About a decade ago, when I still lived in Britain, the project to keep central copies of GP patient data came and it was possible to Opt-Out.
I expresselly filled the paperwork to opt out of it with my GP, because by then I did not at all trust British Governments (all this was after the Snowden Revelations, plus having been in Finance in the 2008 crash and seen how that was dealt with by both British major parties, I fully believed they were corrupt as fuck) and expected that all that healtcare data would be misused including, sooner or later, being sold out (or even given) to the Private sector.
Here we are now, and lo and behold…
PS: By the way, if I remember it correctly this data was already sold to Google years ago, supposedly “anonimized” but in such a weak and inefective way it was proven it could easilly be de-anonimized.
Anonymizing personal info is way harder than most ppl realize. Bordering on impossible when there is other data about those people to use. That Harvard page mentions voter records. But I think more to the massive trove of behavior data that devices capture about everybody now. That paints a very intimate picture of everything most ppl do. Everywhere they go. All their interests. Their moods. Their habits. Their friends group. That is the basis of powerful de-anonymizing techniques. And data broker companies are VERY good at this. They hire incredibly smart data scientists.
I sincerely doubt anyone’s medical data today can remain private. Might be data breaches. Might be de-anonymization. But it will not stay confidental between pt and dr for long.
This one specifically had people’s addresses, so it was reasonably simple to match to people’s identities if you had other data containing identity and address.
About a decade ago, when I still lived in Britain, the project to keep central copies of GP patient data came and it was possible to Opt-Out.
I expresselly filled the paperwork to opt out of it with my GP, because by then I did not at all trust British Governments (all this was after the Snowden Revelations, plus having been in Finance in the 2008 crash and seen how that was dealt with by both British major parties, I fully believed they were corrupt as fuck) and expected that all that healtcare data would be misused including, sooner or later, being sold out (or even given) to the Private sector.
Here we are now, and lo and behold…
PS: By the way, if I remember it correctly this data was already sold to Google years ago, supposedly “anonimized” but in such a weak and inefective way it was proven it could easilly be de-anonimized.
More info about that idea from Harvard University.
Anonymizing personal info is way harder than most ppl realize. Bordering on impossible when there is other data about those people to use. That Harvard page mentions voter records. But I think more to the massive trove of behavior data that devices capture about everybody now. That paints a very intimate picture of everything most ppl do. Everywhere they go. All their interests. Their moods. Their habits. Their friends group. That is the basis of powerful de-anonymizing techniques. And data broker companies are VERY good at this. They hire incredibly smart data scientists.
I sincerely doubt anyone’s medical data today can remain private. Might be data breaches. Might be de-anonymization. But it will not stay confidental between pt and dr for long.
De-anonymizing data should be so illegal that it’ll get you thrown into a wood chipper.
This one specifically had people’s addresses, so it was reasonably simple to match to people’s identities if you had other data containing identity and address.
Yow. That’s insane.