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

Trust

[110010001000]

In Google We Trust. It is on all new dollars.

Re:Trust

[110010001000]

Too bad. Your health care provider already shared it with them.

Just like Facebook

[CanadianMacFan]

Just like Facebook when it said it wouldn't take any user data from WhatsApp when it bought that company. These companies thrive on user data and aren't going to pass up a chance to get more if they can no matter what they've said before.

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?

Re:Hysterical

[jbmartin6]

I believe it to a point. There is a certain class of identifier which has no value for Google, such as name and specific street address. So a lot of medical data (and other kinds) are shared widely (not just with Google) after being 'anonymized' by removing the very specific identifiers. This is done for statistical analysis and a host of other reasons. But de-anonymizing isn't overly difficult if you already have other data to match against. Which Google and thousands of other organizations do.

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.