Opt out of the national health database or face the consequences

MYHEALTHRECORDS is, in theory, a fine idea. It means that you and any medical professional you consult will have access to an accurate profile of your health. And you, as a citizen can control access to your health records.

But the reality is that if you do not opt out of this new data system, you will be vulnerable to abuses of power by police, security agencies, other government entities, and third parties who obtain your data through leaks and hacking.

In the absence of a human rights law that enshrines a right to privacy and the courts being able to control the actions of agencies seeking access to your personal data, Myhealthrecords represents another government bid to surveil Australians.

Naturally, the bureaucrats in charge of Myhealthrecords are making it difficult for you to opt out. This alone tells you something about the culture behind this project.

A growing number of doctors are raising the alarm. One concern is the abolition of the need for police, security agencies and regulators to obtain a warrant from a court if they want a doctor to hand over a patient’s records. Under Myhealthrecords a doctor will be forced to hand over patient records simply because the police or other agency says it has a reasonable belief it is necessary in the enforcement of “the protection of the public revenue” or to prevent and detect crime and improper conduct.

No Australian’s medical records are safe from misuse by police or agencies such as ASIO. As Trent Yarwood, an infectious diseases physician based in Queensland said in an interview last week; “I don’t think a lot of doctors understand that medical records they upload to My Health Record in good faith — because they want to improve patient care — could potentially be used against people for administrative reasons in a way that they would never ever be happy that their paper records would be used.”

Over the past decade the Coalition and ALP have passed legislation that allows for the mass surveillance of every electronic interaction by every Australian. Now these parties are telling you they want your most sensitive data.

There will be hacking and leakage from the system.

Steve Hambleton, deputy chair of the My Health Record expansion program, told Fairfax Media last week that he can’t “guarantee that there’s not a hole somewhere”. And then, Dr Hambleton sought to reassure Australians by saying “there may be a potential breach but that [will] not be the entire database,” but “it’d be individual records and not all of them; and that’ll be tracked and it will show up.” Wow, how comforting.

As Katharine Kemp, Bruce Arnold, and David Vaile from the University of NSW Law School and University of Canberra Law School noted in a piece on The Conversation last week: “We have witnessed a stream of health data breaches in Australia and

overseas, and the incentives for these breaches are only increasing. Storing records digitally with online access greatly increases their accessibility for criminals, hackers and snoopers. Health records are valuable as a means of identity theft due to the wealth of personal information they contain. They are a huge prize for hackers, fetching a high price on the Dark Web.”

Look at the track record of the Turnbull Government and its predecessors when it comes to security of sensitive data. The Centrelink robodebt debacle springs to mind. Not only was Centrelink incompetent but its Minister, Alan Tudge, used private data of an individual to score political points. Remember the 2017 ABS Census debacle? Or the Immigration Department database breach that put the lives of asylum seekers at risk by revealing their details.

What happens if you find your health data has fallen into the wrong hands? Human rights protection is so poor in Australia you can do little to seek redress. There is no legally enforceable right to privacy that can compensate.

So if you care about your privacy, and that of your children, you will opt out of this latest iteration of the surveillance state. But be prepared for the Government to make it difficult for you to do so. Sue Dunlevy reported in The Daily Telegraph last Wednesday that parents trying to opt out themselves and their children were having difficulties doing so. And individuals are opting out they are finding health records have been created for them by the Government without their knowledge.

“Dr Vanessa Teague, an IT expert from Melbourne University, has revealed she was surprised to discover that Medicare information loaded on her My Heath Record says she visited a Queensland doctor several times even though she doesn’t know him and has never consulted him,” The Daily Telegraph reported.

If you do not opt out of Myhealthrecords then you take a grave risk. You have been warned. Hobart barrister Greg Barns is a human rights lawyer who has advised state and federal Liberal governments.