Dangerous Silence

"'Fools', said I, 'Do you not know?
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you.'
But my words, like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed, in the wells of silence"

- Simon & Garfunkel, The Sounds of Silence

RW Keiser, 22 July 2009

Perhaps the most incredible aspect of the ObamaCare proposal isn't the colossal growth of government, or the arrogant way it's being rammed down our throats with almost no discussion, or even the magical claims that it will simultaneously boost the economy and operate without any new taxes (even though the odds are astronomically good that it will do neither). No, what's most astonishing is the level of silence – even from those who ought to know better and should be screaming at the top of their lungs – on the way this plan will trample one of our most cherished rights, the right to privacy.

This is particularly surprising, because those on the left are usually vehemently opposed to any intrusion into their privacy. Whether it's the Bush wiretapping boondoggle (which wouldn't have even affected most Americans), protecting the right to express their favorite fetishism (sodomy, bestiality, erotic asphyxiation, etc), or just protecting personal information like the kinds of videos they like to rent (not that they would extend this courtesy to, say, a conservative Supreme Court nominee), the left is generally first in line to ensure that their privacy is sacrosanct; never mind that they then want to flaunt those same "private" concerns in the most public way possible, such as Gay Pride parades. In this case, however, the sheep are shockingly silent as the Obamessiah sharpens his knives, right under our noses.

Historically, your medical records have been your most private of all (equaled only by the records of your legal counsel), at least from a legal standpoint. But the Obama administration knows that the Achilles heel of socialized medicine is the flow of medical data. So, under the seemingly benign heading of "information exchange", one of the core pillars of the ObamaCare plan is the creation of a national health data infrastructure. In essence, this is a government-operated database system linking the complete health records of every man, woman, and child who ever gets medical treatment in the U.S. Naturally, anyone who works for any medical provider will have access to this data, so you can forget about keeping your medical history – your daughter's birth control preferences, how many Botox treatments your wife has had, whether your boyfriend prefers Viagra or Cialis, those personal matters you discussed with your psychiatrist – private and confidential. Obama's healthcare database will leak so badly it will make HIPAA look secure.

Wait, this is the government we're talking about. They always have our best interests at heart, right? Sure they do, so don't be surprised when Homeland Security also gets full access to this data. After all, there could be medical patterns to be mined that could find the next terrorist – a bullet graze or fertilizer exposure that was treated, DNA that indicates a racial ancestry that isn't readily apparent – and we're much safer knowing that big momma Fed is monitoring and "protecting" all our precious information.

However, those scenarios are tame compared to the possibility of such a master database being hacked. The nightmare potential of a hacker (like those in Russia or North Korea) gaining access to a complete database of all Americans, with their social security numbers, family history, and essentially every possible aspect that an identity thief could possibly want, is almost too horrific to imagine.

"But," you say, "hackers attack government servers all the time. Why, just a couple of weeks ago several servers, including those of the White House and the Pentagon, were attacked by hackers, apparently out of North Korea. They weren't able to penetrate the servers' defenses. That proves that the government can adequately protect confidential data." Yes, such an attack did happen, and yes, the defenses held. However, there are several critical differences:

Although these hackers didn't crack the servers' defenses, they were successful at a "denial of service" attack. This means that they kept the servers so busy that ordinary traffic couldn't get through. Although the servers were still technically active, to you and I it would have appeared that the servers were off-line. Imagine the effect of a similar denial-of-service on your medical records when you're admitted to the emergency room.
The servers attacked didn't contain any confidential data. There are no state secrets kept on the White House web server on the Internet, no military dossiers on the Pentagon site. Such data is kept physically disconnected from public Internet servers, for the very reason that these servers are attacked on a regular basis. Because such precautions are known, serious hacker groups don't care about compromising the President's web server, except for bragging rights, or to make a political statement. On the other hand, a database of confidential data, perfect for identity theft? That will be under attack from day one by the big crime syndicates in Russia. Obama's database presents too tempting a target for them to resist (from a hacker's perspective, Obama's database might as well arrive with a big "please hack me" bull's-eye painted on it). Remember, this data can't be hidden behind the scenes like Vince Foster's files – the whole point of this database is to share data among medical providers. That means, by necessity, keeping it within reach of Internet thieves.
That same purpose, information exchange, also means that this data store will have thousands of entry points – one at every doctor's office, clinic, hospital, insurer, and who knows where else. When data security experts analyze a system for vulnerabilities, one of the most crucial considerations is the "attack surface" – that is, the number of points that are exposed to attack. The greater the attack surface, the greater the odds that a weak point will be found. Obama's system will have the largest attack surface of any system in history, and it's our precious data that's at risk.

By the way, did you know that most of the funding for this "health data infrastructure" has already been passed into law? That's right, it was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Obama stimulus package), under the heading of "Promotion of Health Information Technology". Remember, this was the stimulus package that was so "urgently" in need of passage that it was pushed through before it could really be analyzed fully. Is it any wonder why?

So it seems to me that this is one issue that Americans of every ideological stripe – conservative, moderate, or liberal – can rally behind. From the ACLU to the GOP, we should be shouting from the rooftops to keep Obama from snuffing out our right to privacy. Obama promised that he would unite Americans on both sides of the aisle. We shouldn't let him down.