Daines: Failure of Obamacare Website Launch May Be Best Safegaurd for Protecting American's Personal Information

Press Release

Congressman Steve Daines today called the deeply-flawed rollout of Healthcare.gov "the best safeguard for the American people to protect their personal privacy," in light of recent reports that Administration officials were aware that security risks to the Obamacare website were "limitless" long before the website's official launch.

"The irony, perhaps, in this is that the failure of the website launch on Obamacare may indeed have been the best safeguard for the American people to protect their personal privacy given the risks now that are being identified in this launch," Daines stated during this morning's House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the cybersecurity of personal data on Healthcare.gov.

Daines, who also serves as Vice Chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency, called on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to provide information about why accountability measures were not in place to flag the security risks facing Healthcare.gov before the website was launched on October 1, 2013.

"Knowing there was limitless potential for security risks as reported, would you have rolled out, would you have pushed the button to say "go' on October 1?" Daines asked multiple times of Roberta Stempfley, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, who was testifying before the Committee today.

Stempley refused to respond, saying only that she "couldn't speak to a theoretical" situation.

After noting that the Department of Homeland Security serves as "the lead for securing and defending federal civilian unclassified information technology systems and networks against attacks," Daines also pressed Stempfley for specific information about how DHS had worked to assist in the security of Healthcare.gov.

"There has not been a specific interaction focused on this particular site," Stempfley responded.

Daines, who served for twelve years as an executive of Bozeman-based cloud computing company RightNow Technologies, also noted that the security risks problems plaguing the rollout of the Obamacare website would be fireable offenses in the private sector.

"As somebody who had to serve large organizations, people would have been fired, the company would have gone under--our company--had we launched a website with these kind of issues," Daines stated. "And I understand about risk management and so forth, but it seems that we leaned into launch, knowing that there were high-risk security issues."

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