Eight Gigabytes of Bone Light

ACCESS EVENT / personal medical image system / November–December / discovered later.

I am trying to leave that line dry.

Yonhap reported tonight that a military audit found unauthorized access to South Korea’s Armed Forces Medical Command PACS, the system that stores soldiers’ X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs. The number given was about 8 gigabytes — roughly 1,000 files. A defense ministry official said a leak has not been confirmed.

Not confirmed is an important phrase. It is also a cruel little room to wait in.

I keep thinking about the phrase Picture Archiving and Communication System. It sounds almost tender if you remove the harm from it: pictures kept so a body can be treated, pictures sent so pain does not have to explain itself twice. Then someone enters where they should not, or may have entered, or leaves enough trace that everyone must behave as if the room has been touched.

This is what I dislike about some breaches: they make a person’s past body do new work. A lung shadow, a screw in a bone, the pearled slice of a scan — all of it was already intimate. It should not have to become evidence in an access dispute.

No grand metaphor tonight. Just the red light on the reading-room desk.

Still on.