And we thought things couldn’t get worse after the cover on the IRS abuses was blown and the scope of NSA snooping on Americans was revealed. As details about the ObamaCare data hub leak out, our constitutional Fourth Amendment protection is fading faster than a post-election promise.

This is what happens when 2,700-page bills are passed that none of the elected officials have the time or interest to read before voting on it. Since no Republican in either house voted for ObamaCare, I’m talking about Democrats, of course, whose air-headed leader in the House of Representatives famously said, “… we have to pass the [healthcare] bill so that you can find out what’s in it….”

Well, we’re finding what’s in it.

The fulcrum of ObamaCare is its 50 insurance exchanges – one in each state. Among other functions, the exchanges collect data and information required to administer ObamaCare. The agency that enforces compliance is the IRS, renowned for its citizen abuse skills. The Chief Knee-cracker for ObamaCare enforcement is Sarah Hall Ingram, who was in charge of the IRS office at the center of the Tea Party targeting scandal and gave her the experience for this assignment. If Sarah Hall Ingram were Thelma, Louise would be Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who was given absolute control in the law to implement the aim of ObamaCare by whatever means she chose.

The means she chose include the ObamaCare data hub – the Mother of All Databases – a technology achievement never before attempted on this scale.

The data hub will connect (hold on to your britches) the HHS (entitlement qualification and medical records) with the Social Security Administration (your unique identifier number), the IRS (your income, and employment status), the Department of Homeland Security, (your citizenship and international travel information), Department of Justice (your criminal history), the Veterans Administration (military service information), Office of Personnel Management (information on government employees), the Department of Defense (unit and deployment history), and the Peace Corps (domestic and foreign service assignments.) Plus the hub will tap into state databases to confirm residency and Medicaid criteria. Everyone will be required by law or regulation to report changes in marital status, changes in income, hours worked, changes in employer, moves to a new state, a change in insurance plans, and changes in your criminal history. You can see a schematic here of Obama’s tentacular intrusiveness which his data hub represents.

Think of the hub as a busy four-way intersection through which all traffic must flow to get anywhere and a record is kept of everyone and everything that passes through it.

In a column in USA Today, University of Minnesota professor and Manhattan Institute scholar Stephen T. Parente said “The federal government is planning to quietly enact what could be the largest consolidation of personal data in the history of the republic … when the constantly updated information is combined in a central data hub, the potential for abuse is staggering.”

Edward Snowden showed us how much confidence we should have in the federal government’s ability to keep confidential information confidential. Last year a hacker accessed 3.6 million data base records in South Carolina with Social Security numbers and bank account data.

A recent Government Accountability Office audit said weaknesses in IRS security systems “continue to jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the financial and sensitive taxpayer information.” Another audit discovered that the IRS unintentionally exposed confidential information on thousands of taxpayers in 2009 and 2010. The next year the Social Security Administration did the same thing on a larger scale.

But what do you expect from a government that can’t competently run a postal service or Amtrak profitably? The consolidation of all this data will make it the most attractive hacker target in the world. If the feds can’t prevent inadvertent data releases from independent agency servers, does anyone really believe they can safeguard this data base?

Willie Sutton said the reason he robbed banks was because that was where the money was kept. A hub/database like the one Obama and Sebelius are creating is like Willie Sutton’s banks. Why would thieves look anywhere other than the ObamaCare data hub to steal identities, commit credit fraud, or know if you have assets worth stealing. With only one place to look and a “winner take all” payoff, thieves may team up and work together. Computer hacking technology should become a growth industry.

After failing to master the expertise to run the postal service and a railroad, the government is now going to reform healthcare, bring down costs, and collect a ton of information in the process. Assuming the data could be kept safe from thieves – which I wouldn’t assume for a heartbeat – what’s to keep it from being abused by the government?

Us??? Not us? (wink, wink.) “Mr. Throckmorton, I see from our computer records that you’ve voted Republican in the last seven elections. Our experts have denied your life-saving operation at this time. Please check back with us after the next election.” (Of course, it cuts both ways. The Republicans will regain the White House at some point and may also have control of both houses of Congress.)

Memo to those who believe abuse won’t happen: Did you read about Sebelius soliciting “contributions” from the industry she regulates … money which would be turned over to ObamaCare supporters to drum up support for the unpopular law and encourage people to participate in the exchanges? Do you remember the Obama and Sebelius goons inviting citizens to report their fellow citizens who hated ObamaCare? “If you get an email or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to [email protected],” they urged. Only ideologues who deny First Amendment protection would call for citizens to do such a thing.

In combination with data collected by NSA spying what would not be known about American lives?

Not to worry, says the Obama administration. “The hub will not store consumer information, but will securely transmit data between state and federal systems to verify consumer application information,” or so it claims in an online fact sheet. The Center for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says hey, no sweat. The information we collect will not be stored, and privacy is the “highest priority.”

But a regulatory notice that Obama’s boys and girls filed early this year tells a different story.

That filing describes a new “system of records” that will store names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, taxpayer status, gender, ethnicity, email addresses, telephone numbers on the millions of people expected to apply for coverage at the ObamaCare exchanges, as well as “tax return information from the IRS, income information from the Social Security Administration, and financial information from other third-party sources.” Data from businesses that buy insurance on an exchange, including a “list of qualified employees and their tax ID numbers,” will be kept on file for 10 years. That’s a lot of information not to collect and not store.

Check out the online filing certificate and you’ll see the federal government can disclose any information it collects “without the consent of the individual” to almost anyone – “agency contractors, consultants, or grantees” who “need to have access to the records” to help run ObamaCare, as well as law enforcement officials to “investigate potential fraud.” Who did they leave out?

Republican lawmakers have asked Kathleen Sebelius how HHS and other sources of data will protect sensitive information but she hasn’t gotten back to them with an answer. She’s really busy, you know.

I’ve often said the worst idea that government ever conceived was the central sewage system. When property owners had to get rid of their waste relying on a septic tank the size of an automobile, waste disposal was a manageable problem. When some bright guy said, “Hey, let’s consolidate all of this into a central sewage system,” you now had a big disposal mess – preprocessing, sedimentation ponds, effluent disposal, and on, and on – all caused by consolidation.

One thing leads to another in most things. In order for ObamaCare to function it requires an invasion of privacy on a grand scale that would not be needed if there were no ObamaCare. The data hub became necessary to enable agency computers to “talk” to each other – something that’s never been attempted. Collecting the data puts it at risk for exposure, if not theft. Storing the data makes it attractive to every hacker in the galaxy.  None of this would have been necessary without ObamaCare. All of this is headed toward a disaster. Even the author of ObamaCare, Max Baucus (D-MT) says it’s a train wreck waiting to happen. And when it happens, it will be like the walls on a sewage retention pond collapsing and data will run everywhere.

Representative Diane Black (R-TN), a member of the House Oversight Committee complained that ObamaCare isn’t close to being at a point that allows it to be implemented. She is the author of H.R. 2022, Stopping Government Abuse of Taxpayer Information Act, which halts the implementation of ObamaCare until all government agencies with access to the Federal Data Services Hub certify under penalty of perjury that taxpayer information will not be used to target individuals based on their beliefs.

Black’s bill might get out of committee. It might even be brought to the floor of the House for a full vote. But it has no chance in the Senate. If it did, Obama wouldn’t sign it. Her effort is symbolic and isn’t likely to draw a lot of attention.

Max Baucus paid for his perfidy by leaving the Senate. He’s in a tough race in Montana and his authorship of ObamaCare has cost him with voters.

Last week, Obama announced the delay of the ObamaCare mandate until 2015. In one sense, this was an admission that the vast apparatus needed wasn’t in place – which was helped when 30 Republican governors refused to set up exchanges This has set the stage for legal challenges regarding what Obama can do to create the exchanges and disburse subsidies.

In a larger sense, Obama made a shrewd political move. With the 2014 mid-year elections heating up, the last thing the Democrats want is for voters to experience what was in store for them had ObamaCare been allowed to proceed during an election year. They hope there is an outside chance Democrats could win back the House, giving Obama free rein to run amok the last two years of his administration. It’s more likely that the Republicans will retain the House and an outside chance of taking the Senate. Even gaining seats would slow down Harry Reid’s Senate agenda.

The execution is delayed, not pardoned. Those full time employees whose hours would have been cut to avoid ObamaCare – about 3.2 million – get a reprieve. Good news for fast food and theater employees. Small companies that would have been forced into layoffs to escape the 50-employee cutoff for ObamaCare compliance can delay for a year. ObamaCare would have hurt the economic recovery. Now that’s it’s delayed, the economy may improve and Obama can beat his breast and crow that his policies are working.

So far, it seems like Obama wins by delaying implementation. But unless Republicans are catatonic, which I often think they are, they might want to insist that the law move forward – unless, of course, they want to cede both the executive and legislative functions to the White House and go home. The law, which John Roberts so cleverly kept resuscitating, states that the employer mandate penalties under IRC Section 4980H “shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013.” Unless that’s repealed, it must be enforced.

Last time I checked, the President can’t repeal laws, and he can’t enforce the ones he likes and delay others if that serves his needs.