While Australian Health Minister Sussan Ley has said that the Pharmaceutical Benefits and Medicare Benefits data accidentally leaked online could not be tied to any specific individuals, not everyone agrees, The Age reports. "There is a possibility individual consumers could be identified," said The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ Dr. Nathan Pinskier. "If you can identify data in a remote part of Australia where there's only a few consumers you'll be able to work out who they are pretty quickly." While Ley said no provider or patient names were compromised, the 8 Sept. breach spurred the Australian government to amend the Privacy Act, making reidentifying de-identified data a crime. "If you can re-aggregate it, even though it’s illegal to do so, somebody probably will," Pinskier added.
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