Congress conducted hearings yesterday on the much maligned Obamacare website. The most contentious moment involved Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican. Let's start by hearing about his exchange as America's conservatives did—via Fox News, which syndicated work created by John Nolte of Breitbart.com:
During Thursday's congressional hearing with the contractors responsible for building the troubled ObamaCare federal exchanges, we learned that whether you end up enrolling in ObamaCare or not, no one who puts any information into the ObamaCare website can expect to have their privacy protected. Moreover, the fact that you are giving up your right to privacy is hidden in source code that reads, "You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication of any data transmitted or stored on this information system."
Wow, that sounds pretty damning, doesn't it? Here's a bit more of Nolte's story:
During his questioning on this specific issue, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) only received chilling answers and deflections from the primary contractor responsible for the site. When he asked Cheryl Campbell of CGI about it, her icy response was that another contractor was responsible. After some pressuring, she finally admitted that she was aware of the hidden source code. Just a few minutes earlier, however, Ms. Campbell testified under oath that the ObamaCare website is HIPAA compliant -- meaning everyone's medical and personal information is protected by law.
Another item at Breitbart reports:
Contractors that worked on the glitched ObamaCare website were stunned into silenced when shown a clause on buried in the code of the ACA website that has Americans agree to a privacy clause concerning their personal heath information.
CSPAN video accompanying the story seems to back up that description:
Lots of conservative readers were freaking out.
Seriously, Obama Administration? I said to myself as I watched that video—not that the notion of Team Obama's disregard for privacy would come as a surprise. (After all, I'm a Verizon customer.)
I might've written a quick post about the privacy language yesterday but for two things: (1) I never trust something when I've only seen it reported on Breitbart, where the claim that President Lyndon Johnson drunkenly dropped nuclear weapons on the United States is—despite the author disavowing it—still uncorrected!) (2) Wait a minute, I thought, something doesn't add up here. It isn't like invisible terms of use buried in a web page's source code are binding on users who neither agree to nor even see them. Then I got distracted by another tab and forgot about the story.