Australia's Privacy Commissioner has ruled that the Australian Department of Health unintentionally breached Australian Privacy law when it published the possessively de-identified health data of 10 per cent of the population from Medicare Benefits Scheme (MBS) and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).
When researchers at the University of Melbourne re-identified the data they matched at least seven well known Australians including members of parliament by crossing the data with other sources such as Wikipedia, Facebook and news websites. The Australian Health department must in future review and enhance its data governance and release processes with oversight from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The dataset containing the health data was around 3 billion lines long covering 2.5 million people and was downloaded around 1500 times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @02:12AM (3 children)
You can sue a government, but you'll be fighting against the guys who make up the rules as they go, and they'll just declare more income at the point of a gun in order to socialise the compensation, anyway.
Look how they've explicitly tried to identify members of parliamen.
That's their only hope of getting justice: Begging the overlords to notice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @02:23AM (1 child)
If you're a taxpayer, that would be suing yourself. Individual accountability, always, it's the only way to keep the establishment honest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @02:37AM
Is to periodically hold their feet over a fire. And not the metaphoric kind. The alternative is for a few of them to be set on fire periodically when they screw up, to provide a brightly ingrained reminder to other politicians to be competent in their jobs or GTFO. The current issues in governments around the world are lack of accountability due to their constituents not maiming or murdering a few of them in order to get them to mend their ways.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @09:20AM
The Australian Government is run by committees who don't have any skin in the game that they play. Failure means promotion. They simply don't give a damn and won't be paying a price, but 2 million people will have no idea why their identity keeps getting stolen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @03:36AM (2 children)
Crikey, it's me lost medical records! I thought I'd have to pay again to repeat all those expensive tests! And the results are negative! Thanks, mate! You saved me a bundle, you did!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday April 01 2018, @04:10AM (1 child)
No, the exact opposite happened. Now even the dingos know that your dongo has herpes and genital warts.
You will never get laid again, except by abbos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @04:51AM
No the results were negative. I didn't catch chlamydia from a dingo's dongo. The good news is now I don't have to pay double to get my lost test results because the department of health helpfully leaked my data.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Sunday April 01 2018, @06:28AM (1 child)
Well, did anybody "fudge" a little bit when they handed you those "three simple health questions" in order to get insurance?
You had a wart removed as a kid and did not state that? Or maybe you did not report a little scare you had when you were having an anxiety attack over something, thought it was your heart, and went to see the doctor. Its now in your records. Did you volunteer that on your "three simple health questions"?
They now get to keep the premiums you paid, and not pay out a dime. You will not be told this until you submit your claim.
Now, the onus will be on you to prove otherwise
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday April 01 2018, @10:25AM
If it's Medicare there aren't any questions - apart from "what's your Medicare number?"
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday April 01 2018, @07:53PM
Someday, somehow, America will have a Privacy Commissioner too.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @11:41PM
Do they even have that many people?