Friday, July 26, 2013
Monday, July 22, 2013
EXCLUSIVE: First Cry of Royal Baby
London -- It's a boy! Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and husband Prince William on Monday welcomed their first child.
The baby boy was born at 4:24 p.m., weighing 8 pounds, 6 ounces. A name has not yet been announced for the child, who is now third in line to the throne.
"Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well," read an official bulletin placed outside Buckingham Palace. Crowds erupted in cheers the moment the news was announced.
The fountains at Trafalgar Square were turned blue.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
WARNING: One-stop shopping into people’s personal affairs.
Move over NSA, another Big Brother database:
‘The Obamacare Data-Hub’
by James S. Robbins | Posted by:
jamesrobbins1 on July 20, 2013 2:37 pm
Would you trust thousands of
low-level Federal bureaucrats and contractors with one-touch access to your
private financial and medical information? Under Obamacare you won’t have any
choice.
As the Obamacare train-wreck begins
to gather steam, there is increasing concern in Congress over something called
the Federal Data Services Hub. The Data Hub is a comprehensive database of
personal information being established by the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) to implement the federally facilitated health insurance
exchanges. The purpose of the Data Hub, according to a June 2013 Government Accountability Office
(GAO) report, is to provide “electronic, near real-time access to
federal data” and “access to state and third party data sources needed to
verify consumer-eligibility information.” In these days of secret domestic surveillance by the
intelligence community, rogue IRS officials and state tax
agencies using private information for political purposes, and police electronically logging every license plate that
passes by, the idea of the centralized Data Hub is making lawmakers
and citizens nervous.
They certainly should be; the
potential for abuse is enormous. The massive, centralized database will include
comprehensive personal information such as income and financial data, family
size, citizenship and immigration status, incarceration status, social security
numbers, and private health information. It will compile dossiers based on
information obtained from the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the
Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration, the Office of Personnel
Management, the Social Security Administration, state Medicaid databases, and
for some reason the Peace Corps. The Data Hub will provide web-based, one-stop
shopping for prying into people’s personal affairs.
Not to fear, HHS says, the Data Hub
will be completely secure. Really? Secure like all the information
that has been made public in the Wikileaks era? These days no government agency
can realistically claim that private information will be kept private,
especially when it is being made so accessible. Putting everyone’s personal
information in once place only simplifies the challenge for those looking to
hack into the system.
However, the hacker threat is the
least of the Data Hub worries. The hub will be used on a daily basis by
so-called Navigators, which according to the GAO are “community and
consumer-focused nonprofit groups, to which exchanges award grants to provide
fair and impartial public education” and “refer consumers as appropriate for
further assistance.” Thousands of such people will have unfettered access to
the Data Hub, but there are only sketchy guidelines on how they will be hired,
trained and monitored. Given the slap-dash, incoherent way Obamacare is being
implemented the prospect for quality control is low. And the Obama
administration’s track record of sweetheart deals, no-bid, sole-source
contracting and other means of rewarding people with insider access means the
Data Hub will be firmly in the hands of trusted White House loyalists.
So if you think the IRS targeting
Tea Party groups was bad, just wait for the Obamacare Navigators to be
unleashed. “Trust us,” the
administration says, no one will abuse the Data Hub. Sure, because that has
worked out so well in the past.
James S. Robbins is Deputy Editor of
Rare and author of Native Americans: Patriotism, Exceptionalism, and the New
American Identity. Follow him on Twitter @James_Robbins
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