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Google AI Has Access To 1.6M People's NHS Records (newscientist.com)
Hal Hodson, reporting for New Scientist:It's no secret that Google has broad ambitions in healthcare. But a document obtained by New Scientist reveals that the tech giant's collaboration with the UK's National Health Service goes far beyond what has been publicly announced. The document -- a data-sharing agreement between Google-owned artificial intelligence company DeepMind and the Royal Free NHS Trust -- gives the clearest picture yet of what the company is doing and what sensitive data it now has access to. The agreement gives DeepMind access to a wide range of healthcare data on the 1.6 million patients who pass through three London hospitals run by the Royal Free NHS Trust -- Barnet, Chase Farm and the Royal Free -- each year. This will include information about people who are HIV-positive, for instance, as well as details of drug overdoses and abortions. The agreement also includes access to patient data from the last five years. According to their original agreement, Google cannot use the data in any other part of its business.
This is a non-story about longstanding practice.
Maybe it's more about the overreaching of Google in it's ambitions to spy on people more and more so they have more data to sell to their 'partners' so they can make more and more money. You'd think they're Microsoft or something, with the all the ways they're forcing spyware on everyone. Then with their fucking 'self driving cars' they'll be able to control where and when people travel and track their every movement. Fuck Google, fuck Microsoft, and fuck YOU for being a paid troll for all the above.
Neither the writeup nor TFA mention "anonymized". Could you explain, where you got the information from?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
As a service provider, Google is not equivalent to those other researchers.
The article didn't say, but it would be interesting to know if dates/times were anonymized out (they aren't in the datasets I've seen). With Google calendar and gmail, it's pretty straightforward to deanonymize a rather large set of those patients.
EMRs are becoming more prevalent and some patients start using email for communication (not always that best, but you know it happens). It sure seems like that whole "let's offer an email service" can be quite the treasure trove for this and other kinds of information.
I'll stop by tomorrow morning, Frank. But you know you shouldn't be drinking coffee with your high blood pressure.
If you want results out of it it seems reasonable to put data in for analysis.
Also, I can imagine Deepmind taking better care of the data than the UK government does. I think the government has had a string of data breaches in the past.
Finally, presumably the company has deep pockets as well as a deep mind and can therefore be sued if they are negligent.
Nullius in verba
And chemtrails. You forgot chemtrails.
I'd be right there with you in making fun of GP, but then Edward Snowden came along. I'd also take the original poster's view, if the rule of law still existed for corporation in the U.S. and U.K. Google might have agreed to not use the data in any other part of their business, but what will happen to them if they break that agreement? If a private citizen broke an agreement like that, they could end up in jail, but if Google did it they'd probably get hit with a fine equal to about four hours' worth of profit, which isn't much of a disincentive.