Obamacare Insecurity

By Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (PA) January 8, 2014 12:20 pm

Since computer security experts told a House committee in November that the HealthCare.gov website should more accurately be called "IdentityTheft.gov," the Obama administration has proclaimed the site (once again) to be fixed.

Not so, according to the CEO of the online security firm TrustedSec, which provided lawmakers with a 17-page report highlighting the website's weaknesses. In fact, the site today is probably a worse identity-theft risk for users, says David Kennedy.

"When you recode the application to fix these 400 bugs ... you're introducing more security flaws as you go along with it because you don't even check that code," says Mr. Kennedy, a former U.S. Marine Corps cyber intelligence analyst.

None of the website's security flaws has been addressed, Kennedy tells The Washington Free Beacon. In his testimony before Congress, Kennedy estimated it would take seven to 12 months to fix those problems -- and that's with HealthCare.gov shut down, according to Forbes.

The alternative is to trust one's personal information to ObamaCare's "navigators," who for reasons unexplained do not undergo background checks.

Buying health insurance while protecting one's personal information from identify thieves shouldn't be a leap of faith. Nor should Americans be forced to comply on nothing more credible than the government's flimsy assurances that its problem-plagued website now is secure.
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