OhMyGov.com – The web site boasts “Tracking the Influence of the Nation’s Most Influential” and “Dig into the social conversations making news and impacting policy.”

Welcome to the government’s next step in mining your data.  By using a web site called ohmygov.com, they will be collecting data from social media sites like Twitter & Facebook regarding your medical postings.  While they claim the information they collect will remain anonymous, I’m pretty sure we all know what that means.  Lawyers have taken opposite approaches, with one claiming it’s a trust issue and as long as we are giving out that data, we shouldn’t expect it to be private.  Or in other words, if you don’t want it out there, stay off social media.  Another lawyer claims that she sees this as a major issue regarding  HIPAA and an invasion of privacy, especially if the information gets into the wrong hands.

For a mere $2500 a year and up you can have access to unlimited people and agencies you want to track.  Pick a plan! All plans come with a FREE TRIAL!  Too bad Obamacare doesn’t offer that option.

What this chart suggests is that only information from public figures such as Congressman & Government Agencies can be accessed.  So where do we, as private citizens come into play?

It’s quite interesting to see who is, in fact, using this website to get information.  Companies like Microsoft, the National Parks Conservation Association, Georgetown University & Newsweek, just to name a few.  My question is, what exactly are they looking for?!

No information has been given as to whether or not your privacy settings on Facebook will have any effect on this data mining.  Only that it claims any information regarding your medical postings can be used.  I have my privacy settings set to friends only.  This is why I have them set that way.  I don’t want just anyone coming along and viewing my information.  If that were the case, Facebook wouldn’t need privacy settings or a button that says “Send a Friend Request”.   I can understand them being able to extract this information via Twitter.  There really is no expectation of privacy there, unless your tweets are protected, but even then, once you tweet, it’s out there.  Protecting tweets only means people (followers) you are not connected to can’t see what you’re saying if they try to view your wall.

So the questions still remain.  How does farming your social media medical postings impact policy?  Will it decide who gets funding and for what diseases or is it just another way for the government to keep an eye on you?  And is this really how we want our taxpayer dollars to be spent?

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