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Australian states are looking to implement real-time prescription monitoring to control prescription drug overdoses and deaths caused by prescription drug use which it is believed causes the death of around 800 Australians per year. The new system, named Drugs and Poisons Information System Online Remote Access or "DORA", will be opt in initially until a national scheme is established. This is the second drug control related system to be introduced by the government to combat prescription drug abuse, or so it is claimed.
In 2018 codeine based medicine was restricted to prescription only, ending the decades of over the counter availability of this common drug used for combating pain. Some people consider the deaths of a few hundred people to be just an excuse to put these systems in place.
Will these systems prevent people's privacy from being violated? Will Australians be forced to have a MyHealthRecord in order to be able to get a prescription filled? What is the end game here? Only time will tell because our government is not saying.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jb on Thursday July 12 2018, @05:14AM (2 children)
No idea whether that AC does or not, but many of us here do.
The "end game" is quite clearly complete resurrection of the Australia Card (proposed in 1985, rejected in 1987, just as scary in 2018), a tool that would have been truly Orwellian in its applications.
The present "GovID" proposal is a 21st century term for a late 20th century idea that really should be have been killed off forever while there were still enough people alive who remembered just how chilling hearing the phrase "your papers, please?" had been in certain parts of the world in the mid 20th century.
The side-shows like "MyHealthRecord" and this latest proposal are just preparatory steps to ease the population in acceptance one step at time this time round (since last time around proved that the all-at-once approach was not going to work) -- it's a textbook example of the "how to boil a frog" strategy...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @03:34PM
Alternately, a government bureaucracy having records of their interactions with you - and having some way of estimating that you are who you say you are - makes government... possible.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday July 12 2018, @07:42PM
The cover letter that came with my Brand-Spankin'-New United States Passport requested that I treat it gently so as not to damage its RFID chip.
My Washington State ID card looks just like that of California. I expect there is now some manner of standards specification that is intended to make IDs and Driver's Licenses far more difficult and expensive to forge.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]