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UK Police Will Have Backdoor Access To Health Records
kc123 writes "David Davis MP, a former shadow home secretary, has told the Guardian that police would be able to access the new central NHS database without a warrant as critics warn of catastrophic breach of trust. The database that will store all of England's health records has a series of 'backdoors' that will allow police and government bodies to access people's medical data. In the past police would need to track down the GP who held a suspect's records and go to court for a disclosure order. Now, they would be able to simply approach the new arms-length NHS information centre, which will hold the records. The idea that police will be able to request information from a central database without a warrant totally undermines a long-held belief in the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship."
Well, for instanceMaybe if Slashdot were based based in UK, they would be able to see the mental health problems of management, and arrest them under trumped up cahrges before they destroy swathes of actual meaningful communities. Please consider stopping sensible responses to Slashdot articles. Otherwise in a few weeks slashdot will drown under likes and selfies. Your post today kills tomorrow. Think, react, the only good post right now, if you like slashdot is of course, Fuck Beta.
Well, for example it can be part of the standard background check of some officer's daughter new boyfriend. Or it can expand the possibilities when trying to get rid of some annoying neighbor.
Imagine finding out that your son's teacher has followed some opioid replacement therapy!
All in all, it will make the lives of the wonderful people working in the police easier by giving them more material to exploit against an hostile world populated by devious people.
information is to prevent bad things from happening. So what happens when a bad thing happens and the police fail to prevent it, even though they have information that clearly indicates something bad is about to happen? I wonder if civil lawsuits against the police (and awards to plaintiffs) will increase.
It's not only the police, but also a nebulous group of "government bodies" which can easily be added to like councils, the Forestry Commission, quango charities and anybody else who has absolutely no reason or justification to see confidential medical records apart from that they want to.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
The fun part being that once your data is on this access-for-all database it isn't yours anymore and thus you have no say in how it is doled out to all and sundry. There can't be a privacy violation if the new data owner (whichever dolt is Secretary of State for health at the time) allows it.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Beta is more than cosmetics or aesthetics. The new design ruins the one thing that makes /. what it is -- the commenting system. I only come here for the comments, not the 2-day old articles nor the erroneous summaries.
I do not see the changes of Beta as improvements. What is wrong with Slashdot that demands breaking its foundations? This is not change for the sake of change, but, as others have commented, an attempt to monetize /. at any any cost, and its users be damned.
Our complaints have fallen on deaf ears, and will continue to do so. Dice intends to dispose of Classic in favor of Beta, whether we like it or not. Do you know how to tell whether an executive really cares about feedback? If her CV doesn't already proclaim these changes to be a success even before fully implementing them:
Proven track record innovating and improving iconic websites (CNET.com, Dice.com, Slashdot.org, Sourceforge.net) while protecting their voice and brand integrity
Correct me if I'm wrong, but apart from an almost universally hated Beta version, how can anyone claim in good faith that /. has undergone any change at all so far?
You are aware there is some other "bodies" perhaps "nebulous" who are also happy to make changes with no reason or justification, apart from that they want to.
FUCK BETA.
captcha: coronary!
They'll be able to discover all the people on BETA BLOCKERS!
This is hardly "backdoor". There's a central body, the police can obtain a warrant and then request information from it.
Doctor-patient confidentiality is a practice with regards to disclosure by doctors. In a practical sense your information is disclosed widely with the government and your insurance company - i.e. Medicare would know for what items I went to the optometrist recently, as would any private insurer I had, because they need to pay for the various line-item billings.
It's not a meaningful change from standard practice - medical practitioners can already be compelled by the same warrant's to share patient files.
The fun part being that once your data is on this access-for-all database it isn't yours anymore and thus you have no say in how it is doled out to all and sundry. There can't be a privacy violation if the new data owner (whichever dolt is Secretary of State for health at the time) allows it.
Honestly, I'm fine with SOME change in the traditional doctor/patient relationship. For example, I think it is fine to be able to mine the database in aggregate for information that could be used to improve public health. I'd even be fine with mining the database to find individuals and contacting them to request their consent to participate in studies that would improve public health (and possibly their own).
However, the theme here is that this is about using the data in a way that generally protects the individual interest and which provides a general benefit to everybody, and perhaps even a specific benefit to the individual whose data is accessed.
All of this would be controlled as well - queries of data would be a part of a study and would be reviewed before they could be run to ensure that data being extracted is appropriately de-personalized. If the intent is to contact individuals then the investigators would provide the criteria, and perhaps evaluate a data set which has been blinded (map identifiers to a study-specific set for which the government holds the relationship table). Then the investigator would provide the list of blinded IDs to contact, and the government would handle communications, perhaps directly or through the local doctor. Again everything would be controlled like any other clinical trial in terms of review of consent forms, proper disclosure, etc.
Police access to this data is of course outrageous. This gives individuals incentive to not participate which has impact to both their personal health and public health.
It's a good thing we won world war 2 isn't it.
At least we've had sixty years of freedom.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
You can't opt out, you must participate if you want to use the NHS. You can opt out of the data being shared with other doctors, but not the police.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The UK doesn't seem to give a toss about its obligations as an EU member, but giving complete police access to medical records without court order appears to violate EU privacy guidelines. Never mind all reasonable expectations of privacy. Here's a telegraph article which suggests that the NHS policy violates EU guidelines and could lead to a ban. That the UK would likely ignore.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/hea...
Honestly, there are places where national health care systems really do work. But man does the USA/UK alliance do their best to confirm every libertarian paranoid fear about rogue government abusing private data in publicly held records. What a mess.
On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup...
You don't block javascript so you don't have to see popups and popunders? What kind of nerd are you?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
You can't opt out, you must participate if you want to use the NHS. You can opt out of the data being shared with other doctors, but not the police.
Oh, I understand that. I'm just saying that this will give people incentive to not receive care from the NHS, or to conceal things from their doctors, or to bribe their doctors to provide advice without updating the database, etc. All of these things degrade the quality of both individual and public health (do you want people with infectious diseases walking around untreated?).
The United Kingdom has not adopted a HIPAA "like" policy that protects patient privacy and, as a matter of fact, the UK does not feel the same need for privacy and other human rights that the US embraces (we had a war over this, remember?). Remember the prank call where the radio show host posing as the Queen called the hospital for info on the pregnant Kate, wife of prince William? That ended with a suicide and some firings. In the US, that would have ended, at worse, with the firing of the person that divulged the info. More than likely, the "queen" would have been informed she needed to prove her identity and ask Kate to be added to the disclosure list signed by Kate. And while we're on the subject, your private (or public) insurance provider has TONS of information on you (diagnosis, meds, treatments). Be aware of when you assign rights for others to see your Protected Health Information (PHI). If someone gets your info in the US without permission, warrant, or, in an emergent setting, REPORT THEM! (and then sue). Sorry, we have a great system here in the US, but we all need to make it work and quit complaining.
Until I saw what slashdot beta looked like, I thought they were trolls too. But now that I see that half the browser window is going to be blank just so that the poll
window can have more white space, I sympathize with them. It should be up to each slashdot reader to choose how they read slashdot. Other sites give their forum members a choice in font size, background and text colors, and theme.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Private data, and can it get more private than medical information? is per EU law yours and will always stay yours.
This is not the USofA where a corp can legally sell your stuff, not even in the case of bankruptcy.
Now even EU law has some exceptions to this rule and law enforcement is one of them but it would still require judicial (court) oversight, no blanket trawling.
Rather cynical is this idea is promoted by the same Cameron government that complains the Brussels's 'meddling' in it's internal affairs is wrong and needs to be stopped!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I would have expected someone to raise the possibility of insurance companies mining the information so as to avoid dealing with 'problem' medically compromised customers, or at least increasing the coverage fees to unacceptable levels and thereby driving off the 'problem'. Perhaps that potential new employer wants to know that you aren't medical damaged goods? Perhaps you have to apply to the police or a local authority for permission for something, and they want to use the medical records to check your suitability/mental condition/drink/drugs etc..
I would have expected someone to be making comparisons to 'Gattaca' by this point in time.
Although the Hippocratic Oath does entreat physicians to keep patient information secret, it also asks the practitioner to pray to some fairly obscure deities (and I would point out that His Noodliness is not among them), prohibits assisted suicide and abortion (at least with a pessary) and to keep one's daughters in the dark. So it's a bit of a wash in the 21st Century.
But it does point out that, once you put something into a computer database, it's pretty easy to get it out.
We should go back to stone tablets.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Maybe this medical sharing law is just a fucking BETA?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!