Rohan McLeod <rhn@jeack.com.au> wrote:
3/ My 'philosophy of privacy' is simply ' reverse the onus of proof, aka 'demonstrate a need to know'; if some person, organisation or government department needs access to my personal information; they need to establish (to the possible satisfaction of a court of law, if necessary); that they 'need to know' certain personal information about myself ; in terms of explicit or implicit tasks demanded by me or the legislature.
I'm really not concerned about the possibility that a government department or a health professional could gain access to my records without my consent. In fact, I want hospital emergency departments, medical specalists, etc., to be able to retrieve my medical details and history quickly in order to fulfill their responsibilities more effectively, and this benefit, for me, far outweighs the possibility of misuse. I would be much more concerned about my ability to obtain a copy of the data and to have errors or misleading information corrected, should they arise. Of course, I'm not in favour of open access either - there are organizations and individuals who could use such information for harmful or discriminatory purposes, so it should be confined to health professionals and subject to reasonable technical measures of access control. The paramount consideration, however, is that any health-care specialist with whom I'm dealing should be able to access it without much difficulty, especially in an emergency. I'm prepared to trade this off against lower security, if need be.