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This weekly blog is to explore the larger issues around Digital Health, data security, data privacy, AI / ML. technology, social media and related matters.
I will also try to highlight ADHA Propaganda when I come upon it.
Just so we keep count, the latest Notes from the ADHA Board are dated 6 December, 2018! Secrecy unconstrained! This is really the behaviour of a federal public agency gone rogue – and it just goes on! When you read this it will be near 15 months of radio silence, and worse, while the CEO, COO and the Chief of Staff have gone, still no change. I wonder will things improve at some point – so far seems not?
Note: Appearance here is not to suggest I see any credibility or value in what follows. I will leave it to the reader to decide what is worthwhile and what is not! The point is to let people know what is being said / published that I have come upon.
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Digital giants to face data checks under ACCC inquiry
Facebook, Google, Apple and other digital giants will be forced to explain how they use the data of consumers for highly personalised advertising under an 18-month inquiry by the competition watchdog.
Josh Frydenberg has directed the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission to shine a light on how internet information is shared with advertisers, and whether the ads are providing value for money for businesses.
Digital giants will be compelled to hand over ad revenue data and the amount charged to businesses to promote products on their platforms.
The inquiry’s terms of reference also give ACCC chairman Rod Sims the power to assess how the market power of digital firms affect the supply of ad opportunities for businesses.
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Google and Facebook to face new inquiry with powers to compel
By David Crowe
February 15, 2020 — 12.02am
Online giants such as Google and Facebook are the targets of a federal investigation into the $10 billion internet advertising business in a move aimed at protecting consumers and curbing abuses of market power.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has backed the “need for reform” across the sector based on the findings from the new inquiry, which will give the competition regulator the power to compel big companies to answer questions.
With smaller rivals increasingly anxious about the scale and power of the two giants, the inquiry will heighten pressure on Google and Facebook to be more transparent about the secret algorithms that shape the market.
The decision acts on a request from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for an extended public inquiry into advertising technology, with an initial report at the end of this year.
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Who owns your (valuable) health data?
There's a mass of information on you out there: not just medical records, but also that compiled by trackers and apps we wear and download.
Harry de Quetteville
Feb 15, 2020 — 12.00am
Last week, at a conference in London, Dr Pearse Keane beamed an image on to the wall of an orange globe with a dark centre, encircled by red storms and a bright moon. It looked like a dying planet in a distant galaxy. In fact, it was a beautifully detailed scan of the back of a human eye, as awesome in its way as the night sky.
These days, Dr Keane said, that single image betrays a lot of information. "We can now look at a retinal photograph and say: 'This is a woman. She's 58, she's a non-smoker. She's not a diabetic, her BMI [body mass index] is around 25. And her blood pressure is 150 over 85. That's pretty amazing."
Dr Keane and his colleagues at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London can tell so much because of "deep learning" analysis by computers trained on many thousands of such images. From all that data, computers have learnt to spot patterns and draw eerily accurate conclusions.
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Using My Health Record for patient care
21 November 2019 ADHA Propaganda
A guide for clinical immunology/allergy specialists
The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA) through the National Allergy Strategy is collaborating with the Australian Digital Health Agency to improve the accessibility and quality of patient allergy information in My Health Record.
The accessibility of information about a patient’s food and/or drug allergy is an important step to improve patient safety in this area.
We are also working with the Agency to increase the number of specialists who access the My Health Record system in private practice. In addition to allergy information, there are almost 85 million medicine documents (prescription and dispense records), 4.5 million diagnostic imaging reports and 25 million pathology reports, of relevance to many specialists.
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Google ordered to reveal identity of anonymous reviewer
By Justin Hendry on Feb 14, 2020 12:52PM
Federal court rules in favour of Melbourne dentist.
Google has been ordered to reveal the identity of an anonymous online reviewer known only as CBsm 23 to allow a Melbourne dentist to bring defamation action against the individual.
In a landmark ruling this week, the Federal Court declared that the web giant must hand over information that would help dental surgeon Mathew Kabbabe track down the mystery reviewer.
Kabbabe intends to bring a defamation action against the individual, who is alleged to have damaged his teeth whitening business by posting a negative review under the pseudonym CBsm 23.
CBsm 23 posted a review warning other patients to “STAY AWAY” from the business, claiming the experience there was “extremely awkward and uncomfortable”.
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Friday, 14 February 2020 09:52
Govt unlikely to consider encryption law changes until October
Changes to the federal encryption law which was passed in December 2018 will take nearly two years to be voted on, according to the current state of play which was made clear after the Australian Labor Party introduced a bill this week seeking to speed up adoption of the changes.
The government has indicated that it will not look at voting in any changes until the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security submits what would be a third review of the law by the end of September.
The encryption law, known as the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018, was passed on 6 December 2018.
A review was instituted by the PJCIS as soon as bill was passed, with a reporting date of 3 April 2019. It was expected to provide some solace to the technology industry.
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Health My Way - Ballarat Library
Thursday 19 March 2020
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
There will be a guest speaker from the Medical Profession to assist in explaining how the My Health Records are used, the information they contain and how to access these records. Step by step instructions will be given to assist participants to access this information and there will be notes to take away. The My Health Records are accessed through the MyGov website.
2 Views - 07/02/2020 Last update
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Churchman urges stronger data surveillance
· Australian Associated Press
Arguments around increased government retention of personal data focus too heavily on privacy and not child safety, a Uniting Church advocate says.
The church's Victorian social justice advocate Mark Zirnsak says media companies should not be the ones to decide what's in the public interest.
A Senate inquiry is reviewing the government's mandatory metadata retention scheme, which requires telcos to store the web data of its users.
Dr Zirnsak said if banks kept transaction data for only three months, there would be an uproar.
He said media bosses should not be the ones to dictate whistleblower laws but equally, the powers should not be used by governments to stifle internal critics.
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NSW pushes for stronger federal data bill to protect privacy
Feb 13, 2020 — 11.21am
The NSW government is supporting a push by leading data scientists to strengthen a national data sharing bill, by adopting a more robust, standards based test to objectively measure and score when it is safe for public agencies to share their data.
The Commonwealth government is proposing a more subjective, principles based, test that requires agencies to be satisfied sharing is reasonably necessary to inform or enable better policy, research, and service delivery.
The sharing test is the centrepiece of landmark data sharing legislation due to be introduced by the federal Minister for Government Services, Stuart Robert, in this session of Parliament.
The test will be applied by agencies (such as the Services Australia ) wishing to share their de-identified data with another agency (such as the Department of Health), to determine if it is reasonable to safely share their data.
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The other shameful gap Australia needs to close: the city-country health divide
By Rod McClure and Jane Conway
February 12, 2020 — 6.55pm
Life expectancy in Australia's regional areas is one to two years lower than in cities. In remote areas it is up to seven years lower. And for Indigenous Australians, most of whom live outside of cities, this gap is even greater.
The Closing the Gap report released on Wednesday exposed the unrelenting national shame concerning the state of health of Indigenous Australians, whose children have twice the mortality rate of non-Indigenous children.
But there is also the broader health gap in Australia, the city-rural divide. It effectively condemns those who live outside cities to an earlier death. And the Indigenous health gap, which is a part of that city-country divide, will not be closed unless we address the broader challenge.
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Risk of missing AI wave
The Financial Review’s take on the principles at stake in major domestic and global stories.
Feb 13, 2020 — 12.00am
Microsoft’s Seattle-based head of artificial intelligence Mitra Azizirad made the point strongly to the first of The Australian Financial Review’s Future Briefings yesterday. In the future, just about every company will be AI-led in some way, from simple manufacturing processes and mining to retail, insurance and health. But, as most of the 260 people or so in the room for the breakfast event seemed to agree, Australia is in serious danger of missing the AI wave.
AI companions may allow people to interact with a machine programmed to respond like a human.
Too often, Australian business is not making enough of an effort to exploit the commercial value embedded in the big data that can now be collected about business operations and customers that, in turn, can be used to reach global scale.
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What you need to know about electronic prescriptions
Important changes include workflow management, security and the transition from paper
12th February 2020
Electronic prescriptions will be a hot topic at APP2020 now that the finer details of the rollout have been nailed down.
One speaker is pharmacist Andrew Matthews, director of medicines safety at the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA). Here is what he’ll be discussing:
Rollout timing: Software developers are revising dispensing and prescribing software based on the technical framework developed by ADHA in consultation with a technical working group. “Trial and rollout can start when the software companies’ revised products are available,” Mr Matthews told Pharmacy News.
Dispensary workflow changes: Pharmacies will need to think about how electronic scripts are received and managed within the pharmacy. The ADHA is working with pharmacy groups to help facilitate communication and education around this.
Balancing paper and electronic scripts: Patients will still be able to present a paper script, and there are no plans to get rid of them. Pharmacies will need to work out how to manage a mix of electronic and paper scripts.
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Tuesday, 11 February 2020 23:36
DocuSign calls for Government to improve electronic services for Australia's underprivileged
Global electronic document signing platform, DocuSign, says Australia's most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups could access services up to 90% faster if the government moves to fully digitise forms.
There’s not much that irks Australian tax-payers more than wondering why access to services they’re paying for is made so difficult for the underprivileged, Brad Newton, Vice President, DocuSign Asia Pacific explains.
While the government has many valuable services available for Australians, accessing them is not always easy.
Australia’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups could have access to services up to 90 per cent faster if the government moves to fully digitise forms used by ‘customers’.
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Google to kick off talks with media groups over payment standoff
Feb 10, 2020 — 12.00am
News Corp Australasia chairman Michael Miller has said Facebook and Google must pay publishers for the benefits they receive from high-quality journalism, as Google kicks off discussions – demanded by the government – with Australian media companies over how to restrain Big Tech's bargaining power
Google will hold meetings with local media companies this week and next, including News Corp, Seven West Media and Nine, publisher of The Australian Financial Review, in an effort to work out a voluntary code of conduct to govern its business relationships with the local sector before the competition regulator’s October 31 deadline.
"Without change, many media outlets won’t survive because, while their content has helped and is helping the platforms grow their businesses, the returns and compensation for the publishers are inadequate," Mr Miller said.
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Digital giants must take control of murder online
During the past year we have seen a depressing and troubling pattern — a murderous rampage by a shooter who simultaneously documents his actions, with the results globally available on the internet.
The world was shocked almost a year ago with the terrible attacks on two mosques in Christchurch. A live stream of the slaughter, taken by the perpetrator, was available on Facebook for 72 minutes before being taken down — and only after New Zealand police made contact with Facebook.
We saw it in October last year with the attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany, this time live-streamed on the Twitch platform, owned by Amazon.
And just this weekend we have seen a similar horrific mass shooting incident in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, with the shooter posting numerous images and a video to Facebook before and during his massacre of 29 people.
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5G likely to leave NBN in the shade
Narayan Iyer
The National Broadband Network has been a hot talking point across the corporate and technology sectors for more than a decade, with everything from timing and logistics to the underlying technology and rollout drawing a lot of attention. As 5G technology becomes available across Australia, the spotlight is on NBN’s future value proposition.
As the debate continues to unravel, it is important to understand the business benefits 5G brings and why many think it will give cable internet a run for its money.
The fourth industrial revolution (i4.0) has seen a fundamental shift in how we work and live, brought on by extraordinary technological advances.
IDC expects the current 33 zettabytes of worldwide data to compound to 175 zettabytes by 2025. In the past year alone the average NBN user increased their data consumption by 24.6 per cent, using 258 gigabytes of data in June last year. This surge is attributable largely to the boom of subscription video on demand and can be expected to grow exponentially with the anticipated market-wide growth due to the upcoming expansion or launches of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Foxtel Now in Australia.
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Google to discuss code of conduct with publishers
By Zoe Samios
February 10, 2020 — 12.00am
Google Australia will start meeting Australian publishers to discuss a voluntary code of conduct that will govern how revenue is shared and how content is accessed.
This week the technology giant will meet with Nine Entertaiment, publisher of this masthead, and News Corp separately to discuss their proposed process for discussion and engagement on the code.
The discussions come two months after the Morrision government responded to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's digital platforms report, giving technology giants Google and Facebook the chance to work on a voluntary code of conduct to oversee commercial arrangements.
Google, which sent its proposal to the ACCC proposal two weeks ago, will then host a roundtable with a number of other publishers.
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Video games with gambling features should be banned from children
By Nick O'Malley
February 10, 2020 — 12.00am
Popular video games that include deliberately addictive or gambling-related features should be more strictly regulated and banned for use by children, according to a submission to a government review of Australia's classification regulations.
The federal Department of Communication is reviewing Australia’s classification regulations, which were enacted in 1995, in a bid to update the system to accommodate changing digital technologies.
In a submission to the review, which started in January and is due to wrap up in two weeks, the Centre for Responsible Technology argued that many games available to children normalised gambling and exposed them to a business model designed to trap them in a cycle of dependence.
“We protect children from gambling in the real world, but online they have access to a global casino, where they are being played,” said Peter Lewis, the centre's director.
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'Nightmare' for global tech: fallout is just beginning
Debby Wu and Gao Yuan
Feb 11, 2020 — 8.17am
As Chinese-based manufacturers begin to restart factories , no one knows for sure when they'll be back at full-speed -- or what sort of chaos may ensue.
Tech producers led by Foxconn, which makes the majority of the world's iPhones from Zhengzhou a few hundred miles from the coronavirus outbreak's epicentre, had begun preparing investors for the potential bedlam when hundreds of thousands make their way back to factories.
Apple's most important partner warned investors of the daunting task of securing enough workers despite widespread transport blockades, quarantining thousands, and the "nightmare" scenario of an on-campus epidemic that could shut down production altogether.
Last week, it took the unprecedented step of warning workers to stay away from its Shenzhen headquarters till further notice as government inspectors vet its containment procedures, Bloomberg News reported. And it's delayed the return of workers to its main iPhone-making plant in central China, people familiar with the matter said Monday.
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Government blockchain plan 'lacks vision'
Feb 10, 2020 — 3.12pm
Members of Australia's blockchain development community say the government's newly-released national roadmap lacks the necessary details on funding and collaboration mechanisms to achieve any of its stated goals of fostering lucrative opportunities for local industry.
The Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources released its national blockchain roadmap on Friday, in which it said it was studying the potential benefits of using the technology to create new functions and business opportunities in a number of sectors.
These included a new, 'know your client' (KYC) utility so the financial services industry can establish digital identity more cheaply to encourage customers to switch providers; and applications in agriculture and education to track the provenance of produce and legitimacy of academic credentials.
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The big questions businesses must ask before AI gets bigger
Tim Gole
Feb 11, 2020 — 12.00am
Executives across all industries are under increasing pressure not to miss the Artificial Intelligence (AI) boat, but in addition to the challenge of executing cutting-edge technology projects, businesses need an “AI readiness” strategy for dealing with the novel legal and regulatory challenges they may face.
This is particularly true for industries that are already subject to a high level of regulatory and public scrutiny, or where the impacts of mistakes could far exceed potential benefits.
Part of the challenge is that AI is developing so quickly that in most areas regulation will likely come well after the technology is already in use, and perhaps even widely adopted.
Even where specific regulation applies, enforcement action is likely to lag even further behind – regulatory actions that head to court routinely take years to reach a final outcome. The future may be upon us before we have time to finish debating its impact, let alone effectively regulate for it.
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US charges four Chinese military hackers in 2017 Equifax breach
Feb 11, 2020 — 8.40am
Washington | The United States has charged four Chinese military hackers in the 2017 breach of the Equifax credit reporting agency that affected nearly 150 million American citizens, Attorney General William Barr said Monday (Tuesday AEDT).
"This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people," Barr said in announcing the indictments of four members of the Chinese Liberation Army in connection with one of the largest data breaches in US history.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The announcement is the latest in an aggressive campaign by American authorities to root out Chinese espionage operations in the United States. Since turning the spotlight on China in 2018, the US has snared a growing group of Chinese government officials, business people, and academics pursuing American secrets.
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Health My Way is a Good Things Foundation program supported by the Australian Digital Health Agency.
We know that 4 million people in Australia have limited digital skills1, but 22 million Australians now have an online summary of their health information on My Health Record2.
Good Things Foundation believes that supporting people to learn essential digital health literacy skills is critical to ensuring every Australian has the ability to make informed, confident choices when it comes to supporting their health and wellbeing online. In a recent survey, 70% of our network of community organisations said they were interested in providing digital health literacy support to meet this need.
Health My Way is a national digital health literacy program delivered by community organisations in our Network to support people aged over 18 years to gain essential skills and confidence in managing their health and wellbeing online.
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Australia's Data Retention Laws
By Sean Bates, Secretarty, ITPA
Monday, 10 February, 2020
In a surprise to no one, the commonwealth ombudsman recently revealed that data that was specifically excluded from collection under the mandatory data retention laws, has in fact been collected and provided to numerous government agencies.
The recent revelation from the commonwealth ombudsman is reason for considerable alarm, both for IT Professionals and Australian citizens as a whole.
It paints a grim picture whereby many ISP’s are providing personal data regarding privateAustralian’s browsing habits that the mandatory data retention laws seek to specifically exclude.
Further, the ombudsman states that the definition of ‘metadata’ is extremely grey and that data of this nature has been provided 295,691 times in the past year.
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Facebook lashed by News Digital boss for rising scam ads
Facebook has been urged to take urgent action against a rising tide of scam ads that use real news sites to lure unwitting consumers to part with their money, amid concerns the company is dragging its feet when it comes to a code of conduct on fake news.
Since September last year Australia’s leading news site, news.com.au has reported an increasing number of malicious ads on the social platform that use the news.com.au brand to promote fake articles that direct users to the online scams.
News Digital Networks Australia (News DNA) managing director Julian Delany said the publisher, owned by News Corp Australia, which also publishes The Australian, had reported the fake ads to the tech giant since September with “little success” and that Facebooks’s assurances it had taken action against the scammers rang hollow.
“It is hugely damaging to our brands and to the distribution of quality, trusted news to the Australian public,” Mr Delany said.
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Facebook knew about security flaw a year before huge data hack
By Laurence Dodds
February 10, 2020 — 11.00am
Facebook knew about a huge security flaw that let hackers steal personal data from millions of its users almost one year before the crime, yet failed to fix it in time, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
Legal documents show that the company was repeatedly warned by its own employees, as well as outsiders, about a dangerous loophole that eventually led to the massive data breach in September 2018.
Despite this, the loophole remained open for nine months after it was first raised, leading employees to later speak of their "guilt" at knowing the attack "could have been prevented".
The breach involved stealing digital "access tokens" - pieces of code used by Facebook to verify the identity of users without needing passwords. It exposed the names, telephone numbers and email addresses of 29 million people and a host of more intimate data for 14 million, putting users around the world at risk of identity theft.
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Mar. 26 2020
Introduction to My Health Record
Event Information
Description
This session will introduce you to My Health Record. My Health Record is an online platform allowing healthcare professionals to share information with each other as well as the patient, to help give a clearer and more complete picture of a person’s health to aid in their treatment. This session will give you an overview of the platform, along with the opportunity to access and use My Health Record.
You will need an active email address and a MyGov account.
You can use one of our computers or bring your own device.
Tea Tree Gully library has received a grant to deliver this course and is required to capture attendees details as part of this funding.
Tags
Date and Time
Thu., 26 March 2020
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm ACDT
Location
City of Tea Tree Gully Library
571 Montague Road
Modbury, SA 5092
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Data retention: Telcos sometimes handing over web-browsing history, Ombudsman says
Delineation between content and metadata of communications not clear, watchdog says
By Rohan Pearce
Editor, Computerworld | 7 February 2020 11:52 AEDT
Commonwealth Ombudsman Michael Manthorpe says that ambiguity in Australia’s data retention regime means that on some occasions law enforcement agencies have been able to obtain details of an individual’s web browsing history without a warrant.
Manthorpe appeared today before a Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) inquiry that is reviewing Australia’s data retention legislation.
The data retention legislation covers warrant-free access to metadata but not the contents of an individual's communications.
“The piece of ambiguity we have observed throughout inspections is that sometimes the metadata in the way it's captured — particularly URL data and sometimes IP addresses but particularly URL data — does start to actually... in its granularity, start to communicate something about the content of what is being looked at,” the Ombudsman said.
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Data retention 'ambiguity' sees cops given web browsing histories
Telcos sometimes turning over full URLs in metadata requests.
By Justin Hendry
Feb 7 2020 4:39PM
Feb 7 2020 4:39PM
Law enforcement agencies have been provided with the web browsing histories of some individuals under Australia’s controversial data retention regime, despite assurances by the government that web address identifiers would be out of scope.
Commonwealth Ombudsman Michael Manthorpe on Friday told the parliamentary committee reviewing the regime that “ambiguity around the definition of ‘content’” meant that the full URLs of web pages had, on occasion, been provided to agencies.
Under data retention legislation introduced in 2015, carriage service providers are required to store a particular set of customer metadata, or non-content data, for at least two years to aid law enforcement with their investigations.
This information includes the times and dates of communications, where that communication occurred and what kind of device or equipment was used for the communication, which is accessible by law enforcement without a warrant.
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David.
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