The two very different faces Facebook Inc presents to potential advertisers and lawmakers

Australian Newspaper History Group Newsletter, No 98, July 2018, pp8-9:

98.2.3 Facebook described itself as a ‘publisher’ in 2013

Facebook described itself as a “publisher” as far back as 2013, leaked documents obtained by the Australian reveal. This contradicts the message that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg gave to US Congress, in interviews and in speeches (Australian, 9 July 2018). A 71-page PowerPoint presentation prepared by the then managing director of Facebook, Stephen Scheeler, outlines how the tech giant was the “second-highest reaching publisher in Australia” when compared with traditional media companies such as Nine and Seven. The internal sales document is partly based on data gathered by measurement firm Nielsen as well as confidential internal figures including quarterly revenue targets. There is no mention of Facebook being a publisher in Nielsen’s original report; it categorises Facebook as a “brand” in its Online Landscape Review published in May 2013. A slide in the presentation produced by Scheeler, the most senior executive at Facebook’s Australia and New Zealand business at the time, changed Nielsen’s description of Facebook from a brand to a “publisher”, showing that the social media giant views itself as such.

This is significant because Facebook has long argued it is a tech platform, not a publisher or a media company, when questioned about how it has generated vast profits by siphoning off billions of dollars from the news industry. The admission in the document contrasts with Facebook’s recent public contribution to a high-powered Australian inquiry into the local digital media market. The company repeatedly calls itself a “platform” in a 56-page written submission to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission.

Zuckerberg has persistently rejected the suggestion that Facebook is a publisher, presenting the company as a neutral platform that does not have traditional journalistic responsibilities. In April, Zuckerberg was asked by US senators investigating the Cambridge Analytica data scandal to explain whether his company was a tech company or publisher. Dan Sullivan, a Republican Senator for Alaska, said: “That goes to an important question about what regulation or action, if any, we would take.” Asked by Senator Sullivan if Facebook was a “tech company or the world’s largest publisher” during his second day of testimony on Capitol Hill, the Facebook co-founder responded: “I view us as a tech company because the primary thing that we do is build technology and products.” Senator Sullivan pressed further: “You said you’re responsible for your content, which makes you kind of a publisher, right?” Zuckerberg did not admit Facebook was a media company or publisher, but did say it was responsible for what is posted on its platforms after it emerged that the company allowed Russia to spread disinformation in the US presidential election.

“I agree that we’re responsible for the content. But we don’t produce the content. I think that when people ask us if we’re a media company or a publisher, my understanding of what the heart of what they’re really getting at is: do we feel responsible for the content on our platform? The answer to that I think is clearly yes. But I don’t think that that’s incompatible with fundamentally at our core being a technology company where the main thing that we do is have engineers and build products.”

Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt is not being truthful about My Health Record and he knows it

On 16 July 2018 the Australian Minister for Health and Liberal MP for Flinders, Gregory Andrew 'Greg' Hunt, characterised My Health Record as a "secure summary" of an individual's key health information.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) tells a rather different story.

One where at least 242 individual My Health Records have been part of mandatory data breach reports in 2015-16 to 2016-17, with nine of the 51 reported breach events involving "the unauthorised access of a healthcare recipient’s My Health Record by a third party".

A story which also involves at least 96 instances of Medicare uploading data to the wrong digital health records and also uploading claim information to another 123 My Health Records apparently without the knowledge or consent of the persons in whose names these My Health Records had been created.

There were other instances where MyGov accounts held by healthcare recipients were incorrectly linked to the My Health Records of other healthcare recipients.

Prior to the database name change and system change from opt-in to opt-out there had been another 9 data breaches of an unspecified nature reported, involving an unknown number of what are now called My Health Records.

More instances are now being aired in mainstream and social media where My Health Records were created by DHS Medicare Repository Services or other agents/agencies without the knowledge or consent of the individual in whose name the record had been created.

Healthcare IT News 16 July 2018

If this is how the national e-health database was officially functioning malfunctioning by 30 June 2017, how on earth is the system going to cope when it attempts to create millions of new My Health Records after 15 October 2018?

On the first day of the 60 day opt-out period about 20,000 people refused to have a My Health Record automatically created for them and at least one Liberal MP has also opted out, the Member for Goldstein and member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport Tim Wilson. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull has stated his view that mass withdrawals will not kill the national digital health records system - perhaps because he and his government are possibly contemplating adopting the following three coercive recommendations found amongst the thirty-one recommendations included in the Siggins Miller November 2016 Evaluation of the Participation Trials for the My Health Record: Final Report:

20. Use all mechanisms available in commissioning and funding health services as vehicles to require the use of the My Health Record to obtain funds where practical.

21. Consider ways to require the use of the My Health Record system by all healthcare providers and how to best use the Government’s purchasing power directly (e.g. in the aged care sector), via new initiatives as they arise (such the Health Care Home initiative) or via PHNs commissioning clinical services (e.g. require use of the My Health Record system in all clinical and aged care services that receive Commonwealth funds). Such requirements should have a timeframe within which healthcare providers need to become compliant.

22. Explore with health insurers how they could encourage preferred suppliers and clients to use the My Health Record system as part of their push for preventive care and cost containment.

That the My Health Record is not about improving health service delivery for individual patients is indicated by the fact that a My Health Record is retained by the National Repositories Service for between 30 and up to 130 years after death and, even during an individual's lifetime can be accessed by the courts, police, other government agencies and private corporations listed as research organisations requiring medical/lifestyle information for what is essentially commercial gain, at the discretion of the Secretary of the Department of Health or the Digital Health Agency Systems Operator. See: My Health Records Act 2012 (20 September 2017), Subdivision B - s63 to s70

To put it bluntly, this national database will allow federal government to monitor the personal lives of Australian citizens more closely, enforce civil & criminal law, monetise collated data for its own benefit  and, weaponize the personal information collected anytime it feels threatened by dissenting opinion.

NOTES

OAIC annual reports:

https://www.oaic.gov.au/resources/about-us/corporate-information/annual-reports/ehealth-and-hi-act-annual-reports/annual-report-of-the-australian-information-commissioner-s-activities-in-relation-to-digital-health-2015-16.pdf

https://www.oaic.gov.au/resources/about-us/corporate-information/annual-reports/ehealth-and-hi-act-annual-reports/annual-report-of-the-australian-information-commissioner-s-activities-in-relation-to-digital-health-2016-17.pdf

The Guardian, 22 July 2018:

Australia’s impending My Health Record system is “identical” to a failed system in England that was cancelled after it was found to be selling patient data to drug and insurance companies, a British privacy expert has said.

My Health Record is a digital medical record that stores medical data and shares it between medical providers. In the UK, a similar system called care.data was announced in 2014, but cancelled in 2016 after an investigation found that drug and insurance companies were able to buy information on patients’ mental health conditions, diseases and smoking habits.

The man in charge of implementing My Health Record in Australia, Tim Kelsey, was also in charge of setting up care.data. 

Phil Booth, the coordinator of British privacy group Medconfidential, said the similarities were “extraordinary” and he expected the same privacy breaches to occur.

“The parallels are incredible,” he said. “It looks like it is repeating itself, almost like a rewind or a replay. The context has changed but what is plainly obvious to us from the other side of the planet, is that this system seems to be the 2018 replica of the 2014 care.data.” [my yellow highlighting]

North Coast Voices , 22 July 2018, Former Murdoch journalist in charge of MyHealth records –what could possibly go wrong?

UPDATE

Australian Parliamentary Library, Flagpost, 23 July 2018:

Section 70 of the My Health Records Act 2012 enables the System Operator (ADHA) to ‘use or disclose health information’ contained in an individual’s My Health Record if the ADHA ‘reasonably believes that the use or disclosure is reasonably necessary’ to, among other things, prevent, detect, investigate or prosecute any criminal offence, breaches of a law imposing a penalty or sanction or breaches of a prescribed law; protect the public revenue; or prevent, detect, investigate or remedy ‘seriously improper conduct’. Although ‘protection of the public revenue’ is not explained, it is reasonable to assume that this might include investigations into potential fraud and other financial offences involving agencies such as Centrelink, Medicare, or the Australian Tax Office. The general wording of section 70 is a fairly standard formulation common to various legislation—such as the Telecommunications Act 1997—which appears to provide broad access to a wide range of agencies for a wide range of purposes. 

While this should mean that requests for data by police, Home Affairs and other authorities will be individually assessed, and that any disclosure will be limited to the minimum necessary to satisfy the request, it represents a significant reduction in the legal threshold for the release of private medical information to law enforcement. Currently, unless a patient consents to the release of their medical records, or disclosure is required to meet a doctor’s mandatory reporting obligations (e.g. in cases of suspected child sexual abuse), law enforcement agencies can only access a person’s records (via their doctor) with a warrant, subpoena or court order....

It seems unlikely that this level of protection and obligation afforded to medical records by the doctor-patient relationship will be maintained, or that a doctor’s judgement will be accommodated, once a patient’s medical record is uploaded to My Health Record and subject to section 70 of the My Health Records Act 2012. The AMA’s Guide to Medical Practitioners on the use of the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record System (from 2012) does not clarify the situation.

Although it has been reported that the ADHA’s ‘operating policy is to release information only where the request is subject to judicial oversight’, the My Health Records Act 2012 does not mandate this and it does not appear that the ADHA’s operating policy is supported by any rule or regulation. As legislation would normally take precedence over an agency’s ‘operating policy’, this means that unless the ADHA has deemed a request unreasonable, it cannot routinely require a law enforcement body to get a warrant, and its operating policy can be ignored or changed at any time.

The Health Minister’s assertions that no one’s data can be used to ‘criminalise’ them and that ‘the Digital Health Agency has again reaffirmed today that material … can only be accessed with a court order’ seem at odds with the legislation which only requires a reasonable belief that disclosure of a person’s data is reasonably necessary to prevent, detect, investigate or prosecute a criminal offence…..

Although the disclosure provisions of different agencies may be more or less strict than those of the ADHA and the My Health Records Act 2012, the problem with the MHR system is the nature of the data itself. As the Law Council of Australia notes, ‘the information held on a healthcare recipient’s My Health Record is regarded by many individuals as highly sensitive and intimate’. The National Association of People with HIV Australia has suggested that ‘the department needs to ensure that an individual’s My Health Record is bound to similar privacy protections as existing laws relating to the privacy of health records’. Arguably, therefore, an alternative to the approach of the current scheme would be for medical records registered in the MHR system to be legally protected from access by law enforcement agencies to at least the same degree as records held by a doctor.

Counting Donald Trump's words and how he uses them......

The Star, 14 July 2018:

Click on image to enlarge

There’s a lot of dishonesty: Of all the words Trump said and tweeted as president as of July 1, 5.1 per cent were part of a false claim. 

Expressed differently: Trump uttered a false word every 19.4 words.

Trump’s dishonesty density is increasing: The issue isn’t just that he’s talking more these days. It’s that what he’s saying is less truthful.

In weeks that started in 2017, 3.8 per cent of Trump’s words were part of a false claim. In 2018, it’s 7.3 per cent. 

Expressed differently: in 2017, Trump said about 26 words for every one false word. In 2018, it’s down to about 14 words per one false word.

Newsweek, 8 January 2018:

President Donald Trump—who boasted over the weekend that his success in life was a result of “being, like, really smart”—communicates at the lowest grade level of the last 15 presidents, according to a new analysis of the speech patterns of presidents going back to Herbert Hoover.

The analysis assessed the first 30,000 words each president spoke in office, and ranked them on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scale and more than two dozen other common tests analyzing English-language difficulty levels. Trump clocked in around mid-fourth grade, the worst since Harry Truman, who spoke at nearly a sixth-grade level.

Clifton Gardens-Mosman residents, you have a data breach......

looks like apple got access to a bunch of Australian business regos and just dumped them into maps without validation. Now everyone’s ‘retirement trusts’ (SMSFs) are showing up... pic.twitter.com/2etZKaTYMA

— Maxwell Swadling (@mxswd) July 21, 2018

I spy with my little eye a former "young broker of the year", a number of Self-Managed Superannuation Funds and a slew of private corporations whose registered addresses are not so private anymore.

One of the reasons why local government, traditional owners and communities in the Clarence Valley should be very wary of home-grown and foreign lobbyists, investment consortiums and land developers – Part Three

In July 2018 the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) continues to hear evidence in Operation Skyline.

An organisation called United Land Councils Limited was mentioned as allegedly sending its then sole director Richard Green around New South Wales to talk with local aboriginal land councils concerning certain proposals.

These trips appear to have commenced sometime in 2015.

At least one trip taken in 2016 by Mr. Green was to Yamba in the Clarence Valley, allegedly at the behest of Nicholas Petroulias.

The subject of the alleged discussion/s with the Yaegl community in Yamba was the creation of a large port in the Clarence River estuary.

It shoud be noted that by July 2016 Yaegl elders and the Yaegl Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation were strongly opposed to a mega port being created in the estuary.

Mainstream media has been following current events as they unfolded.....

The Daily Telegraph, 13 July 2018:

AUSTRALIA’S youngest ever tax chief is behind bars after ­allegedly being caught with a wallet full of counterfeit cash, bank cards in different names and dodgy driver’s licences.

Nick Petroulias, once the nation’s second most powerful tax official, appeared before Burwood Local Court as Michael Nicholas Felson earlier this week having been pulled over by police while driving his luxury black BMW X5.

When the officers stopped him in inner-west Sydney on June 20, the 50-year-old is alleged to have handed them a current New Zealand driver’s licence in the name of another alias, Nicholas James Piers.

Police will allege that inquiries revealed Piers was a permanent resident of Australia and allegedly had a number of aliases including Nick Petersen, Michael Felson as well as his real name — Nick Petroulias.

Under his various aliases he is alleged to have held one NSW driver’s licence, three Queensland licences, one from Victoria and another from Tasmania, only two of which were current. He has not been charged over those licences.

Once a Melbourne legal whiz-kid, Petroulias (pictured left) was made assistant commissioner of the Australian Taxation Office at the age of 30. In 2014 he was declared bankrupt with eye-watering estimated debts of $104 million.

On Tuesday he appeared in court via videolink from Silverwater Jail dressed in prison greens as he used his fingers to flatten the “comb-over” hiding his bald head.

Court documents show he has pleaded not guilty to knowingly possessing seven counterfeit Australian $50 bank notes and two counts of possessing bank cards with the intention of committing fraud. He was refused police bail on June 20 and refused bail in Burwood Local Court the next day.

His case has been adjourned to August 14 when the court was told he will make a fresh bail application.

Newcastle Herald, 17 July 2018:

A member of the Awabakal Local Aboriginal Land Council has admitted to giving false evidence to the Independent Commission against Corruption and disobeying orders not to discuss its inquiry with other potential witnesses, after an intercepted phone call was played in which he told former tax official Nick Petroulias about an inquiry into land deals with which the pair were involved.

But Richard Green, former deputy chair of Awabakal, denied he was “tipping off” Mr Petroulias about the ICAC inquiry.

He was reprimanded by Commissioner Peter Hall QC for failing to answer questions directly.

“Mr Green if you're going to obstruct this commission you could be putting yourself into real trouble,” Commissioner Hall said.

On Monday, Mr Green was questioned about whether he spoke to anyone after receiving a summons from the ICAC in January, telling him he would be required to appear before its Operation Skyline public hearings and warning him not to discuss the matter with any other person.

When pressed by counsel assisting the commission, Nicholas Chen SC, Mr Green admitted he had a brief conversation with Mr Petroulias about the summons, but said it was because he had not read the warning contained within the letter.

However minutes later, a phone intercept was played where Mr Green was heard to read the contents of the letter to Mr Petroulias, including the direction to keep the summons confidential.

“That was contrary to the clear and express statement of what you were not permitted to do. Isn't that right?” Mr Chen said. “What's your excuse, Mr Green, for doing that?”

“Like I said before I don't – I haven't got an excuse,” Mr Green responded.

The inquiry heard that Mr Petroulias is in custody on unrelated charges. 

The former tax office high flyer is accused of playing a "central role" in four deals to sell off Awabakal land. The ICAC is investigating whether the deals were a sham to benefit Mr Petroulias, his lawyer partner Despina Bakis, and Awabakal board members Mr Green and Debbie Dates.

Mr Green conceded that his signature appeared on a number of the sales agreements. However he insisted he could not read well and had not read through documents when they were given to him to sign by either Mr Petroulias or Ms Bakis.

He could not explain why he signed the documents without telling other board members about them, despite board approval being a requirement of land sales. He agreed his behaviour was "reckless in the extreme" but denied he benefited financially from it.

"When you've got a person acting like Nick you take notice of them," he said. "And I keep saying over and over if people understand how Aboriginal land councils function they will understand what I'm talking about.''

Newcastle Herald, 19 July 2018:

Luxury cars, gold jewellery, and Foxtel subscriptions were among the items that Richard Green bought with money disgraced former assistant tax commissioner Nick Petroulias provided to him, allegedly for helping facilitate the sale of Aboriginal-owned land in the Lower Hunter.  

The Independent Commission Against Corruption heard on Wednesday that Mr Green, a former land council board member, is alleged to have received an estimated $145,000 between 2014 and 2016 for his personal benefit from Mr Petroulias. 

The money was received via several bank and credit card accounts that were operated in Mr Green’s name, but which appear to have been opened on behalf of him by Mr Petroulias. 

Mr Green appeared confused when presented with statements from some of the accounts and denied any prior knowledge of others. 

The commission is investigating whether a series of deals to sell Awabakal land to developers were a “ruse” to benefit former board members Richard Green or Debbie Dates.

It is also probing whether the first of the deals was a sham set up by Mr Petroulias – using a company he allegedly controlled called Gows Heat – so he could on-sell his interests to other buyers. 

BACKGROUND

25 August 2016 Yamba Port & Rail Scheme: was the NSW Upper House Inquiry into Crown Land misled?

25 September 2016 What's in a name?

20 December 2017 One of the reasons why local government, traditional owners and communities in the Clarence Valley should be very wary of home-grown and foreign lobbyists, investment consortiums and land developers

9 February 2018 One of the reasons why local government, traditional owners and communities in the Clarence Valley should be very wary of home-grown and foreign lobbyists, investment consortiums and land developers – Part Two

1 April 2018 UNITED LAND COUNCILS IN THE NEWS AGAIN: Nicholas Petroulias appears before NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption and represents himself at hearings

16 April 2018 One of those asssociated with the company behind the second push for a Yamba Mega Port allegedly used an alias when giving sworn evidence before a NSW parliamentary committee

  

Former Murdoch journalist in charge of MyHealth records –what could possibly go wrong?

Former news editor of the notorious Newscorp publication The Sunday Times which was involved in the UK hacking scandal, former  Executive Director of Transparency and Open Data in the UK Cabinet Office and then National Director for Patients and Information and head of the toxic government Care.data project which stored patient medical information in a single database. before ending up as the commercial director of Telstra Health in Australia, Tim Kelsey, was appointed as CEO of the Australian Digital Health Agency by the Turnbull Coalition Government to progress the stalled My Health Record national database in 2016 with a salary worth $522,240 a year.

 A curriculum vitae which may go some way to explaining why reports are beginning to emerge of individuals seeking to opt-out of My Health Record finding out they have been registered by stealth in the Australian national database some years ago.

Crikey.com.au, 18 July 2018:

The bureaucrat overseeing My Health Record presided over a disaster-plagued national health record system in the UK, and has written passionately about the belief people have no right to opt out of health records or anonymity.

Tim Kelsey is a former British journalist who moved into the electronic health record business in the 2000s. In 2012, he was appointed to run the UK government’s national health record system, Care.data, which was brought to a shuddering halt in 2014 after widespread criticism over the sale of patients’ private data to drug and insurance companies, then scrapped altogether in 2016. By that stage, Kelsey had moved to Telstra in Australia, before later taking a government role. There was considerable criticism about the lack of information around Care.data, and over 700,000 UK people opted out of the system.

Kelsey vehemently opposed allowing people to opt out — the exact model he is presiding over in Australia. In a 2009 article, “Long Live The Database State”, for Prospect…..

For Kelsey, this was necessary for effective health services…….

Kelsey also expressed his opposition to the anonymisation of data, even of the most personal kind…... 

Kelsey’s vision was of a vast state apparatus collecting, consolidating and distributing private information to enable an interventionist state.

Moreover, he stated others should have access to data…..

ADHA, Kelsey is doing little to fix his reputation for controversy. On Saturday, ADHA released an extraordinary 1000-word attack on News Corp health journalist Sue Dunlevy who correctly pointed out the strong risk to privacy in the My Health Record system. The statement repeatedly criticised Dunlevy, accusing her of “dangerous fearmongering” and being “misleading and ignorant”.

Dunlevy had rightly noted the lack of any effective information campaign about My Health record (exactly the criticism made of Care.data), prompting ADHA to boast of its $114 million campaign at Australia Post shops, Department of Human Services “access points” and letters to health practitioners. It makes you wonder why even News Corp’s Janet Albrechtsen said she’d never heard of My Health Record until last week…. 

Political Cartoon of the Week

@BrookesTimes July 2018