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NHS England patient data 'uploaded to Google servers', Tory MP says

theguardian.com

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Re: NHS England patient data 'uploaded to Google servers', Tory MP says

#3
The report in question (linked in the article) provides "exceptional" evidence for the performance of Cloud technology by comparing a Google BigQuery search against an on-premises SQL Server query.

So, cloud is good because map-reduce performs better than relational databases...

Re: NHS England patient data 'uploaded to Google servers', Tory MP says

#5
Surely PA Consulting should immediately be sued out of existence. This kind of behaviour must be considered beyond negligent, practically criminal.

I would strongly support throwing anyone involved in this into jail for a long time as a deterrent against future criminals.

This is just unbelievable.

Re: NHS England patient data 'uploaded to Google servers', Tory MP says

#6
post #5

Surely PA Consulting should immediately be sued out of existence. This kind of behaviour must be considered beyond negligent, practically criminal. I would strongly support throwing anyone involved in this into jail for a long time as a deterrent against future criminals. This is just unbelievable.

I would strongly encourage everybody to contact the Information Commisioners Office, as this must be a breach of data protection ?

https://ico.org.uk/Global/contact_us

If anybody has details about how this may be a breach of the data protection act exactly, then please post below.

Re: NHS England patient data 'uploaded to Google servers', Tory MP says

#8
post #2

It's worse than that: Ben Goldacre is reporting ( https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440475049880195073 ) that the data was made publicly available. This is beyond parody.

To add insult to injury they were probably getting paid vast amounts of taxpayers' money to be this incompetent.

Re: NHS England patient data 'uploaded to Google servers', Tory MP says

#9

PA has a history of not looking after UK Government data very well, they famously left a USB stick on a train with alot of confidential data on it.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7575989.stm

Leaving a USB stick on a train is one thing. Spending weeks to upload 27 DVDs' worth of confidential health data to Google servers is quite another! One is negligent. The other is, imho, criminal.

Re: NHS England patient data 'uploaded to Google servers', Tory MP says

#10
post #3

The report in question (linked in the article) provides "exceptional" evidence for the performance of Cloud technology by comparing a Google BigQuery search against an on-premises SQL Server query. So, cloud is good because map-reduce performs better than relational databases...

Not even that - they say "We uploaded it into a traditional Microsoft SQL database on a 1TB drive". So it sounds like they were just using a single spindle. Purchasing an SSD for that SQL Server would probably have given comparable performance benefits.
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