Donate blood and your identity please!

Good citizens who thought they were doing good by giving blood may be feeling a pinch more painful than a needle: identity theft. Thieves stole a laptop from a St. Paul Minnesota blood clinic containing pertinent information on over 268,000 blood donors on November 28th. The information lost contained names, medical history, social security numbers, and addresses. A manager at the blood clinic Laura Kaplan stated "We believe that the data is secure.” The information was protected by several passwords, although the hospital will not say if it was encrypted or not. Police believe the crime was random, and the thieves will not attempt identity theft. Yet if I had recently donated blood in Minnesota I would be very worried. Since the clinic did not proudly state the data was definitely encrypted, I believe it most likely was not. The clinic would want everyone to know if it was. Therefore the thieves, with a little bit of tech know-how, could access the critical information. Even though, they may not want to commit identity fraud, they probably could find a buyer for the valuable data.
Because of incidents like this and others, people will stop volunteering valuable personal information even if it means not being able to give blood. As a frequent blood donor, I will be more hesitant to give blood next time if the administers are not going to take my privacy seriously. Since so many patients depend on blood daily, this will be detrimental to society. Patients will have to wait longer for necessary medical procedures, and run into more complications. It’s bad news for everyone.
To ease people’s concerns, the government should require laptops, and other storage devices containing such private information as someone’s social security number and medical history, be encrypted. Encryption is the when data is converted into code so only an intended viewer can see the actual data. Lives can be ruined when identities are stolen, so the government should do everything they can to protect people’s lives. Likewise, the medical community should not complain about the added expense and regulation because they are supposed to follow the Hippocratic oath which is a promise the medical community makes to protect privacy. Also, people will be more comfortable helping someone by donating blood. Donating blood is always painful, but the pain should not be more than a pinch.

Just say no to (e)democracy

Last week, Dazza Greenwood, a privacy expert at the MIT Media Lab, spoke to our Legal Studies class a great deal about his strides towards promoting internet privacy, and all the great things added privacy could bring. Among the things mentioned, Dazza emphasized the changing role of government. With added privacy, the government could become more and more digital. He gave the example of the changing format of renewing a driver’s license. No longer will one have to wait in line at the RMV, instead one can just go to a website, and fill out some forms quickly. He further added with a center ID verification process, “e-democracy’ could be a great benefit to society. No longer will people have to go to the local town hall or elementary school to vote in a national election. Voters can simply turn on a computer, enter in a username and password, and choose a candidate. Also, people’s voting decisions could be kept anonymous. I am highly skeptical of this development. I know the technology will one day be available so it could work. I doubt people will let it. History is filled with countless examples of leaders fixing elections. Anyone who has any computer experience knows data on a computer is highly manipulative, so it is not illogical to think election results could easily be manipulated. Information technology workers could swing an election one way or another if they were bribed. Safeguards could be installed, but how do you guarantee they are actually working. National elections are far too important not to consider these possibilities. Also, how is it possible to recount electronic votes and have confidence in the results? Less than 8 years ago, the nation watched as the results of the Presidential election were challenged. I saw this as a sign of how great our system of democracy is because actual votes could be confirmed. We would lose that if we switched to electronic democracy. I do not watch the democracy of these country to be trusted to administrators running a software program. Sure it might improve voter “turnout” but at a serious cost.