Google whistleblower: the medical data of millions of Americans is at risk
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Re: Google whistleblower: the medical data of millions of Americans is at risk
#2We can only rely on whistleblowers to tell us truly what's going on behind the scenes with these kinds of things.
Kudos to the whistleblower for coming out.
Look at how this is done vs. how Apple is doing their health program. There's tons of transparency, they're openly talking about doing studies with Medical Schools, and the medical parties are publishing results.
Re: Google whistleblower: the medical data of millions of Americans is at risk
#3The real story here might be about how many exceptions are allowed within HIPAA, and how often health data gets transferred.
My understanding is that patient consent is not necessary for things like research, which Google's AI efforts could be argued to fall under. This makes sense in that requiring researchers to get consent for every piece of patient data would quickly become cost-prohibitive for many types of studies or introduce sampling issues (e.g. selection bias) or some combination of the two. Patient health data is frequently handed over to researchers, but HIPAA probably did not anticipate the case in which a powerful consumer-facing entity that is notorious for using personal data also could do legitimate research on health data.
Additionally, given that Google adheres to the HIPAA business associate agreement, healthcare institutions are allowed to give non-anonymized patient information without patient consent. A typical example might be a medical group that outsources its billing procedures. My understanding is that the medical group does not need to get patient consent in order to hand over medical data to the medical billing coders.
Someone who is more knowledgeable about HIPAA might be able to add to the discussion, but from the few details that have been publicized, it could be that Google is following the law, but people are surprised by what is allowed by the law.
Re: Google whistleblower: the medical data of millions of Americans is at risk
#4[deleted]
Re: Google whistleblower: the medical data of millions of Americans is at risk
#5The real story here might be about how many exceptions are allowed within HIPAA, and how often health data gets transferred. My understanding is that patient consent is not necessary for things like research, which Google's AI efforts could be argued to fall under. This makes sense in that requiring researchers to get consent for every piece of patient data would quickly become cost-prohibitive for many types of stud…
Yes, can someone point out what they violated? I know GOOGLE BAD! around here, but surely they aren't this reckless.
Re: Google whistleblower: the medical data of millions of Americans is at risk
#6I work for a large US based corp that focuses on technology and data services for the healthcare field. We have massive amounts of PHI for the majority of people who have visited a provider within the country.
We apply all sorts of stuff to this data, ML, AI or whatever other buzzy tech you can think of.
Most of this work happens within our own data centers but there is significant work done within public clouds.
We have BAAs (business associate agreement) with every cloud vendor we work with. We also have gone to extreme lengths to be confident that our cloud deployments are as secure (or more) than our on premises stuff.
However, none of that is unique. We're no industry trail blazers with adopting public clouds. Just about every other major player is doing this in a way fairly similar to ours
So, what I _really_ don't understand with this story is, did Ascension just simply give up their data to google without boundaries? Their BAA should be very clear that Ascension intends to use google's cloud services but not giving rights to their data to google.
It would not be unusual to engage a vendor or form some other partnership with another firm to work on problems or generate new products. I assumed that this is what Ascension and google were doing but this whistleblower and other stories make it seem like google just has free and clear access to this data outside of their relationship with Ascension.
Is that true? If so, that's crazy! Otherwise, business as usual?
Re: Google whistleblower: the medical data of millions of Americans is at risk
#7What is the risk of exposing our health data? To me it is not so obvious, other than maybe embarrassment? Is it like how in our culture we don't like to talk about how much money we make? Why are all these things supposed to be secret in the first place?
Re: Google whistleblower: the medical data of millions of Americans is at risk
#8What is the risk of exposing our health data? To me it is not so obvious, other than maybe embarrassment? Is it like how in our culture we don't like to talk about how much money we make? Why are all these things supposed to be secret in the first place?
Because the right to your private medical issues is at stake. And that ignores the predatory insurance industry and other discriminatory practices as an aside.
Re: Google whistleblower: the medical data of millions of Americans is at risk
#9My housemate is not careful with their digital privacy so their devices are all unambiguously theirs and the profile assembled by advertisers is likely cohesive across platforms.
Two days ago they said they've been getting a lot more ads about prescription vaginal creams lately. This wasn't happening a week ago. There is reason to expect that someone with access to their medical history would segment them as a likely target for such ads. The topic hasn't come up in their life recently so it would have had to have been from medical records.
To be perfectly clear: this probably wouldn't be happening if Google was telling the truth about not using the data for ads.
It's time to stop believing ad networks when they say they're "not going to use this data for ads" and "are doing everything they can to keep the data safe".
Singular anecdatum, I know, but if we find enough examples of similar occurrences we may be able to build a strong case that they're simply lying about the security of our data in their hands.
Re: Google whistleblower: the medical data of millions of Americans is at risk
#10What is the risk of exposing our health data? To me it is not so obvious, other than maybe embarrassment? Is it like how in our culture we don't like to talk about how much money we make? Why are all these things supposed to be secret in the first place?
Isn't embarrassment enough? Why do you close the door when you go to the bathroom?
In addition, many diseases like STD/STIs or mental illness carry a stigma. Information like that, if inadequately protected, can have a social or even financial cost like losing your job.