Slashdot Mirror
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 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.
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
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."