Timing is Everything

          As a child, I remember watching a television show dedicated to debunking Bible miracles.  Scientists had studied everything from the creation to the resurrection and assured us that every “miracle” could be explained scientifically.  I was very upset to learn that the Red Sea parted for Moses and the Israelites because of a rare phenomenon called “wind settling.”  The wind had blown the sea out of the way of the Israelites.  It was the wind, not Moses, who rescued God’s people from Pharaoh’s army. 

With tears in my eyes, I turned to my Dad and said, “I guess Moses wasn’t that big a deal after all.”

“But you are forgetting one very important fact,” my Dad answered.  “The scientists said that “wind settling” is rare.  Yet, that wind parted the sea at the very moment Moses needed to escape.  And it stopped blowing just in time for the sea to close up over the Egyptian army.  Sometimes the timing of an event is the miracle.”

Since that night, I have often been reminded that timing is everything.

          April 20, 2010, was a ho-hum day for the CBS news team.  The evening news reported that lobbyists from JP Morgan Chase opposed federal financial regulations.  Union lobbyists announced that they were going to oppose “moderate” Democrats as well as Republicans in the upcoming elections.  The Tea Party complained that the Ohio Republican Party wasn’t supporting the Tea Party agenda.  Of course, the biggest story of April 20^th was still percolating in a Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.  Had the rig blown earlier in the day, CBS would not have needed to spice up the news with its copier identity theft story.

          Months earlier, CBS had purchased 4 used copiers, removed the copiers’ hard drives, and downloaded documents that had been copied, faxed, or scanned on the machines.  They hit “paydirt” with all four copiers.  One was from the Sex Crimes Division of a Police Department.  Another was from a construction company.  It had thousands of names, addresses, and Social Security numbers.  The third was from another police department and contained information relating to drug investigations.  The hard drive on the fourth copier turned out to be a Pandora’s Box for Affinity Health Plan.  It contained medical information on approximately 344,579 patients insured by Affinity. 

          Like most of us at the time, Affinity probably did not know that modern-day copiers record every document copied.  Unaware of this handy feature, Affinity simply turned in its copiers at the end of the copiers’ lease period.  It also failed to document in its HIPAA-mandated “Risk Assessment” the fact that medical information was stored on its copiers. Thanks to the CBS story, Affinity had to file a confession of wrong-doing known as a “Breach Notification Report.”  Within a month, the feds had launched an investigation.

Three years later, Affinity owed the feds $1,215,780.  This is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on investigators, forensic computer analysts, and lawyers.  Affinity also agreed to try to track down all of its former copiers and delete patient records from the hard drives on those copiers.  It must revise its risk assessment and confidentiality policies.  Once the government has approved those new policies, Affinity must educate its employees about the policies.

The Affinity copier scandal and the resulting fine seem insignificant compared to the billions of dollars in damages resulting from the Gulf oil rig explosion that monopolized news organizations for months after April 20th.  In fact, had the explosion occurred a few hours earlier on the 20th, it is possible that we would not have known about Affinity Health Care and its copier problems.  Other health care providers, law firms, federal agencies, and police departments may have continued taking broken copiers to the dump.    Edward Snowden and Wiki-leaks could have avoided all their legal problems by getting their top secret information from discarded copiers, thumb drives, laptops, DVD’s and computers.

But then, as Moses could tell us, timing is everything.