I know I’ve been kvetching about this before, but the coming massive invasion of privacy by the federal government is going to make the NSA scandal look like a walk in the park:
With just six weeks until scheduled implementation of the ObamaCare health insurance exchanges, delays by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in verifying its system’s security measures threaten to put the personal records of millions of Americans at risk. At the heart of this problem is the Federal Data Services Hub, a massive information sharing network set to launch on October 1st.
The data hub will contain volumes of Americans’ personal information and will be shared among numerous federal agencies, including the IRS, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as state governments. It will be used and accessed by thousands of bureaucrats as they seek to enroll people in the ObamaCare exchanges.
The potential for abuse of personal information is staggering, and the recent scandals involving many of these same government agencies makes this massive collection of personal information even more unsettling. The data hub is a prime target for identity thieves and cyber attacks, and it requires the strongest possible security measures to prevent breaches.
But what is astonishing is that the Obama administration is moving forward with implementation of the data hub even though there has been no assurance that proper security measures will be in place.
They don’t care about security. This is a massive, frontal assault on privacy, and the idea is to just ramrod it through (before the October 1 deadline) and basically drop the bomb and get the damage done before people have time to muster a defense. (Perhaps a new overseas war will provide cover?)
There’s barely been time to do the usual mundane things like slap together a basic Wiki post, but at least that acknowledges how unprecedented this is:
The Federal Data Services Hub is a database of United States persons that will be used to facilitate the government backed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act health coverage program.[1][2] It is one of the largest consolidations of personal data in U.S. history.[2]
[…]
Origins
It is built by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Health and Human Services (HHS). It combines data on income and employment from IRS records, health and entitlements from HHS records, identity from Social Security, citizenship from Department of Homeland Security records, criminality from Department of Justice records, and residency from state records.[1] Also involved will be the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Office of Personnel Management, the Peace Corps, and state Medicaid administrations.[2]
What they are doing is handing over access to the most personal details of your life to a bunch of untrained, un-vetted people called “navigators,” who will be allowed access to the database:
“The federal government is planning to quietly enact what could be the largest consolidation of personal data in the history of the republic,” noted Stephen Parente, a University of Minnesota finance professor.
Not to worry, says the Obama administration. “The hub will not store consumer information, but will securely transmit data between state and federal systems to verify consumer application information,” it claimed in an online fact sheet .
But a regulatory notice filed by the administration in February tells a different story.
That filing describes a new “system of records” that will store names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, taxpayer status, gender, ethnicity, email addresses, telephone numbers on the millions of people expected to apply for coverage at the ObamaCare exchanges, as well as “tax return information from the IRS, income information from the Social Security Administration, and financial information from other third-party sources.”
They will also store data from businesses buying coverage through an exchange, including a “list of qualified employees and their tax ID numbers,” and keep it all on file for 10 years.
In addition, the filing says the federal government can disclose this information “without the consent of the individual” to a wide range of people, including “agency contractors, consultants, or grantees” who “need to have access to the records” to help run ObamaCare, as well as law enforcement officials to “investigate potential fraud.”
The “navigators” are basically community activists — who will have your most sensitive personal data available at the touch of a button:
And now we’re learning of an immense barrel of worms in the enrollment process that is terrifying privacy and civil liberties advocates and many states’ attorneys general. All this when, according to Gallup, a growing majority of Americans disapprove of the law, 52% last month, up from 46% when Obama was reelected.
The unspoken goal of ObamaCare implementation is, of course, to sign up as many millions of Americans as quickly as possible to get the new federal money flowing out as soon as possible, theoretically creating a hardcore cadre of entitlement-addicted citizens opposed to the law’s repeal, reform or defunding.
The administration is already spending hundreds of millions of dollars encouraging people to enroll to get your taxpayer dollars, even if they were happy with the health plan they had. This includes having public school teachers take valuable class time to train pupils to sell ObamaCare to parents and family. Never mind English and math.
Have you heard of “navigators”? No, not Ferdinand Magellan or Vasco de Gama. These new battalions of government employees are being hired to help applicants enroll quicker for this Rube Goldberg-monstrosity called ObamaCare. Isn’t that thoughtful?
These navigators will have absolutely zero background in insurance. But they’ll be full of advice on what’s best for you. And given Obama’s record of truthfulness, who wouldn’t trust a total government stranger implementing Obama’s health plan?
In theory, these public employees will provide unbiased information to potential applicants about the best plans for them. To do this, navigators will assemble all the necessary personal information for each applicant from the vast new federal government data center.
It too is late and will have dubious standards about who can access all this data.
That’s the data center authorized to plug into more than a half dozen major federal bureaucracies, including the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Social Security and — wait for it! — the Internal Revenue Service.
Planned Parenthood employees will soon have access to a vast federal database of sensitive information, including the Social Security number, tax form, bank account, and medical records of every single American citizen as the president seeks their help in implementing ObamaCare.
Consumers purchasing health insurance through health care exchanges will speak to “navigators,” whose job is to help them find the best coverage and determine if they are eligible for a federal subsidy.
The Obama administration has awarded Planned Parenthood more than $655,000 of taxpayer funds to hire “navigators” for the president’s health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). State affiliates in Iowa, Montana and New Hampshire were among the 105 organizations receiving $67 million in federal grants.
HHS will not require background checks or fingerprinting of employees, and a previous criminal conviction – including one for identity theft – does not necessarily disqualify an employee from becoming a navigator.
Navigators and their assistants will have access to the federal data hub, an online nexus containing information from the Department of Health and Human Services and seven federal departments: the IRS, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Defense Department, the Office of Personnel Management, the Veterans Health Administration, and the Peace Corps.
To expedite hiring before the exchanges go live on October 1, the administration has scaled back screening and cut new employees’ training from 30 hours to 20.
This has raised concerns nationwide. Thirteen state attorneys general sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on August 14 saying the administration had “failed to adequately protect the privacy” of American citizens.
This should upset everyone, and not just anti-abortion activists. The idea of hiring political cronies to access the personal data of Americans is one of the most chilling developments I have seen in my life, and I’ve been around for a while.
This has to be stopped. But how? I worry that people are so demoralized and overwhelmed that they cannot mount an adequate defense. Too much stuff is being thrown at them.
Comments
5 responses to “Navigators wanted! Now hiring activist busybodies with political axes to grind!”
civil disobedience on a massive scale-don’t participate pay the tax
It was never about socialized medicine. The way it was pushed through Congress was in itself totalitarian. I wrote on this blog at the time:
We’ve watched while more and more private decision making is taken away. Both political parties are to blame. But the health care bill’s byzantine progress through the legislative process seems to have crossed a line. The outrage is there on the right. But
coupled with it is a hands rubbing glee at the prospect of political gain in November. [Which they DID get and then blew it.]
It’s almost as if they are wishing this thing to become law. Just like the left, they are disconnected from the reality of what this will mean to the average person. Do they think that a few tweaks here and there after passage will right the injustice?
http://classicalvalues.com/2010/03/emergency_class/#comments
Its simple we need a constitutional amendment to a right to privacy. If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear! Even though we have made everything illegal! If thats not good enough for you support right to privacy amendment with teeth 25 years for first offense. Right to lifers say we can’t have right to privacy as that would protect right to abortion I say give right to lifers a post natal abortion!
There has to be a nation-wide effort to educate people not to talk to anyone claiming to be a “navigagtor”.
The term itself smacks of Scientology.
[…] Navigators wanted! Now hiring activist busybodies with political axes to grind! […]