One purpose of this blog is to call attention to issues that may well be about to assume increased public policy prominence. An example is the seemingly mundane matter of computer security. That includes security for public records.
Recently there have been disconnected stories about foreign efforts to attack military and commercial computers in this country and schemes to steal identities of credit card holders and other people whose personal data have been entered into computers. In practice, just about all of us are affected.
The past week the Obama Administration announced that it would like to put many of the nation's medical records--now on paper or on disparate computer files--into a centrally organized data base. The proposal in principle has merit as a way to make medical cases more portable for patients and to speed insurance and other processes. But it raises questions of cost, of course, and, even more importantly, questions of privacy. Who wants to see their private medical information bandied about on the Internet or, worse, sold to vendors of various kinds?
http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/stories/2009/04/13/daily9.html?ana=from_rss
There appear to be new technologies to prevent such problems and at reasonable cost, but the overall problem of vulnerable computer security--on medical records or national security--is not a minor threat for the country as a whole or for our citizens as individuals. It won't solve itself. It needs high priority notice by government and businesses alike.
One scary new idea is that the president could be empowered to close down the nation's computer systems to protect against cyber-attack:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/government/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216500090
