It’s difficult to imagine that a website which still doesn’t have a fully functioning backend might also have a security problem, but here you go:
After promising not to withhold government information over “speculative or abstract fears,” the Obama administration has concluded it won’t publicly disclose federal records that could shed light on the security of the government’s health care website because doing so could “potentially” allow hackers to break in.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied a request by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act for documents about the kinds of security software and computer systems behind the federally funded HealthCare.gov. The AP requested the records late last year amid concerns that Republicans raised about the security of the website, which had technical glitches that prevented millions of people from signing up for insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care law.
This goes to the heart of a tangentially related story about the White House’s obsession with keeping you in the dark:
The civic watchdog group Cause of Action on Monday sued the Obama administration, claiming that presidential attorneys have interfered improperly in the release of public documents under the landmark FOIA law in an effort to curb the release of derogatory information about the White House.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the nonpartisan Cause of Action, names 12 federal agencies that the group says slowed the release of documents so officials could consult with White House attorneys under a review process established in spring 2009. FOIA analysts say this practice never occurred in prior administrations.
Prior administrations weren’t nearly so …imaginative… in the execution of executive powers — which is really saying something.
And then there’s this item, which isn’t directly related to ♡bamaCare!!! or to the White House, but which might prove telling nonetheless:
One of the biggest hospital groups in the US revealed Monday that it suffered a monumental security breach, which possibly led to 4.5 million patients’ data being stolen, according to Reuters.
Community Health Systems, which oversees 206 hospitals in 29 states, said the stolen information includes Social Security numbers, patient names and addresses, telephone numbers, and birth dates, according to Reuters. This is the largest known attack to involve hospital patient information since the US government began tracking these types of data breaches in 2009.
“One possible goal of this attack is to facilitate future targeted attacks,” Elysium Digital data security expert Joseph Calandrino told CNET.
Cyber security — which the Administration is keeping deliberately quite secret — is going to become an even bigger problem, as the ♡bamaCare!!! goal of getting everybody off of job-based insurance and onto the exchanges becomes more real. In the case of HealthCare.gov, the residents of 37 states will eventually have their records stored at a single digital location, the security of which the White House won’t discuss.
That’s one great big fail in the making.
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