Category Archives: Privacy

Federal Security and Privacy

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A government data warehouse stores personal information forever on millions of people who seek coverage under President Obama’s health care law, including those who open an account on HealthCare.gov [ObamaMart] but don’t sign up for coverage.

The Feds are proud of that, too:

The health care system, known as MIDAS, is described on a federal website as the “perpetual central repository” for information that the Affordable Care Act authorizes federal agencies to collect.

“Data in MIDAS is maintained indefinitely at this time,” says another document, a government privacy assessment dated Jan 15.

Never mind that

Marilyn Tavenner, the Medicare administrator at the time, told a congressional hearing that the program’s technology infrastructure was designed “to minimize all possible security vulnerability.”

“And we especially focused on storing the minimum amount of personal data possible[.]”

Or that proper information security technique has data destroyed after a fixed period of time, not held in perpetuity, or for as long as convenient to the holder of those data.

And this gem:

The Obama administration says MIDAS is essential to the smooth operation of the health care law’s insurance markets and meets or exceeds federal security and privacy standards.

The Obama administration has shown us, with OPM, just how shockingly low those security and privacy standards are.

Hmm….

American Security

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Thinks about the Obama administration’s current, and ongoing, failure regarding the Office of Personnel Management. After having “lost” the background check data it had “stored” in its computer facility last fall, the Inspector General of OPM said that

parts of its network should be shut down because they were riddled with weaknesses that “could potentially have national security implications.”

OPM didn’t bother. Now we learn that People’s Republic of China hackers (should we start calling them invaders?) entered OPM’s computer network and stole the personal data of all 2+ million Federal employees and the personal data of a skosh under an addition 2 million past Federal employees. As The Wall Street Journal put it,

[T]his isn’t a James Bond movie. It’s a Dilbert cartoon.

The WSJ goes on to say that the Federal bureaucracy can’t protect its data. I say, given the long-term duration of these hacks, including those by Russian and Iranian hacks and that IG recommendation, it’s not a matter “can’t.” The Feds refuse to try.

Are these hacks or an ongoing invasion?

The episode is one more confirmation that China is waging an unrelenting if unacknowledged cyber war against the United States.

Does Obama care at all about the security of the United States or of individual Americans?

A Proper Ruling

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And by Article III judges….

The Second Circuit appellate court has ruled in favor of individual liberty, privacy, and free speech all in one ruling.

[The Second Circuit] ruled Thursday the National Security Agency’s controversial collection of millions of Americans’ phone records isn’t authorized by the Patriot Act, as the Bush and Obama administrations have long maintained.

The Court held, in part,

…we hold that the text of [the law in question] cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and that it does not authorize the telephone metadata program. We do so comfortably in the full understanding that if Congress chooses to authorize such a far‐reaching and unprecedented program, it has every opportunity to do so, and to do so unambiguously. Until such time as it does so, however, we decline to deviate from widely accepted interpretations of well‐established legal standards.

Indeed. The question is a political one and not a judicial one. It may be that Congress will screw this up and authorize the thing, but in that event we have recourse: we can fire the blackguards in an upcoming election and select, instead, representatives who understand our rights as free men.

The court’s ruling was based on one of the core questions regarding this law:

[T]he government takes the position that the metadata collected—a vast amount of which does not contain directly “relevant” information, as the government concedes—are nevertheless “relevant” because they may allow the NSA, at some unknown time in the future, utilizing its ability to sift through the trove of irrelevant data it has collected up to that point, to identify information that is relevant. We agree with appellants that such an expansive concept of “relevance” is unprecedented and unwarranted.

Sorry guys—no fishing expeditions, either.

The Second Circuit’s ruling can be read here.

A Saudi Cease Fire

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Recall Libya and Europe’s ejection of Muammar Gadhafi from power. Shortly into the air campaign supporting Libyan rebel efforts, that campaign nearly ground to a halt because the Europeans—really—ran out of ordnance to drop on Gadhafi and his loyalist forces. The Unites States had to step in and rearm the European forces in order for the campaign to continue.

Earlier this week, Saudi Arabia called a halt to its air campaign in support of the just-overthrown government and against Houthi terrorists in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia declared late Tuesday that strikes against the Houthis would transition to a mostly political phase, but left open the possibility of using military action to halt the spread of the militants.

This was followed the next day by the Houthis continuing their advance, including capture of the government forces’ brigade headquarters in Taiz, the country’s third largest city, and it had been immediately preceded by the terrorists’ capture of a major seaport, apparently in preparation for receiving Iranian seaborne arms shipments.

The US isn’t rearming/resupplying the Saudis as far as I can tell. This bodes ill for the Saudis and for Araby in general—and for Israel, on the back side of Araby from Iran—in the coming confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

I hope I’m being overly paranoid. The Saudis also released a statement:

…the new phase of operations “will support the Yemeni government on the ground as it works toward building a stable and secure Yemen[.]”

We’ll see.

Update: It appears the Saudis, or at least their coalition, are resuming airstrikes against the Houthis.  If true, this would be to the good.

An alternative reason for the ceasefire may be this:

The Obama administration told the Saudis the military campaign should be wrapped up quickly because it was no longer having the desired effect, senior US officials said. In the private messages, the administration said the campaign risked escalating into a broader conflict….

The “broader conflict” which President Barack Obama fears is one with Iran.  Never mind that someone needs to stand up to the Iranians and halt their expansion and their hegemonic dreams, and the Obama administration hasn’t the heart for it.  Never mind, too, that the Yemeni situation is only a small part of those dreams, and Iran is unlikely to force the question here.  Yet.

Assault on Conservatives

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…by the Obama administration is continuing in spades. This time, it’s a naked assault on a conservative Congressman, Jason Chaffetz (R, UT). The Secret Service “leaked” information concerning a decade old application for work with the SS submitted by Chaffetz and which was rejected by the SS. This sort of thing is confidential, which SS employees know full well.

Supposedly, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson personally called Chaffetz after the release of that confidential information, as did Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy.

However.

Chaffetz is Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and he’s

been relentless in his scrutiny of the [Secret Service], particularly in the wake of a March incident where agents returning from a party drove into an active bomb investigation scene. Chaffetz earlier this week subpoenaed the two agents in question—a step Johnson called “unprecedented and unnecessary.”

He’s also been an ardent critic of Obama administration policies all across the board.

Now, it’s certainly true that, in the larger scheme of things, this is a relatively minor matter. But regarding that larger scheme of things, this is a part of that larger scheme.

In light of that, what’s the value of these…apologies?

How do they make Chaffetz, the victim of this assault on privacy, whole?

How do they give any material assurance that this miscreancy won’t be repeated?

What’s really needed is a wholesale replacement of management (I won’t say leadership) of DHS and of the Secret Service.

Remember this in the fall of 2016.