There are any number of conspiracy nuts out there (you know - the guys who are out all night looking for black UN helicopters invading the USA), I'm not one of them. But there are some legitimate concerns about letting the government have control over personal information you'd rather not have publicized. This is true no matter how valid the government's need for that information may be. Apart from the reported blackmailing of prominent Americans by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI or Joe McCarthy's House Unamerican Activities Committee, the biggest danger to the rest of us is not so much a malicious government as an incompetent one. With a million employees, the government will have it's share of idiots, fools, and malicious pranksters who have control over such information. If the following story is not enough, remember that the general battle plan for the gulf war was stored on a laptop computer that was stolen from an unattended car just before the air war started. See Colin Powell's My American Journey
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Courtesy of Associate Press via CompuServe's Executive News Service
By EVAN PEREZ Associated Press Writer MIAMI (AP) -- State officials
fired a public health worker who used a confidential list of people
with AIDS and HIV to screen potential dates and offered to do the
same for friends at a bar. William Calvert compromised sensitive
information by using the government database as a reference for
himself and his friends, the Department of Health and
Rehabilitative Services said Wednesday.
o Disks contained 4,000 names of patients. An anonymous
complaint sent to two Tampa-area newspapers and the health department
blamed Calvert.
Although Calvert acknowledged using the database for personal
reference, he contends he did nothing wrong. His disclosure is
under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
o Purpose was to "check out his dates' medical histroy." He also
provided the information to friends about their dates. An AP source
alleged Calvert steered friends away from him when his name is not on
the list of HIV-positive patients.
o Neither Calvert or his lawyer returned calls for comment.
"We certainly believe this is a serious violation of the code of
ethics for state employees," said Elaine Fulton-Jones, spokeswoman
for the HRS office for Pinellas and Pasco counties.
o UPI story states disclosure of the information is a
second-degree misdemeanor punishable by 6 months in the gray-bar hotel
and a $500 fine.
AIDS patient advocates have cited the database leak as proof of the
dangers of allowing the state to keep names of HIV and AIDS
patients.
A state law that was to take effect in January would require health
workers to report to the state the names of HIV patients. HRS put
the law on hold after the disk was leaked.
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Dave Kennedy CISSP Dir Research, Nat'l Computer Security Assoc.