Hiding the Hacking at HealthCare.gov [will not let you know]

National Review ^ | December 23, 2013 | John Fund

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Christmas shoppers were stunned to learn last Thursday that computer hackers had made off with the names and other personal info of some 40 million Target customers. Some of the pilfered information is reportedly being sold on the black market, prompting JP Morgan Chase to limit purchases and cash withdrawals on debit cards owned by recent Target shoppers.

But at least Target informed its customers of the security breach, as it is required by federal law to do. HealthCare.gov faces no such requirement; it need never notify customers that their personal information has been hacked or possibly compromised. The Department of Health and Human Services was specifically asked to include a notification requirement in the rules it designed for the health-care exchanges, but HHS declined.

The Federal Register tells the tale about what happened on March 27, 2012, at a meeting on the issue.

At that meeting, two commenters asked HHS to ensure the exchanges would promptly notify affected enrollees in the event of a data breach or unauthorized access to the exchange’s databases. One commenter suggested that a full investigation be launched each time such a breach occurred, with the goal of holding hackers legally and financially accountable for breaking into the website.

According to a report by the group Watchdog.org, HHS responded: “We do not plan to include the specific notification procedures in the final rule. Consistent with this approach, we do not include specific policies for investigation of data breaches in this final rule.” In other words, the government doesn’t have to tell you about a security breach unless it decides it wants to — despite the fact that private companies are required to publicly disclose any incidents. State laws also require many of the 14 state-run insurance exchanges to disclose such information, but no such law exists for the federally run exchange, which 36 states rely upon.

The Watchdog report notes that it’s through state laws that we’ve learned the most about security problems in the exchanges. In September, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that “an official at MNsure, the state’s new online health insurance exchange, acknowledged it had mishandled private data.” A Minnesota insurance broker received an e-mail containing a trove of confidential information on more than 2,400 people, including their Social Security numbers and business addresses. A staffer at MNsure had accidentally sent the e-mail to him. “The more I thought about it, the more troubled I was,” Jim Koester, the recipient of the data, told the Star Tribune. “What if this had fallen into the wrong hands? It’s scary.”

Last July, Dave Jones, California’s insurance commissioner and a Democrat, expressed his concerns about inadequate security processes on his state’s exchange, one of the better-run ones. If unscrupulous people get hold of Social Security numbers, health records, or other private information of consumers “we can have a real disaster on our hands,” Jones told the AP. He has declined further comment since then.

In Florida, GOP governor Rick Scott is troubled that privacy guidelines will be ignored in the rush to try to enroll his state’s 3.5 million uninsured residents. He wrote to Congress this fall expressing worry that the thousands of “navigators” hired by private groups posed a possible security threat, given that they undergo no federal background checks: “As the push for ‘navigators’ to sign up Floridians on the federal health insurance exchange becomes more frenzied, the need to safeguard the personal information Floridians submit to the ‘navigators,’ and its use in a ‘federal data hub,’ is taking on paramount importance.” The workers the federal government hired to conduct the 2010 census were fingerprinted and underwent background checks. Not so the Obamacare “navigators.”

It’s not as if the Obama administration wasn’t notified of security concerns about its website. MITRE Corporation, an HHS contractor, alerted the agency that 19 unaddressed security vulnerabilities plagued the website before its launch on October 1. Last week, Teresa Fryer, the chief information-security officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told the House Oversight Committee that she recommended that HealthCare.gov not launch on October 1 because of serious security concerns. “My evaluation of this was a high risk,” she told the committee in a private interview. Tony Trenkle, the project manager for the website, declined along with Fryer to sign the Authority to Operate (ATO) license needed to launch the site, which is why it had to be signed by Marilyn Tavenner, the political appointee in charge of CMS. Trenkle retired on November 13 and has declined to talk with reporters. But Fryer said her own concerns about security remain unaddressed because there have been “two high findings of risk” — the most serious warning level — in tests conducted in just the past few weeks. A CMS spokesman says both problems have been resolved.

Few cyber-security experts I spoke with for this article have much confidence that the government will quickly or competently reveal any security breaches on HealthCare.gov. On October 30, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified under oath before Congress that “no senior official reporting to me ever advised me that we should delay” the launch of the website. But Fryer told the House committee that she had personally briefed Sebelius’s top aides on her findings on September 20, ten days before the site launched. While it may be true that Fryer and Trinkle don’t report directly to Sebelius, they both declined to sign off on the ATO needed to launch the site. At best, Sebelius has demonstrated a complete inability to follow or manage the security crisis, though it’s her responsibility to do so.

According to Bruce Webster, a consultant who has advised companies for 40 years on IT issues, the administration’s policy appears to be “security through obscurity,” a largely discredited approach. He told me:

They do not want to talk about their security measures; they do not want to talk about their security breaches; they do not want to inform affected citizens of compromised personal information. Their attitude reminds me of Lily Tomlin’s character Ernestine as an AT&T operator back when AT&T had a monopoly: “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Congresswoman Diane Black, a Tennessee Republican, is fed up with the obfuscation and evasion surrounding HealthCare.gov. She has introduced the “Federal Data Breach Notification Act,” which would require that the Federal Trade Commission notify anyone whose personal information has been jeopardized. “The federal government imposes these same rules on the private sector, yet they have gone out of their way to avoid imposing this basic diligence on their own Obamacare exchange,” she told me.

If the House and Senate have any basic concern for the privacy rights of Americans, they will catapult her bill onto President Obama’s desk ASAP. It is horrible news that Target’s security vulnerabilities allowed hackers to filch the names and personal information of customers. But it will be even worse if the federal government can continue to keep people in the dark about its own security breaches, leaving many Americans with big, fat targets on their backs for identity thieves.

[Mr. K]

""HHS responded: “We do not plan to include the specific notification procedures in the final rule. Consistent with this approach, we do not include specific policies for investigation of data breaches in this final rule.” "

the next question should have been "Why the F$%^ not?"

and splatter this info all over the internet

The Federal Register is turning out to be a gold mine for info about this corrupt administration... there is only one thing to do- stop writing things in the federal register.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

“......... The workers the federal government hired to conduct the 2010 census were fingerprinted and underwent background checks. Not so the Obamacare “navigators.”..................

[Liz]

WRT healthcare.cov security breaches, HHS responded: “We do not plan to include the specific notification procedures in the final rule. Consistent with this approach, we do not include specific policies for investigation of data breaches in this final rule.”

Oh, and BTW, gang...glitch-plagued O/care (and the healthcare.gov rollout) were 2013's top news story...........

Now's a good time for Obama campaign-era articles to go viral---how
Obama bragged about him and his campaign team's tech savvy---how
they ran and won, financed by their clever use of tech.

===========================================

DO IT NOW---nail Michele's schoolmate's company
which raked in bushels of tax dollars for the botched web site.

Toni Townes-Whitley, Senior Vice President at "CGI Federal" for
Civilian Agency programs, healthcare.gov designers is Princeton 1985,
same dumbed-down class as Michelle Obama. Both are members of
the racial separatist organization----Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

"I wake up every day wondering how I ever graduated from Princeton."

======================================================

We, the people, ripped off by CGI for $$hundreds of millions wonder, too.

[I want the USA back]

This is the government, not a business. The government can do what it wants and we have no recourse. Who’s going to fine them or throw them in jail? The corrupt ‘justice’ department?

[Real Cynic No More]

So, they wanna prosecute Snowden for security breaches about government snooping, but they don’t even want to let us know when they build in a means for hooligans to steal private data about anyone who signs up for Obamacare?

[rarestia]

IT security circles believe there are as many as 500 brute force attack attempts against government websites per hour. With Healthcare.gov being such an enormous target, it’s likely that number is much higher. Black Hat analysts believe that 1-in-20 attacks are successful at some level.

Successful attacks could mean someone finds a port vulnerability, is able to access a database, or otherwise gains access to a system that is restricted to government employee/contractor use only.

[Starstruck]

The essence of this article is that if you sign up on-line for ObamaCare you can just assume you have given personal information to hackers. There is no way the programmers who couldn’t create a working web site could keep the information secure.

[Slyfox]

No one I know trusts the Obamacare website. Can you imagine Amazon pulling crap on people to where they did not trust it enough to not buy anything ever again on Amazon?

Obama is trying to sell us something he has no knowledge of, with sexy ads, backed up by some law that intends to stick the IRS after us if we don't comply correctly.

If Obama were selling cell phones using all of his present techniques, he would be the laughing stock on Wall Street.

[null and void]

Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!

To get onto The Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping List you must threaten to report me to the Mods if I don't add you to the list...

[Lazamataz]

I will repeat my vow: I will NEVER sign up on this website, even if threatened with death.

[bgill]

But at least Target informed its customers of the security breach

Nearly a month after it happened.

[Nifster]

just another reason I will NEVER use this crazy a%$ site for anything…. least of all health ‘care’ insurance

[LucyT]

You will not be notified when your ID and personal/ medical information is stolen.

Article, then # 2, 3, 4, 7.

Thanks, Nully.

[no-to-illegals]

Thank You Both and Merry Christmas.

[no-to-illegals]

Thank You and Merry Christmas to you and yours.

[no-to-illegals]

The key is this site is linked, from what I understand to the IRS computers. Have to believe they have us all by now and is only a question of when they will use the information obtained.

[no-to-illegals]

Laz, do you think they have broken open the code to the IRS computers via the healthcare site yet? My best guess is, it is done and they are in.

[no-to-illegals]

Everything designed by the zer0 administration has a purpose and none of that purpose is good.

[Cicero]

If the House and Senate have any basic concern for the privacy rights of Americans, they will catapult her bill onto President Obama’s desk ASAP.

Does anyone think Obama would actually obey this law, even if it was passed and he signed it in order to avoid criticism?