The federal government, as part of Obamacare implementation, is trying to figure out how to get its hands on everyone’s healthcare records.

It may seem like a small boat in the ocean of bureaucratic incursion that is Obamacare, but given the construction of the new law and the priority its authors and supporters place on “bending the cost curve,” allowing government access to American’s most personal records is a critical step in its effort to control healthcare costs at the expense of care.

The path to achieving this is to use treatment outcomes and other health data as instruments of rationing and denial of care through the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research — created by President Obama — and based on European rationing boards.

There are several ways for the government to access our health records, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is already contemplating options.  One would be for the federal government to collect them directly. Another is mandating that the states, as part of Obamacare’s new healthcare exchanges, collect the information and pass it along to the federal government.  A third would be to force private insurance companies to make the data available to the feds.

Notwithstanding any discussion of the government’s right to our private records, none of these are good ideas but not as bad as another option that some have floated; let a private contractor bid on the project to collect and maintain the information on behalf of the government.

Allowing a private company to access everyone’s healthcare records is an open invitation to disaster and a gross invasion of personal privacy.  And more so as about the only company that could handle the job with any degree of competency appears to be Google.

Google’s business model is tracking and collecting preferred sites and other information from its users. Everything from favorite restaurants to marital status is fair game for the Internet behemoth, which uses sophisticated algorithms to identify who accesses the web in a given home — capturing birthdates, age, gender, imputed income and other information useful to determining what products and services might be of interest to a person when they go online.

Google collects and utilizes this information whether it has permission from the user or not, which is where the issue of private healthcare records comes into play.

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From Politico:

Lawmakers are asking the FTC to investigate Facebook following reports that the social network has been collecting data even from users logged out of their profiles.

The concerns from Capitol Hill came Wednesday in a letter by Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), who have repeatedly questioned Facebook’s privacy practices.

The duo expressed deep concern with the findings of one Australian security blogger, who discovered this week Facebook was gathering data even from logged out users whenever they visited Web pages that feature the social network’s signature “Like” button.

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To many conservatives, it may seem surprising that Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) would echo antitrust concerns in his aggressive questioning of Google Chairman Eric Schmidt during this week’s hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. Isn’t that more of a lefty thing? Well, yes and no. The left indeed tends to be altogether too, er, liberal in its use of anti-trust laws to control big business. But conservatives also need to guard America against bad policies and domineering, unfair businesses practices that distort markets and ultimately punish consumers.

I believe this is where Sen. Lee was coming from in his line of argument against Schmidt.

Antitrust aside, Google has danced very close to the line in terms of profiting from other companies’ property rights, for example. In the eyes of many experts, Google also has violated consumer privacy. It has heavily influenced public policy to protect and enhance its bottom line at the expense of other companies. Surely it’s worth asking if Google’s business, lobbying and legal strategies pose threats free enterprise.

As Lee put it, “Whether or not Google formally qualifies as a monopoly under our antitrust laws, one thing is clear. Given its significant ability to steer e-commerce and the flow of online information, Google is in a position to help determine who will succeed and who will fail on the Internet.” American’s have a right to be concerned about the implications of Lee’s observation.

I do not begrudge Google its success. It is an amazing company with a superior search offering and a clever business model. At the same time, Google has built its market dominance and cash position, at least in part, by appropriating, some might say misappropriating, the copyrighted content of others. For instance, Google “scrapes” content from other websites and sells advertising based on that scraped content. Google has also become dominant on mobile phones with its Android operating system, which arguably uses patented technology owned by other companies. Google has also played fast and loose with trademark protection—selling ads around other companies’ trademarks.

Most notoriously, Google generated significant revenue from illegal pharmaceutical advertising—a practice to which it admitted and forfeited $500 million to avoid prosecution.

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It is no secret that the White House is using, with alarming frequency, czars, boards, and executive orders to implement policies that have been met by “inconvenient” obstacles- like the American people and their representatives in Congress.

Following in President Obama’s authoritarian footsteps is the ruling Democratic class of the small state of Connecticut, where Obama-clone Governor Dannel Malloy has recruited, from Yale University, nationally known environmental expert, Daniel Esty, to be the state’s commissioner of the newly combined Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). Of his new recruit, Governor Malloy said, “His experience advising private companies and the president of the United States, coupled with his knowledge of environmental law and policy is second-to-none, and I know this new department will be on the cutting edge of environmental and energy policy with Dan at the helm.”

In 2007 and 2008, Mr. Esty served first as Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign adviser on energy and the environment, and later on as a member of the presidential transition team. So, little wonder Mr. Obama and Commissioner Esty are of the same ilk when it comes to “green” energy and its imposition into the lives of the American people- whether they want it or not.

Mr. Esty sparked considerable controversy recently in the Constitution state through his unprecedented intervention in the matter of Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority’s (PURA) management of a multimillion-dollar application by Connecticut Light & Power Co. (CL&P), which provides electric utility service to most of the state. The application, which involves the rapid installation of 1.2 million “Smart Meters” at residences and businesses over the next four years, was challenged by the state’s Attorney General, George Jepsen, the Office of Consumer Counsel, and an association of industrial energy users. Several weeks ago, Commissioner Esty wrote PURA, upon its draft decision to reject CL&P’s application, asking it to suspend its decision for a few months until his department can “establish the state’s smart meter policy.”

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Being the world’s self-appointed defender of so-called tax havens has led to some rather bizarre episodes.

The bureaucrats at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development threatened to have me thrown in a Mexican jail for the horrible crime of standing in the public lobby of a hotel and giving advice to low-tax jurisdictions.

On a more amusing note, my efforts to defend tax havens made me the beneficiary of grade inflation and I was listed as the 244th most important person in the world of global  finance – even higher than George Soros and Paul Krugman.

But if that makes it seem as if the battle is full of drama and (exaggerated) glory, that would be a gross exaggeration. More than 99 percent of my time on this issue is consumed by the difficult task of trying to convince policy makers that tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy should be celebrated rather than persecuted.

Sort of like convincing thieves that it’s a good idea for houses to have alarm systems.

And it means I’m also condemned to the never-ending chore of debunking left-wing attacks on tax havens. The big-government crowd viscerally despises these jurisdictions because tax competition threatens the ability of politicians to engage in class warfare/redistribution policies.

Here’s a typical example. Paul Vallely has a column, entitled “There is no moral case for tax havens,” in the UK-based Independent.

To determine whether tax havens are immoral, let’s peruse Mr. Vallely’s column. It begins with an attack on Ugland House in the Cayman Islands.

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European courts brought more bad news to Google’s recent reign of error as Switzerland’s top Court ruled that Google’s Street View mapping service violated the privacy of its citizens forcing Google to blur faces and license plate numbers before putting images on the Internet. The Swiss Court stated, “the interest of the public in having a visual record and the commercial interests of the defendants in no way outweighs the rights over one’s own image.” Switzerland joins the United Kingdom, Spain and France all of whom have found that Google violated various privacy laws.

Lately, the United States has gotten into the act.  Last year, the Federal Communications Commission opened an investigation after the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a complaint asking the Commission to investigate violations of federal wiretap law and the U.S. Communications Act. Now, the FTC has launched an anti-trust probe into Google and the Senate will be holding hearings on privacy and Google’s anti-competitiveness nature when Congress returns in September.  But authorities have only begun to scratch the surface of issues relating to whether Google has lived up to its mantra of “Do No Evil.”

One thing is clear–Google’s position on privacy turns America’s long-standing view of the Constitution on its head.

In December 2009, Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, declared about privacy concerns: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines—including Google—do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”

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News that Google’s Street Car Program collected locations of millions of cell phones, laptops and other Wi-Fi devices from around the globe has raised further privacy concerns about the policies of the corporate Giant.

Google’s Street Car program was ostensibly designed to collect and catalog public Wi-Fi locations but instead the company also recorded the addresses and unique identifiers of computers and other devices using those wireless networks and then made the data publicly available through Google.com until just a few weeks ago.

Sound familiar? It should. This isn’t the first time Google has been caught driving around capturing private information from unsuspecting citizens.

Last year, Google’s Streetview cars captured personal information including passwords from Wi-Fi networks in every home the cars drove past.

The last time this happened, Google claimed it was a  “mistake” and blamed a rogue employee. But it seems like there are an awful lot of “mistakes” that result in Google’s acquisition of massive caches of otherwise unobtainable personal data.

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Google has built an empire by collecting, storing and using the personal data of their users. Every email sent through Gmail; every document created with GoogleDocs; every purchase made with Google Wallet; every thing users do is stored on Google’s servers and used for whatever marketing purpose the company sees fit.

The model goes something like this: offer a “free” product and then just sit back and collect all the valuable data users turn over.  Next, store this data forever and finally use the aggregate and historical data to develop behavioral and preference models to sell to advertisers.

But the cache of data that Google has amassed is apparently not enough.  Now the company is seeking to get its hands on personal data from non-Google users and they want their current users to help to get it.  Some might call it crowd sourcing a data heist.

Google’s new product, Google +, is their effort to enter the social media space. Incredibly, they have built a tool to import all the personal information obtained from users’ Facebook accounts onto Google servers—where it will remain forever and be used just as Google uses other data streams.  Not just users’ own private information, rather all of the information on their Facebook accounts including names, addresses, phones numbers, interests, birthdays and websites of their friends.

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News today that the FTC is preparing to issue civil subpoenas as part of a broad anti-trust inquiry into Google’s business practices comes on the heels of a similar—and perhaps more in depth– threat from Congress.

In a letter sent to Google on June 10, the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights Senators Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Mike Lee (R-UT) requested the company provide one of their top two executives to testify at an oversight hearing exploring Google’s business practices.

But so far Google has refused and offered to send their legal counsel instead prompting the Senate subcommittee to threaten subpoenas to compel either Larry Page or Eric Schmidt to appear.

It will be interesting to see how Google responds to the FTC subpoenas. But in the case of Congress, Google’s sudden interest in privacy is irony at its best.

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News that Android and Apple phone communicate collect data on your personal information reveal much about the two companies and their views of the consumer.

Upon the release of the news, Steve Jobs took to the microphone denying Apple products track users calling such accusations “false.”  Emails leaked to the Mercury News tell a different story about Google.  “I cannot stress enough how important Google’s wifi location database is to our Android and mobile product strategy,” Google location service product manager Steve Lee wrote. “We absolutely do care about this (decision by Motorola) because we need wifi data collection in order to maintain and improve our wifi location service.”

This is not Google’s first dust-up regarding privacy violations.  Back in 2003, Google-Watch chronicled major privacy concerns about the company including

1. Google’s immortal cookie: Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it’s years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don’t already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

2. Google records everything they can: For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as “IP delivery based on geo-location.”

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Did Google Money & Influence Buy FTC Decision?

Yesterday we reported that the FTC’s decision to close it’s investigation into the Google WiSpy affair came less than a week after President Obama attended a $30,000-plate fundraiser at the California home of senior Google executive Marissa Mayer. It also came four days after Google, after months of denials, admitted for the first time that its “Street View” video cameras were intercepting emails, passwords and website addresses sent by unsuspecting Internet users.

Now we’ve learned that on September 28, 2009, Becky Burr, another Google lobbyist at Wilmer Hale, emailed White House officials Susan Crawford and Andrew McLaughlin asking for a meeting to request the White House’s assistance in urging the Federal Trade Commission to back off on privacy. Ms. Burr’s email request was as follows (PDF of email exchange can be found here See pages 50-52):

“Wondering if we can get together to discuss the movement away from a ‘notice and choice’ privacy paradigm to a more prescriptive normative approach? This is an emerging theme in the academy, and seems to be gathering favor at the FTC. The move has some worrisome implications for innovation, and it seems important for the FTC to have administration input on this… Let me know if this is something of interest.”

Ms. Crawford replied the same day and suggested that White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin – himself a former Google employee who was sanctioned earlier this year for emailing privately through his Gmail account with his former Google colleagues about policy issues that benefited his former employer — should also be a part of that meeting. As documents unearthed by Consumer Watchdog indicate, Mr. McLaughlin agreed to meet with Ms. Crawford and Ms. Burr, suggesting Friday, October 2nd.

The outcome of that meeting is not clear, and while the email exchange occured before the WiSpy scandal broke, what it clearly demonstrates is Google’s willingness to use its close relationship with senior White House officials to pressure regulatory agencies to back off privacy policies it did not like.

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Would it really be surprising to learn that Organizing for America’s progressive Democrats may be better at vote fraud and stealing elections, as opposed to running information-based GOTV campaign? Probably not.

After all, these are the same people who aired Joe the Plumber Wurzelbacher’s information, put czars in charge of everything and want to get their hands on your health care records under ObamaCare. They may not be looking out for you, but rest assured, they will be looking at you if you oppose them. And since they can’t even seem to protect the information of their friends, just imagine how they might handle yours.

Ahead of the midterms, OFA, which was folded into the Democratic National Committee following Obama’s election, has created an online “virtual” phone bank ostensibly for use by Democratic volunteers. As of Monday, the web page provided the names of Democrats who voted in 2008 but who aren’t always regular voters, plus their phone numbers, ages, locations, and party affiliations. OFA also includes a script to use to encourage those voters to vote (and for the right candidates) on Election Day: “Will you help the president by committing to vote in your local elections in 2010, including the midterm elections on November 2nd?”

Anyone can access the information without so much as logging in.

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A major Internet company is under investigation by more than 30 state attorneys-general for alleged wiretapping violations.  In Europe and now Texas that same company faces anti-trust inquiries on whether it unfairly penalizes its competitors, and its operations face criminal wiretapping inquiries throughout Europe, as well as in Australia and South Korea.

Yet, inside the Beltway, it’s business as usual.  The Obama Administration plans to award the company a sweetheart, no-bid contract for satellite imagery and access to classified data.  After protests, the Administration backtracks, allowing other companies to bid, but still intends to award the contract to the company.  According to industry sources the total spending in that segment on intelligence outsourcing in 2009 was $161 billion.  This is no small contract.

Surprising? Then how about this: This same company’s executives were among the Obama campaign’s largest contributors. Its CEO stumped for candidate Obama, while he and other senior executives ponied up $150,000 to help pay for the inaugural celebration.

But, it gets even better: The CEO and another senior company official serve as technology advisors to the Administration on issues that directly impact their company.  The company’s senior lobbyist has had multiple secret meetings with senior officials at the National Security Council. Meanwhile, the company’s former top Washington lobbyist now works in the White House overseeing national policy over issues on which he used to lobby.

Is it Halliburton? Exxon? Boeing?  Nope.  The company is Google, the CEO is Eric Schmidt and the joke is on us.

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Article I, section 2, of the Constitution requires the populations of the various states to be enumerated every 10 years. The first such census was conducted in 1790; its main purpose was to apportion seats in the House of Representatives among the original 13 states.

The Founders scarcely could have foreseen the stunningly costly and politically sensitive undertaking the census now has become.

There is much at stake. Census figures will be used to shift representation in Congress from states where populations have declined since 2000 to those where they have grown. By 2012, every state also will have redrawn its own legislative district boundaries to reflect recent population trends.

Moreover, the 2010 headcount will determine how every state and community fares over the next decade when federal funds are allocated for a host of social programs, including health care and job training; highway, bridge and tunnel construction; public education; and much else. The jackpot of taxpayer-financed loot to be doled out based on census results now amounts to about $400 billion. With federal spending reeling out of control, billions more likely will be up for grabs.

How much will it cost to count noses this year? No one really knows. The Census Bureau began planning for 2010 immediately after 2000. It is not yet fully ready. Preparations for 2010 have been plagued by fraud, cost-overruns and failures of computer hardware and software.

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Just when we thought flag@whitehouse.gov–which appears to be alive and well when clicked–was scary and invasive–it seems the Obama administration’s Census Bureau has outdone itself.  A US census worker, driving a metallic gray Ford Taurus-type car, has been reported to be combing through the Memphis, TN suburb of Germantown knocking on doors asking people for information on their neighbors.

Yes, you read that correctly. The US census worker was asking how many people lived in the house next door on or about April 1, 2010. As if there wasn’t enough controversy with the census already, this just adds fuel to the fire.

According to the source, here’s what happened when Obama’s Orwellian Big Brother knocked:

The census worker identified himself, showed his credentials, and continued to ask if she knew if the house next door was occupied on April 1 of this year.  The census worker also indicated that he had “difficulty” contacting the neighbors.  After the source confirmed the house was occupied on April 1st, the census worker continued by asking, “How many people occupied that house?”

My source responded by saying, “If they haven’t filled out their census, I can’t help you and I have no intention of telling you anything about my neighbors and your recourse is to enforce your penalties.”

The worker replied, “Well you know why we take the census don’t you?”

My source replied, “Yes, in this case, to redistribute my wealth.  And you are not permitted to ask me about my neighbors.”

The worker went on to say that the census is used to figure out the number of representatives and federal monies that would be allocated.  The source still refused to answer and the census worker was asked to leave the property.

He then proceeded to knock on the other neighbor’s doors, apparently, to get the information he was sent our for.  Let’s just hope that these people are not attorneys because this is a clear violation of the privacy and security procedures of the census to ensure an accurate and secure count.  Nowhere in this information does it say your neighbors can provide census information.

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Mississippi State Senator Chris McDaniel and I have filed a class action lawsuit today, Good Friday 2010, challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as “ObamaCare” and a variety of other less polite euphemisms.

We believe that the PPACA is DOA for several equally important reasons, but only one of which has received much attention. Most folks know by now that Congress has invoked the Commerce Clause to justify this massive expansion of governmental power. Our “Good Friday” Complaint spends many pages discussing how Congress has clearly exceeded the limits of its power under the Commerce Clause. I strongly urge you to read the entire Complaint. What I really want to point out, though, are some things you probably don’t know, and definitely will not like — even if you consider yourself a “Liberal.”

Consider for a moment that you have now been commanded to enter into a contract with an insurance corporation, whether you want to or not, whether you need to or not. Yes, there are many who actually choose to be uninsured. For most, it is simply an economic decision that often works out to the uninsured’s economic advantage. Not always, of course, but that’s the beauty of liberty — you get to make the decisions, and live with the good or bad that comes of them.

Now that you realize that a dictate has been handed down, compelling you to contract with an insurance corporation or else, consider what you have to do. It’s not like you can go to a vending machine, swipe your debit card and pull out a policy. You still have to apply. True, they cannot turn you down, but so what? You still have to give a big, scary, mean corporation a lot of private medical and psychological information about yourself and your family. Then, forever after, the insurance corporation’s bureaucrats will gather this private information without even bothering to let you know. As our Complaint states:

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It’s been several weeks now since the disastrous rollout of Google Buzz’s initial social networking platform.  It was on February 9^ththat Google Buzz unleashed its newest foray into social media to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

According to a post on Google’s Official Blog at the time, Buzz was touted as a service that was built “right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch… Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email with and chat with the most.”

And therein lies the problem…  Almost immediately, Buzz was lambasted for taking huge liberties with Gmail users’ privacy.  By default, the Gmail contacts of each new Buzz user were made publicly available in their Google profiles for the world to see.  The Buzz-o-sphere even included “follow” links, which meant that any prying snoop could harvest the contact lists of other Buzz users as well.

Well, now we’ve learned that one of those who apparently got swept up in the Buzz privacy imbroglio was none other than Andrew McLaughlin, the controversial Deputy Chief Technology Officer in the Obama White House who was formerly Google’s top lobbyist.

McLaughlin works in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and is in charge of all Internet policy for the Administration.  The two key components of OSTP’s mission are the creation of an “Open and Transparent Democracy”, and ironically, “Safeguarding the Privacy of Every American” by … “holding businesses accountable for violations of personal privacy.”  (More on this in a moment.)

McLaughlin’s Buzz profile (which he quickly made private after his contacts were exposed) is enlightening to say the least.  It includes a treasure trove of movers and shakers in high-tech, Internet public policy, and venture capital circles.

But it includes much, much more.  At least 28 of the folks Google Buzz pulled from McLaughlin’s Gmail contact list are employed by…Google!  And, as you can see from the screenshots below (captured before he made his contact lists private) McLaughlin’s Gmail appears to include a “who’s who” of Google senior lobbyists and lawyers from across the globe:

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The University of Basel’s Institute of Governance recently published a map showing the nations most linked to dirty money. What made the map interesting is that only one of the 28 nations listed was a so-called tax haven, thus exposing the left-wing lie that low-tax jurisdictions are somehow hotbeds of dirty money.

A more fundamental question is whether anti-money laundering laws are an effective way of fighting crime.  The evidence is not encouraging. The system costs billions of dollars each year. Banks are forced to set up expensive monitoring systems to snoop on their customers. They are then required to send reports to the government for all large or unusual transactions. Theoretically, these reports are supposed to alert law enforcement to patterns of criminal activity, but since banks are compelled to send millions of reports every year, it is impossible to sift through haystacks of data to find needles of criminal activity. This is why conservatives, such as a former Reagan Justice Department official John Yoder, think the laws do more harm than good. This six-minute video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains why the time has come for politicians to reconsider the current approach.

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