Sunday 29 July 2018
Trump World this week
Labels:
#TrumpFAIL,
alternate universe
When it comes to My Heath Record the words horse, stable, door, spring to mind
In January
2016 the Australian Digital Health
Agency (ADHA) became a corporate Commonwealth established under the Public Governance,
Performance and Accountability (Establishing the Australian Digital Health
Agency) Rule.
It has a
board appointed by the Minister for Health in whose portfolio it is situated and the board is the accountable
body of the ADHA.
Currently Mr Jim Birch AM, Chair. Mr Rob Bransby, Dr Eleanor Chew, Dr Elizabeth Deven, Ms Lyn McGrath, Ms Stephanie Newell, Dr Bennie Ng, Professor Johanna Westbrook and Michael Walsh sit on this board.
Currently Mr Jim Birch AM, Chair. Mr Rob Bransby, Dr Eleanor Chew, Dr Elizabeth Deven, Ms Lyn McGrath, Ms Stephanie Newell, Dr Bennie Ng, Professor Johanna Westbrook and Michael Walsh sit on this board.
The executive team is headed by Tim Kelsey as CEO, with Professor Meredith Makeham as Chief Medical Adviser and Bettina McMahon, Ronan O’Connor, Terrance Seymour & Dr. Monica Trujillo as the four executive managers.
ADHA is also
the designated Systems Operator for My
Health Record which currently
holds the personal health information of 5.98 million people across the country
and will add the remaining 19 million after 15 October 2018 unless they opt
out of being included in this national database.
Given the potential size of this database the question of cyber security springs to mind.
It seems that the Australian Digital Health Agency has not been independently audited for cyber resilience by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) ahead of beginning the mammoth task of collecting and collating the personal heath information of those19 million people.
Australian National Audit Office, Potential audit: 2018-19:
Management of cyber security risks in My Health Record
Australian National Audit Office, Potential audit: 2018-19:
Management of cyber security risks in My Health Record
The audit would examine the effectiveness of the Australian Digital Health Agency’s management of cyber security risks associated with the implementation and ongoing maintenance of the My Health Record system.
My Health Record creates a record of Australians’ interactions with healthcare providers, and more than 5.5 million Australians have a My Health Record. The audit would focus on whether adequate controls are in place to protect the privacy and integrity of individual records.It seems that the Australian general public still only has the honeypot's dubious word that it cannot be raided by unauthorised third parties.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has reacted to growing community concern about the number of agencies which can access My Health Records with a vague promise of "refinements" and with this outright lie; "The fact is that there have been no privacy complaints or breaches with My Health Record in six years and there are over 6 million people with My Health Records".
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has recorded complaints and 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".
BACKGROUND
Intermedium, 8 May 2018:
Re-platforming options
for the My Health Record (MHR) system will soon be up for consideration, with
an Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) spokesperson confirming that a
request for information will be released in the next few months to inform plans
to modernise the infrastructure underpinning Australia’s mammoth patient health
database.
An open-source,
cloud-based environment has already
been flagged as a possibility for the MHR by Department of Health
(DoH) Special Adviser for Strategic trategic Health Systems and Information Management Paul Madden at Senate Estimates in May last year. He also said that the re-platforming decision was one of many “variables” that needed to be squared away to accurately gauge how much the MHR system will cost beyond 2019-20.
“The variables in there include the re-platforming of the system to an open source environment, using cloud technology… which will be something we will not know the cost of until we hit the market to get a view on that”, Madden said last year. “Our commitment is to come back to the budget in 2019 to paint out those costs for the four years beyond.”
ADHA is scoping out MHR re-platforming options early, with the existing contract with the Accenture-led consortium not set to expire until 2020. As the “National Infrastructure Operator”, Accenture is tasked with running and maintaining MHR’s infrastructure. The prime contractor works with Oracle and Orion Health to provide the core systems and portals behind MHR.
Accenture was awarded the contract to design, build, integrate and test the then-personally controlled electronic health record system (PCEHR) back in 2011, and has signed 13 contracts worth a total of $709.53 million with DoH in relation to the MHR in that time. With the original infrastructure now over seven years old, ADHA recognise the importance of modernising the environment supporting the MHR....
What happens to medical
records when opting out?
Dr Kerryn Phelps reminds
us that, if people don't opt out, the My Health Records Act
allows disclosure of patients' health information to police, courts and the ATO
without a warrant ("My Health Record backlash builds",
July 25). This would be in addition to "health information such as
allergies, medicines and immunisations" available for emergency staff.
How can the access be
restricted to emergency staff? How can only certain categories of information
be released when allergies and medication are part of general medical notes? I
was not reassured by "serious penalties relating to the misuse of
information do not apply to accidental misuse" on the website. I opted
out.
My GP has told me that, nonetheless, she will be obliged
to upload my records
- which sounds credible since I have formally opted out with the government,
not with my doctor's practice. So what happens -
does my health record get kicked off "the cloud"?
What exactly did I opt out of?
Denise De Vreeze [my yellow highlighting]
Denise De Vreeze [my yellow highlighting]
Labels:
#TurnbullFAIL,
Big Brother,
data retention,
health,
information technology,
privacy,
safety
Saturday 28 July 2018
Super Saturday By-elections, 28 July 2018 - counting is underway
Click on the Australian Electoral Commission links
to see names of the 48 candidates standing for election and their declarations
of eligibility under s44 of the Australian Constitution.
Progressive
voting results will be posted on AEC Virtual
Tally Room at https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/ from 6pm onwards.
Labels:
by-elections
Political Cartoons of the Week
These cartoonists can be found at:
Kasia Babis https://thenib.com/kasia-babis
Ed Hall @halltoons
Cathy Wilcox http://cathywilcox.com.au/
Glen LeLievre https://www.lelievrecartoons.com/
Friday 27 July 2018
Turnbull invites Trump to Australia - expected to arrive in November 2018
This unstable individual is a threat to the US-Australia alliance, a serious security risk, as well as danger to world peace and international trade - an erratic politician Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull insists on publicly supporting as an "American patriot", who he is prepared to follow into a war of Trump's own making and, who he will be hosting on a proposed visit to Australia.
The
New York Times,
18 July 2018:
WASHINGTON — Two weeks
before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified
intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had
personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.
The evidence included
texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a
top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the
Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded
grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence
briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings
that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have
unanimously endorsed.
The shifting narrative
underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly picks and chooses
intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more clear
than this week.
On Monday, standing next
to the Russian president in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump said he accepted Mr.
Putin’s denial of Russian election intrusions. By Tuesday, faced with a
bipartisan political outcry, Mr. Trump sought to walk back his words and sided
with his intelligence agencies.
On Wednesday, when a
reporter asked, “Is Russia still targeting the U.S.?” Mr. Trump shot back, “No”
— directly contradicting statements made only days earlier by his director of
national intelligence, Dan Coats, who was sitting a few chairs away in the
Cabinet Room. (The White House later said he was responding to a different
question.)
Hours later, in a CBS
News interview, Mr. Trump seemed to reverse course again. He blamed Mr. Putin
personally, but only indirectly, for the election interference by Russia,
“because he’s in charge of the country.”
In the run-up to this
week’s ducking and weaving, Mr. Trump has done all he can to suggest other
possible explanations for the hacks into the American political system. His
fear, according to one of his closest aides who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, is that any admission of even an unsuccessful Russian attempt to
influence the 2016 vote raises questions about the legitimacy of his
presidency.
The Jan. 6, 2017,
meeting, held at Trump Tower, was a prime example. He was briefed that day by
John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of
national intelligence; and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National
Security Agency and the commander of United States Cyber Command.
The F.B.I. director,
James B. Comey, was also there; after the formal briefing, he privately told
Mr. Trump about the “Steele dossier.” That report, by a former British
intelligence officer, included uncorroborated salacious stories of Mr. Trump’s
activities during a visit to Moscow, which he denied.
According to nearly a
dozen people who either attended the meeting with the president-elect or were
later briefed on it, the four primary intelligence officials described the
streams of intelligence that convinced them of Mr. Putin’s role in the election
interference.
They included stolen
emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been seen in Russian
military intelligence networks by the British, Dutch and American intelligence
services. Officers of the Russian intelligence agency formerly known as the G.R.U. had
plotted with groups like WikiLeaks on how to release the email stash.
And ultimately, several
human sources had confirmed Mr. Putin’s own role.
That included one
particularly valuable source, who was considered so sensitive that Mr. Brennan
had declined to refer to it in any way in the Presidential Daily Brief during
the final months of the Obama administration, as the Russia investigation
intensified.
Instead, to keep the
information from being shared widely, Mr. Brennan sent reports from the source
to Mr. Obama and a small group of top national security aides in a separate,
white envelope to assure its security.
Mr. Trump and his aides
were also given other reasons during the briefing to believe that Russia was
behind the D.N.C. hacks.
The same Russian groups
had been involved in cyberattacks on the State Department and White House
unclassified email systems in 2014 and 2015, and in an attack on the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. They had aggressively fought the N.S.A. against being ejected
from the White House system, engaging in what the deputy director of the agency
later called “hand-to-hand combat” to dig in…..
Read the full
article here.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
The White House on Monday threatened to strike back at critics of President
Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia by revoking the security clearances of six
former U.S. officials, drawing accusations that he was abusing his power and
aiming to stifle dissent.
Donald Trump is
doing anything he can to hold on to his base ― even employing propaganda tricks
straight out of 1984.
On Tuesday, the
President spoke at a Veterans of Foreign Wars gathering in Kansas City and
told his followers to forget about anything else other than what he tells them.
“Just remember, what you
are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening,” he said.
…ThinkProgress chillingly notes that Trump’s demand
directly correlates to the “final, most essential command” of the ruling
totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984: “to
reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”
Trump decided to jump
headfirst into that belief by telling the crowd, “We don’t apologize for
America anymore. We stand up for America. We stand up for the patriots who
defend America.”
Jake Tapper noted on
Twitter that those comments came eight days after he blamed the U.S. for poor relations with Russia.
Thursday 26 July 2018
Australia 2018: the Coal War continues
It should come as no surprise that in the Coal War being conducted by right-wing ideologues and climate change deniers consumers are predicted to be the losers under the Turnbull Government's National Energy Agreement (NEG) and, that Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is offering the same illusory $550 per annum saving on electricity costs per household promised but not delived by his predecessor Tony Abbott.
A COAG Energy Council Ministers meeting on August 2018 will reveal the final NEG design - a design which won't be published until after this meeting.
What is already broadly known about the NEG design appears to support allegations that the aim of this agreement is to cement the dominant position of fossil fuels in the national energy mix at the expense of renewable energy technologies.
REneweconomy, 20 July 2018:
As pressure mounts for
Australia’s states and territories to finalise their position on the National Energy
Guarantee, a new report has warned the federal government’s policy would fail
to achieve its most basic and important function: to lower energy costs for
consumers.
The report, commissioned
by Greenpeace Australia Pacific, says the Coalition’s NEG would in fact do the
opposite – raise electricity prices; as well as bringing investment in
large-scale renewables to a halt, and do nothing to combat climate change.
Based on analysis
conducted by energy and environment analysts RepuTex, the report models the
impact of the NEG under the government’s 26 per cent emissions reduction
target, compared to a more ambitious 45 percent target.
In both scenarios, as
shown in Figure 17 above, electricity prices are forecast to fall through to
2020 as more than 6GW of renewable energy enters the NEM under large-scale
renewable energy target (LRET).
“The increase in low
cost solar and wind generation will see the electricity supply steadily become
more competitive, with average prices less influenced by high priced gas, and
subsequently falling toward $60 MWh in 2020,” the report says.
But under the NEG, new
investment in renewables falls off a cliff after 2020, while the impact of the
reliability guarantee drives an increase in gas generation, prolongs the
phase-out of coal, and makes it harder for key new technologies, like battery
storage and demand management to compete.
“The result is the
continuation of a coal-dominated market with a fairly static picture for
large-scale renewables investment, with gas providing flexibility to meet
evening ramp ups,” the report says.
“As a result wholesale
prices rise above $70 per MWh after the closure of Liddell, and $80 per MWh
after the expected retirement of Yallourn in 2028.”
A more ambitious
emissions reduction target, however, of 45 per cent, would provide a signal for
investment in more solar and wind, driving prices down by around $20/MWh.
“The competitive
pressure from higher solar and wind energy is modelled to push wholesale prices
lower, eventually resulting in the closure of excess coal capacity” – around
9GW, in total, by 2030 RepuTex says.
Published
on Jul 23, 2018
The
crucial make or break meeting of State Energy Ministers is on 10 August. So if
we want block Turnbull's dirty energy plan, we need to move right now.
Proof positive that money buys government policy?
Liberal MP for Warringah and soon to be Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, in April 2012 at the Institute of Public Affairs 70th Anniversary celebration promised:
“I want to assure you
that the Coalition will indeed repeal the carbon tax, abolish the Department of
Climate Change, abolish the Clean Energy Fund. We will repeal Section 18C of
the Racial Discrimination Act, at least in its current form. We will abolish
new health and environmental bureaucracies. We will deliver $1 billion in red
tape savings every year. We will develop northern Australia. We will repeal the
mining tax. We will create a one stop shop for environmental approvals. We will
privatise Medibank Private. We will trim the public service and we will stop
throwing good money after bad on the NBN. So, ladies and gentlemen, that is a
big “yes” to many of the 75 specific policies you urged upon me…”
The Sydney MorningHerald on the subject of the IPA, 7 April 2016:
Four months from
election and the people scratch their heads. Why, again, are we destroying the
Reef for some billionaire Indian coalminer? Why fund private schools and
de-fund public ones? Above all, how did Australia go from a country where the
poor occasionally stole the goose from the common to one where the rich are
consistently rewarded for stealing the common from the goose? The answer, at
least in part, appears to be the IPA.
The IPA has three member
senators, David Leyonhjelm, Bob Day and James Paterson, and a fourth-in-waiting
with ex-human rights commissioner Tim Wilson running in the lower house. It
also has several state MPs and members with regular media gigs – like IPA
senior fellow Chris Berg (The Drum and Fairfax) and board member Janet
Albrechtsen, whose recent column in The Ozpuffed Paterson and Wilson as
"outstanding warrior[s] for the freedom cause". They all talk a lot
about warriors – which is also what Abbott called Credlin.
But the IPA's real power
is the charisma of wealth. At its 70th birthday gala dinner in 2013, Rupert
Murdoch gave the keynote. NewsCorp's Andrew Bolt was MC and opposition
leader Tony Abbott called the IPA "freedom's discerning friend". Gina
Rinehart, George Pell, George Brandis and Alan Jones were guests…..
Still, the IPA then
seemed like harmless cranks. Now it seems they're all but writing government
policy. Even that's not bad in itself. The wealthy are allowed their clubs, and
governments must get ideas from somewhere. But when the private interest of Big
Money consistently presents as public interest, it's time to worry. Big time.
We've heard much lately
of illegal developer funding, which caused the NSW Electoral Commission to
withhold $4.4 million from the NSW Liberals. But developers aren't the only
group who might seek influence, and brown paper bags are not the only vehicle.
The IPA has long
insisted NGOs should be transparent, but it's notoriously secretive about its
own sources of money. (Executive director John Roskam says its donors get
intimidated). But revealed sources include all the bad boys of Big
International Money: media, oil, tobacco, genetics, energy and forestry. Who
benefits from IPA policy? They do.
In 2012, the IPA
published "Seventy-Five
Radical Ideas to Transform Australia". I haven't done the math, but
I'd say over a third are now law or seriously discussed.
DeSmog reporting on the IPA, 17 July 2018:
Australia’s richest person,
mining magnate Gina Rinehart, has been revealed as a key funder of the right
wing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) – a major pusher of
climate science denial.
Rinehart’s company,
Hancock Prospecting Proprietary Ltd (HPPL), donated $2.3m to
the IPA in 2016 and $2.2m in 2017, according to disclosures made to
the New South Wales Supreme Court.
As part of a
long-running legal dispute over the use of company funds, Gina Rinehart’s
daughter Bianca had served a subpoena to access documents that would have shed
light on the two donations from HPPL to the IPA.
The IPA is an
influential right wing think tank with close ties to Australia’s governing
Liberal Party. IPA fellows regularly appear in the media. The
payments suggest that more than a third of the IPA’s income in 2016 and
2017 was from HPPL – majority-owned privately by Gina Rinehart.
According to Forbes,
Rinehart was the seventh richest woman in the world in 2017 and Australia’s
richest person, with current wealth estimated
to be $17.6 billion.
The IPA is a
registered charity but is not legally required to disclose its funders and has
declined to reveal them in recent years, citing concerns that donors could
be “intimidated”.
According to the court judgement, Bianca’s solicitors had been
provided with a schedule of “donations and sponsorships”
from HPPL where it was disclosed, the judgement said,
“that HPPL paid or provided amounts to IPA in a total of
$2.3 million for the 2016 financial year and $2.2 million in the 2017 financial year.”
The donations also raise
questions about the way the IPA has disclosed the nature of
its revenues.
The IPA's 2017 annual report declared $6.1m of income but
said that “86 per cent” had come from individuals. HPPL’s $2.2m donation
constituted more than a third of the IPA’s income that year.
In 2016, the IPA reported that 91 per cent of donations
were from individuals, but that year HPPL’s $2.3m donation constituted
almost half the IPA's income of $4.96m that year.
Labels:
funding,
IPA,
political rort
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