A secure democratic Net is a fundamental right

Some people here and in the US are dreaming of doing everything electronic in the health infrastructure - forgetting that we are talking about medical information that would be interesting for economic spionage, blackmail and intelligent scams and phishing.

Now they are talking on the news that several hospitals have great problems with that new (already two weeks old) virus that is spreading. They say that everything is working but that it takes more time to download medical information and so on

let us make a few things clear

* this is not a supervirus. This virus only works if you haven't updated your computer since october with an easy downloadable patch from Microsoft. Surely in a network like a hospital you should have organised your patching and updating centrally and control it so that it is done effectively. And there is nothing NEW

* it means that the security of the computers in hospitals is too lax to be confident that they should treat in their present situation in a confidential and high secure computernetwork with information that is as important as our medical information

* the great law of silence and just trust us has proven its weakness, especially after the new Belgian ehealth law needed more security and auditing and norms before going ahead with all their great plans. The system as a whole is only as secure as their weakest part. This means that maybe the computer use and culture and infrastructure in hospitals has to change and that hospitals have to understand that their computers are as important for saving lives as their operating rooms.

I am sure some people can tell stories about security in hospitals or on the computers of the doctors that would be quite interesting..... but that is the real reality that is responsable for this situation. You only need one pc to get the rest into trouble.