Looking for another reason to reject the Democrat government controlled health care plan besides the fact this program has been an abject failure in every country it has been implemented?
Wouldn’t it be terrific if someone, say a neighbor you don’t get along with or a nosy relative, with access to the system could look up your personal health records with a few keystrokes? Think it couldn’t or wouldn’t happen?
Police from communities across the state have repeatedly tapped into the state’s criminal records system to improperly access information on celebrities and “high-profile citizens,” according to a scathing audit released yesterday that also branded the system as obsolete and flawed.
Law enforcement personnel looked up personal information on Patriots star Tom Brady 968 times – seeking anything from his driver’s license photo and home address, to whether he had purchased a gun – and auditors discovered “repeated searches and queries” on dozens of other celebrities such as Matt Damon, James Taylor, Celtics star Paul Pierce, and Red Sox owner John Henry, said two state officials familiar with the audit.
The Criminal Offender Record Information system, with its massive databases of criminal records, driving histories, car ownership, and Social Security numbers, is intended to provide police and prosecutors with complete portraits of individuals who have been arrested or brought into the court system. Reports are available to other users such as landlords and some employers conducting background checks on prospective tenants and job seekers. Access is supposed to be restricted to authorized law enforcement users, who are specially trained.
But the yearlong review by state Auditor A. Joseph DeNucci depicts a system repeatedly accessed by users “without any apparent work-related justification.”
The rest of this boston.com article can be read here>>>
Besides Massachusetts, I wonder how many other states have computer systems in place that make it next to impossible to track down unauthorized access of their personal records databases?
Besides Delaware, I wonder how many other police agencies illegally collect and store records on firearm purchases as a matter of normal business?
If the Democrats ram through their universal health care scam I wonder how many times the personal private medical records of American citizens will be surreptitiously accessed by people who have no legitimate business reason for doing so, such as employees of government agencies, collecting information that can be used for a variety of potentially unethical or political purposes?
Yes indeed, I do wonder.
Update: Breaking news out of Virginia which emphasizes the concerns I wrote about above.
Hackers Threaten to Expose Va.’s Privates
The FBI is on the trail of hackers who claim to have accessed the personal information of millions of Virginians. They’re holding the information hostage, and are threatening to dispurse the sensitive data on the Internet if they don’t receive a $10 million ransom.
The hacker or hackers posted the ransom note on “Wikileaks,” a Web site that allows for anonymous tips about leaks of government information. The note claims that the personal information came from a raid on a state agency’s computer database, and that the hackers are now in possession of 8 million patients’ records, as well as 35 million prescription records. Those records may include Social Security numbers.
Investigators have reason to believe the threats from hackers may be credible; The Virginia Department of Health Professions has confirmed that there was an incident last Thursday where a hacker may have breached system servers.
“We take this very seriously,” Virginia Department of Health Professions Director Sandra Whitely Ryals said. “That’s why we took immediate steps to shut the system down, to secure the system, and to safeguard people’s information.”
Experts say these types of databases are always at risk.
The rest of this article can be read here>>>
