The story reads like something out of the old Soviet Union or North Korea.
British Columbia’s very progressive, Liberal-led government has yet another crisis to deal with in its decrepit North Korean-style government-run “health care” system division, today. One of its regional “health care” secretariats, called the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (gotta love that “authority” bit —so totalitarian and socialist!) is said to have been leaving its government-owned, government-run “health care” computer system open to prying eyes, so that health records of all the serfs plebeians proletariat good honest innocent taxpaying people have been exposed to the world. The hole was discovered by the trusty meanderings of another government authority which protects all the citizens, the auditor-general. Back in 2002. We found out about it today. Now that it’s 2010.
Health records system was full of holes
Auditor-general finds that health authority’s computer system left patient files open to all usersBy Jonathan Fowlie, Vancouver Sun
February 11, 2010 4:06 AMBritish Columbia’s auditor-general says he has found serious weaknesses in a computer system used by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and that highly sensitive personal information may have been compromised.
“In every key area we examined—from the management and assignment of user access to security controls within the health authority’s computing environment—we found serious weaknesses,” John Doyle wrote in his report.
Doyle said the problems were so serious he delayed the public release of his report so it “would not further expose the system to potential compromise.”
… The computer program in question is called Primary Access Regional Information System (PARIS), which Doyle said has been used since 2002 to help provide health care services—including residential care, mental health and addiction services and health promotion—to more than 620,000 people.
Doyle found users had unmonitored access to all client records, and there were inadequate controls to prevent external attacks.
“There are insufficient controls to ensure that client information stored on PARIS has been safeguarded from inappropriate disclosure for the personal or financial gain of insiders or external intruders,” he wrote in the report.
Health Services Minister Kevin Falcon thanked Doyle for exposing the problem. …
Then we have some fun with irony in the world of progressives and socialism!
The point-man from the opposition party, Adrian Dix, he of the even further left-wing and all-out fringe socialist New Democratic Party, which news reports should actually more properly call the extreme leftist opposition party or as I always call it, the you’ve got to be kidding party, said, “In an area where privacy is essential, I think this is a significant failing on the part of the government.” No report of him crossing his fingers behind his back while he said that. (On the other hand, the liberal-left media actually has his back, so it’s handy that way.)
It is reported in that same article that Dix then questioned the government’s ability to protect information in its push to create a broad system for electronic health records. He said this with a straight face, as I understand it.
Then the socialist Dix tootled off to demand further “enhancements” and “investments” of taxpayer cash to increase the now almost complete control over and meddling in the lives of every British Columbian and every remaining private company by the beloved and ever so benevolent progressive — but not progressive enough yet — government.
This is, after all, a dream come true for the average progressive and socialist like Dix. Create a government program like the government-run “health care” monopoly. Make it so big and all-encompassing and all-controlling that all citizens are forced, by law even, to totally rely on the government —even for their own basic health care. Make it “too big to fail” if possible!… and then watch as it inevitably and even hopefully appears to fail, as all ideological, social-engineering, centrally-planned, big-government programs with Soviet-style names like “Authority” ultimately do. They are thus provided with a fabulously plausible (to useful idiots only) excuse to enrich the government’s program with even more taxpayer cash to expand it and gain even more control and meddling, in order to “fix it”. “Fix” the problem of their own making — the government’s own idiocy — with more government idiocy and more government spending of more taxpayer cash. To save the day. The government will fix it. Only the government can fix it.
Hi Barack!
This is progressive, Vote liberal. Get more.
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