Google Accused of 'Trust Demolition' Over Health App (bbc.com)

A privacy expert is criticizing Google for taking over a controversial health app developed by AI firm DeepMind. The app in question -- Streams -- was first used to send alerts in a London hospital but hit headlines for gathering data on 1.6 million patients without informing them. DeepMind now wants the app to become an AI assistant for nurses and doctors around the world. BBC reports: One expert described the move as "trust demolition." Lawyer and privacy expert Julia Powles, who has closely followed the development of Streams, responded on Twitter: "DeepMind repeatedly, unconditionally promised to 'never connect people's intimate, identifiable health data to Google.' Now it's announced... exactly that. This isn't transparency, it's trust demolition," she added.

Comments

Hysterical

[jbmartin6]

There's nothing in the story about sharing data, just the technology. DeepMind said "Patient data remains under our NHS partners' strict control, and all decisions about its use will continue to lie with them. The move to Google does not affect this." The knee-jerk hysteria of privacy nuts is sadly counterproductive, even fewer will listen each time until eventually they are left shouting at each other in an isolated room. Or has that happened already?

Never trust applications.

[Gravis Zero]

Never trust an application to not behave maliciously. If it has the technical capability to copy your information and phone home then you should assume that's exactly what it will do. We need to develop security hardened OSes to prevent this kind of privacy infringement because it will not stop on it's own but it can be prevented from happening in the first place.