[LINK] Your Medicare records online

[Stephen Wilson]

Ivan Trundle wrote:
>  On 03/03/2010, at 2:47 PM, Kim Holburn wrote
> > If you have all your medical records online what's to stop your
> > insurance company or a potential employer or the police accessing
> > your medical records.
>
>  Trust. And a sensible system of security, legislation and penalties.
>  As with with paper records.

There's an old saying, "It's good to trust, but it's better not to".

So I would delete trust from your list of protections, and retain (in 
order) security, legislation and penalties.  This is how we 
traditionally secure banks and houses, and also how we ensure safety of 
card, planes, electricity etc.  We don't muck around, we usually mandate 
certain technologies or at least technical standards.

A stark curiosity in e-security and e-health is that actual preventative 
measures are almost totally absent in the regulatory menu.  Under the 
guise of "technology neutrality" we have Internet banking regimes and 
soon Internet health information regimes where there is little real 
security, and certainly no mandated security.  Convenience trumps 
security.  Nominating actual security measures is uncool, for it's 
deemed to be "backing a winner". 

Yet the Health Identifiers Act is actually drafted around a very 
specific design: a centralised directory from which authorised providers 
will look up IHIs for patients.  And therein lies the deep privacy 
problem in the proposed IHI design and legislation. 

Cheers,

Stephen Wilson
Managing Director
Lockstep Group

Phone +61 (0)414 488 851

www.lockstep.com.au <http://www.lockstep.com.au>


Lockstep Consulting provides independent specialist advice and analysis
on digital identity and privacy.  Lockstep Technologies develops unique
new smart ID solutions that enhance privacy and prevent identity theft.