your centralized medical records will be safe.
Unless, of course, someone working for the government decides to steal it and sell it, as happened in Israel:
A contract worker from the Ministry of Labor and Welfare was charged with stealing the personal information of over 9 million Israelis from the Population Registry, the Justice Ministry announced Monday after a media ban was lifted.
The worker electronically copied identification numbers, full names, addresses, dates of birth, information on family connections and other information in order to sell it to a private buyer….
A copy of the software program, devoid of any protection mechanisms, was later obtained by a computer technician who uploaded it to the Internet. He even created a website with detailed instructions explaining how to download and use the Argon program with Israeli citizens’ personal information.
