David,
Yes that might be all too true but it does not mean that we want allow it to continue, allow it to expand and grow, or make it right or wrong.... It simply is. History is full of "Wonderful" rules, laws and common practices that we now look back at with horror and wonder how such times existed.... Sweat Shops and Child Labor, Slavery, Scabs and Company Men Bashing Union Members Heads in with the support and protection of the police. Dread Scott ruling, the present supreme court's ruling in Citizen's United that only unrestricted spending is total free speech, making free speech a commodity to be purchased and traded that most citizens can no longer afford to play in even semi-local elections to be heard... Or many years ago and still touted today by Mitt just the other day that "corporations are entitled to all the same rights and priviledges of actual living breathing human beings".... So many Wrong Headed, illogical, selfish, misguided rules, laws and SOP's all the time...
I am fighting our present personal health insurance carrier right now on a number of issues of how the attempt to control, manipulate and limit customer's ways of paying and then the way that they apply it so that they can inappropriately deny coverage and dismiss patients, members from their roles. A year and a half ago we sent them a payment for April not realizing that we still owed them the previous month as even their statement had a line that said, $0.00 in previous balance, so I guess we are good up to this point. We used and consumed services and then the termed us retroactively as of Feb 1st sayiing that we certainly did pay for April but never paid for Feb or March.... Instead of doing what ALL businesses do as SOP of applying most recent payment to oldest outstanding balances.. So we were not that far behind but sure we did owe them some premiums at the time... So in early April they Term us retroactively back to Feb 1st???? After we have consumed services when I went on line and confirmed coverage and policy was in effect on the days in question???
But this was simply "Their" internal policy and how they do things. And to synch the deal of admission of guilt, guess who like 6 months later sent us back a check for the entire amount of our premium that we paid labled April 2010???? yeah this Carrier Emblem, HIP, GHI did.... Gee I guess you really did pay us good money. Oh and they wanted us to first pay them for the months that had past that we could never go back in time and use when we had to punt and do without certain care or meds, raid our samples closet and make use of second level choices from the less expensive generics list... Like past premiums and months of coverage is something that one can put away in a closet to save and then use on a rainy day like canned goods...
So to have federally run, servers that now store and compile, are the one and only central repository for a centralized, single chart, no less a chart that can never go away, is insane. Again this is much like so many other things that we forget and just allow the new tech and it's capabilities to create new standards and policies instead of insisting upon that although tech and databases have a great and meaningful role to play in improving the preservation and the movement of important data, information, We need to insist, Demand that many of the great original old fashioned rules of how and what to share remain in place, and NOT to compromise them simply because the means of creating, storing and sharing has changed.... So we went from quill pens to typewriters, that doesn't mean that our expectations of privacy and how we handle them and address them, enforce them, and penalize them should change..... And so IMHO and those of other well respected electronic privacy experts the same kind of sound and reasonable logic should apply here as well....
Did you ever expect when you were using a credit card back in the 1980's that one day a prespective employer would be "Legally Allowed" access to your personal and private credit rating and that it would be a protected behavior to look at that credit rating and even use it as part of a basis as to whether or not to hire or not hire you???? You're not even their employee yet, not even on their payroll system, insurances and there they are allowed to rummage thru your credit history and see what magazines or hobbies you have, who you purchase what from and whether or not you pay your monthly bills how??? Give me a break, that is Insane and should never be allowed to stand, and yet, there you have it, today in Modern America.... So then how long until we just allow our slippery slope of Medical Privacy to slide so low that the same kind of scenario will soon be playing out in human resources dept's all across the country, with potential employers rummaging thru our medical records just to get a job as a tech writing software, processing labs, teaching kids, collecting garbage for the local city???? How long and how low should we go????
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/opinion/protect-our-right-to-anonymity.html?_r=1&scp=69&sq=sept%2013,%202011&st=cse
Here is a link from an article in the NYT's from yesterday, an op-ed about using GPS's to track our whereabouts and not just on one single car chase or to find a fugative for a day or two... But to actually track a man's movements for a full month to build a case based upon his movements to prove he was engaging in certain illegal activities... Letting the GPS do the leg work and detective work for them, and NOT being required to at least get some sort of a warrent to prove probably cause before collecting and monitoring this person so percisely and over such a long period of time... That is what bothers me so much.... One can watch for cars, familiar faces, the same car or truck keeps showing up..., but to listen in on my coversations you should need a warrent, and to plug into my cell phone or my car's GPS, to do long term more than perhaps 24 hour chasing, one should need a warrent for that too... Do we and should we have an expectation of privacy and to not feel constantly watched and monitored, our whereabouts constantly monitored and Recorded too via GPS's on our phones and cars, police and security cam's with very accurate facial recognition software???? When have we allowed the gov't to go to far that we no longer recognize this once great and "Free" land that we used to be able to be so proud of and now personally I am very ashamed of and worried about.... This stuff is so frightening...
And then if one were able to start piecing this all together, the GPS's, the Cam's, the purchasing history and credit ratings, and the medical records.... Like is this not the supposed Stalinistic horror of a police state we supposedly fought an entire super tense, dangerous and expensive Cold War to defeat??? And now here we are only 40-50 years later we have become a much more efficent and modern version there of???? What the Hell is going on here, and why the Hell doesn't this bother almost any and ALL Americans is the question I have???? I should not be in the minority, I should be in a super majority here. I have history, case history, the constitution and the Law on my side of this arguement...
The cost of freedom really is constant vigilance and we have fallen asleep at the wheel, warm and soft in our cyber beds and fed our cyber drugs to dull our senses...
Beware, and don't say I didn't tell ya so.....
Paul
