Free Republic

Experts’ warnings of Obamacare website’s complete lack of security apparently have been justified. The website gave at least 3 unknown individuals access to a woman’s Social Security number, address, and other data that could be used for identity theft. Customer service operators at Healthcare.gov’s 1-800 number told Lisa Martinson about the unauthorized access when she called in to change her password. When Martinson asked for her information to be removed from the site she was told it would take 5 days.

In a weird confluence of the nation's two most pressing issues -- Obamacare and our insane immigration laws -- this week we found out that the tens of thousands of "navigators" hired by the government to enroll people in Obamacare will include convicted felons. Despite some "navigators" having already been exposed as having arrest warrants against them, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has no plans to screen out the criminals. (But rest assured: If your identity is stolen as a result of trying to sign up for Obamacare, no one will be more upset about it than...

HealthCare.gov is ripe for cyber attacks targeting personal information, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee charged Wednesday. The site is vulnerable bcause the federal agency charged with ensuring the security of government websites played virtually no part in its development, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said. Apart from two e-mails and a phone call, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not participate in the Centers’ for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) development of the enrollment portal for the landmark health law, McCaul said. “DHS had effectively no input into the security of HealthCare.gov, despite it being arguably the most...

The launch of the health exchanges has produced diverse images of failure: blank screens, improperly released Social Security numbers; a White House official undermining congressional oversight on September 6, 2013, with a phony security certification; and political appointees blaming their failures on unexpected enthusiasm for the exchanges—a fiction reminiscent of Cold War Soviets touting food lines as evidence of enthusiasm for a five-year agricultural plan causing widespread starvation. One of the most striking recent images was that of a shaken president twice reciting the toll-free number for the exchanges. He did so to encourage frustrated Americans to abandon HealthCare.gov temporarily...

James O’Keefe, the guerrilla videographer who helped bring down ACORN (the “community organizing” group that Barack Obama worked for as a lawyer and trainer) and got NPR’s president fired, is back. This time, his undercover investigators focused on Obamacare’s “navigators,” the nearly 50,000 people who, in the words of the Department of Health and Human Services, “will serve as an in-person resource for Americans who want additional assistance in shopping for and enrolling in plans” on the Obamacare exchanges (at least when they’re finally working). The total value of grants doled out for nonprofits and community organizations to hire navigators...

The man with the unusual superhero-like name has his own fan club on Facebook — and a penchant for getting in trouble.A Singaporean man with an unusual superhero-like name turned out to be a villain who consumed drugs and stole from his brother. Batman bin Suparman, which means Batman son of Suparman in the Malay language, was jailed on Monday for two years and nine months for various offenses, including stealing his brother's automated teller machine card to make withdrawals, media reported.

The Internal Revenue Service sent $4 billion to identity thieves filing fraudulent tax returns in 2012, at the same time it was devoting resources to invasive politically targeted audits of not-for-profit groups, according to a recent report released by Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George. The IRS, which is now overseeing Obamacare’s complicated implementation and collecting its tax penalties, sent 343 tax refunds to a single address in Shanghai, and another 655 tax refunds to one in Lithuania, according to CBS News. A statement detailing a similar report filed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found 1.1 million...

To the list of problems plaguing President Obama’s health care law, add one more — fraud. With millions of Americans frustrated and bewildered by the trouble-prone federal website for health insurance, con men and unscrupulous marketers are seizing their chance. State and federal authorities report a rising number of consumer complaints, ranging from deceptive sales practices to identity theft, linked to the Affordable Care Act. Madeleine Mirzayans was fooled when a man posing as a government official knocked on her door. Barbara Miller and Maevis Ethan were pitched by telemarketers who claimed to work for Medicaid. And Buford Price was...

INDIANAPOLIS - Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana has launched an internal investigation after 13 Investigates discovered the charity has been selling tax returns, medical records, social security numbers and other sensitive information mistakenly donated by its customers. The personal information WTHR found for sale at Goodwill Outlet Stores has angered donors, shocked law enforcement and raised policy questions about the charity, which receives 1.9 million donations annually. The problem was first identified by a longtime Goodwill donor and shopper. Her tip to Eyewitness News triggered an undercover investigation that, according to police, exposes a safety and security threat to anyone...

The Obamacare website has more than annoying bugs. A cybersecurity expert has found a way to hack into users' accounts. Until the Department of Health fixed the security hole last week, anyone could easily reset your Healthcare.gov password without your knowledge and potentially hijack your account. The glitch was discovered last week by Ben Simo, a software tester in Arizona. Simo found that gaining access to people's accounts was frighteningly simple:

There is good news and bad news regarding Healthcare.gov. The good news is that despite the systemic failure infecting much of the site, there is one essential component — the federal data hub — that is working as it was designed. The data hub links federal-agency records together to determine whether an applicant for health insurance is eligible for subsidies. The bad news is that because the data hub is the largest consolidation of personal data in our nation’s history, it will become a magnet for identity thieves. This isn’t idle speculation or fearmongering. Michael Astrue, who was commissioner of...

NORFOLK Two former Sentara Healthcare nurse's aides improperly accessed the personal information of about 3,700 patients as part of an elaborate identity theft scheme that netted more than $116,000, according to hospital officials. Sentara Healthcare's chief privacy officer, Greg Burkhart, announced the scope of the data breach Friday after the second of the two men pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiracy to defraud the government. Although court documents indicate fewer than 250 people fell victim to the scheme, Burkhart said federal investigators have forwarded to the hospital evidence the two men had information on thousands of patients. "We...

A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), provided exclusively to Breitbart News ahead of its release, seeks to counter the talking point that America’s at least 11 million illegal immigrants are “otherwise law-abiding.” The 21-page report, titled “The Myth of the ‘Otherwise Law-Abiding’ Illegal Alien,” analyzes which key laws the authors allege illegal immigrants regularly break and other illegal activity they purportedly engage in on a frequent basis. “For years advocates of amnesty and high levels of immigration have described the illegal alien population as one made up of ‘otherwise law-abiding’ people who have committed no violation...

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/10/04/John-McAfee-On-Obamacare-Tech-People-Will-Lose-Millions-of-Dollars

Oh, it’s seriously bad. Somebody made a grave error, not in designing the program but in simply implementing the web aspect of it. For example, anybody can put up a web page and claim to be a broker for this system. There is no central place where I can go and say, OK, here are all the legitimate brokers, the examiners for all of the states, and pick and choose one. Instead, any hacker can put a website up, make it look extremely competitive, and because of the nature of the system — this is health care, after all —...

An employee of Minnesota’s Obamacare exchange, MNsure, sent an unencrypted file to the wrong person and left 2,400 people’s private information at the mercy of a nearby insurance agent. One exchange staffer’s simple mistake gave insurance broker Jim Koester access to an Excel document of Social Security numbers, names, addresses and other personal data for whole a list of insurance agents. Luckily for the 2,400, Koester was cooperative — and unnerved. “The more I thought about it, the more troubled I was,” Koester told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “What if this had fallen into the wrong hands? It’s scary. If...

A service that sells personal data to identity thieves has been getting its wares from hacked data brokers storing information similar to what Obamacare marketplaces plan to use, setting the scene for fraudsters to collect government subsidies. According to a new investigative report by cybersecurity researcher Brian Krebs, the service, known as SSNDOB, hacked LexisNexis and other large data aggregators that supply ID check information.

..."Some navigator participants plan to engage in enrollment activities that increase the likelihood of fraud or abuse, including door-to-door contacts." ... “The recipient of one of the largest Navigator grants explained in their application that they expected a substantial portion of their program to involve door-to-door contacts,” ... “Another described their work plan as involving ‘door-to-door outreach to 10,000 households per week"

Oh, did we say Obamacare required 30 weeks of training for its “navigators”? We really meant 20: Opening day for the new health-insurance marketplaces is two months away, but efforts to recruit and train workers to help people enroll are barely off the ground in many states. With time running short before enrollment kicks off Oct. 1, the Obama administration last week cut back on training requirements for these ‘navigators.’ Officials were concerned there might not be enough time to do more-extensive training before the health-insurance exchanges open … Three weeks ago, the administration said navigators would need up to...

Today's high-end televisions are almost all equipped with "smart" PC-like features, including Internet connectivity, apps, microphones and cameras. But a recently discovered security hole in some Samsung Smart TVs shows that many of those bells and whistles aren't ready for prime time. The flaws in Samsung Smart TVs, which have now been patched, enabled hackers to remotely turn on the TVs' built-in cameras without leaving any trace of it on the screen. While you're watching TV, a hacker anywhere around the world could have been watching you. Hackers also could have easily rerouted an unsuspecting user to a malicious website...