It doesn’t get much more humiliating: a major backdown slipped out at 8.16pm, in effect acknowledging that what your critics have been saying, and what you fought so hard against, is entirely correct: “The Government will strengthen privacy provisions under the My Health Record Act, removing any doubt regarding Labor’s 2012 legislation,” Greg Hunt admitted last night, after days of insisting, absurdly, that black (or at least black letter law) was white and that the absence of any warrant requirement in the health records legislation meant there was no warrant requirement for police, the ATO and other regulators to access your data.
Presumably Hunt will apologise to the parliamentary library staff who made that exact point before his minions bullied the library into retracting and censoring the article.
Hunt finally took everyone’s, including Crikey’s, advice, and tried to blame the whole thing on Labor, referring repeatedly to “Labor’s 2012 legislation” in just 200 words in his media release. Too little, too late, Greg — you made this disaster your own days ago when you tried to bully critics who raised the issue.
But Hunt’s mishandling of it has served to shine a light on the whole issue of how police and regulators should be able to access private information. The government has in effect admitted that the high standard of judicial oversight is required for access to private health information of the kind that is available in health records. But if it is required for health records, why isn’t it required for access to metadata of the kind the government insists telcos retain about citizens as part of of its mass surveillance scheme?
Metadata isn’t different to your health records in terms of its privacy impact. Health records may provide great detail about a particular medical condition you have, but your phone call data to medical professionals, and your location data from your phone about where you are, will provide a good guide to which professionals you are seeing and for how long. Going to a mental health professional? An oncologist? A reproductive health clinic? When you go and how long for and how often is all available under the government’s data retention scheme.
No warrant is required for that. Why would someone bother going to the trouble of getting a warrant for medical records when they can get very similar information without one?
Metadata isn’t limited to health, of course; it provides that same rich detail about all areas of your life. Where did you sleep last night? Who was there? Whom are you calling and texting, and when? That’s the beauty of metadata. Your health records are only ever about you. Metadata can be about everyone you interact with. No warrant for that. Nothing. Just a one-page pro forma from the police. But for whatever reason, we fetishise health as different. Perhaps this will make more people understand just how much threat governments and corporations pose to their privacy.
As for Greg Hunt, all he’s managed to do is demonstrate what a pack of thin-skinned whingers the Turnbull government is. They react furiously against any perceived slight or objection, no matter how well-founded, and go hunting for those who perpetrated the outrage of criticising them. Why on earth anyone would trust any of their personal information to these bullies is a mystery for the ages.
29 thoughts on “Hunt health record humiliation raises the question: why no warrant for metadata?”
Josephus
August 1, 2018 at 1:27 pmNext step is the Chinese State’s ID card that records how well I conform to State requirements and beliefs, but if my rating is not good then eg my children do not go to University, and I don’t get a good job either- if I am lucky. The SF dystopian writers were pretty prescient. Maybe hide in the forest a la Thoreau or wartime refugees from murderous, tyrannical governments, or as at present try to seek refuge in the few democratic countries, such as ours. Oh, wait…
Nigel Abbott
August 1, 2018 at 1:39 pmTo be fair to the minister, it must’ve been an absolute Greg Hunt of a piece of legislation to draft
Terry of Tuggeranong
August 1, 2018 at 1:43 pmThis is not ‘the Turnbull government’ or ‘the LNP government’ this is the ‘Errol Flynn government’!!!!!
Dog's Breakfast
August 1, 2018 at 1:57 pmStrange how the LNP is so complicit in the destruction of personal liberty.
When it was hard to surveil your citizens, they said it was totalitarian to do so, but now the technology is there they can’t and won’t keep their hands off it.
I say again, as more and more data became available the governments of all western democracies should have been enacting laws AGAINST companies keeping data about you, and ENSURING that data bout you was never shared on any platform to anyone at any time.
Kids and cookie jars!
John Zuill
August 1, 2018 at 2:07 pmI Have spent the years since the invention of the internet wondering why no one seems to care about organising an international consensus on privacy. Is no one else astonished? Is Estonia the only advanced country in the world? What sort of idiot is Hunt? Was this humiliation completely predictable? I would have to say YES! Someone breaks into my credit card twice a year. But lets not talk about privacy, oh no. Are we really going to go on with our digitial identity in slivers all over the internet? Is this really a good idea? I may be stupid but it seems very stupid to me. But like drug laws we and our government continue to believe the situation just needs a few tweaks. I spend my life in complete flabberghastment. We are very silly clearly. We need laws. We need a constitutional right to privacy specific to data and enshrined in law and zealously enforced. We need digital identities that are secure from all unwanted intrusion including the government. We need it now. The situation is about to get worse. WT&^&*(*&^! And we are not even talking about it.
zut alors
August 1, 2018 at 2:17 pmTurnbull & his lacklustre ministers continue to blame Labor for pretty much everything even five years later.
They haven’t held Shorten & the AWU responsible for the drought yet but give it time.
Rais
August 1, 2018 at 2:48 pm“The Government is working hard to mitigate the effects of Bill Shorten’s dastardly drought.” Sort of rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?
MAC TEZ
August 1, 2018 at 7:10 pmHopeless Hunt’s back-down came as a surprise to me but not his claim that “it was a Labor 2012 Legislation Black Hole wot done it “.
Spes
August 1, 2018 at 2:44 pmBrilliant! Thank you for this clarifying and confirming article about metadata.
Vasco
August 1, 2018 at 2:55 pmMHR still isn’t fixed in spite of the sycophantic thanks to Hunt for sorting it out from the AMA pres this morning. Why should an optometrist, registred with AHPRA be able to access information about my reproductive health. No offence to optometrists but the point is only the health provider treating you should be able to access your relevant health info to assist their treatment of you in a specific situation. You should be made aware that the provider is accessing your records. Go back outside Gregory and come in properly.
Peter Wileman
August 1, 2018 at 4:12 pmBetter still Gregory – Go back outside, and stay out.
Nigel Abbott
August 1, 2018 at 9:00 pmI think one of the primary purposes of the database is that doctors other than your own *should* be able to access it: for instance an ER department if you’re unconscious after a car accident while interstate
Administrator
August 1, 2018 at 2:59 pmThirty years ago, communications companies were local monopolies (inefficient, expensive and unresponsive) but they were common carriers. Common carriers were required by law to carry everybody’s traffic at standard published prices, without fear or favour and without regard for content.
Content was none of the carriers’ business. They recorded the numbers of the A and B parties, the time and duration of the call for billing purposes. But not the identity of parties, not the subject or content of the message.
Carriers have lost their carriage monopolies. They have become oligopolies (inefficient, expensive and collusory) and permitted to engage in the content business. It has been a bad deal for consumers, especially in countries lacking anti-trust legislation.
“Metadata” about an act of communication has become more extensive, now revealing much about the parties. It has become of great commercial value to advertisers and for unspeakably intrusive manipulators like Cambridge Analytica.
“Metadata … about everyone you interact with. No warrant for that. Nothing. Just a one-page pro forma from the police.,, Perhaps this will make more people understand just how much threat governments and corporations pose to their privacy.”
Bernard, you are right about the metadata retention and the present breadth of its availability. I hope you are also right that people rebel against the threats to their privacy.
Bref
August 2, 2018 at 3:35 pmYou’re correct, A, but you can’t completely blame corporations for doing what comes naturally; ie screw their customers. Its up to the govt to regulate and both parties have been extremely cavalier or in cahoots with big business or just plain dumb regarding our privacy laws, probably all three.
On the internet we can at least protect ourselves by using a VPN, but there’s little protection on govt sites.
Noel Turnbull
August 1, 2018 at 3:08 pmThere is still a major question about the Government and My Health Record. How did the organisation’s head, Tim Kelsey, come to be appointed in the light of the disaster he presided over in the UK with a similar scheme – one which had to be scrapped in the end? And should not the Speaker be protecting Parliamentary Library staff from bullying by Minister’s staff?