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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

#51

Post by pbhjpbhj »

collyw wrote: post #44
apoz wrote: post #38

It took weeks to upload? Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes...

We were shipping hard disks between the States and Spain. Unfortunately Spanish customs can make the delay unreasonably large (especially when someone put the value of the drive at $100).

>(especially when someone put the value of the drive at $100) //

Is that wrong? I see a Seagate Baracuda 3TB on Amazon at $110. Do you mean it should have included the data value or that they inflated the price or what?

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

#52

Post by pbhjpbhj »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #18
kabdib wrote: post #12

27 DVDs = not a lot of data. What were they doing, transcoding through paper tape?

Sneakernet would have been faster...

They're probably not allowed to take the data out of the building for security purposes ...

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

#53

Post by Shivetya »

swombat wrote: 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.

If they have permission of government officials then what?

We can hold companies accountable but how do you hold government accountable? In a meaningful way? Certainly we can find a myriad of excuses not to fire an government worker for a mistake I am fine with doing the same for this as well.

The key is to learn from it and put into place processes that stop it from reoccurring. We need to weigh the penalties to the harm caused. Frankly, if no one lost their life or livelihood I don't think seeking the outcome you suggest is warranted.

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

#55

Post by srj »

atmosx wrote: post #41
nly wrote: post #26

Good. Imo, the fearmongering here is actually quite irrational. Google have more credibility (and money) to lose from a high publicity hack than government contractors who already act with impunity . If they'd invested in their own own map-reduce deployment we'd only be hearing another story about government contractors wasted millions of £ in taxpayers money on Big Brother data analysis. > The extracted information…

> Google have more credibility (and money) to lose from a high publicity hack than government contractors No, Google's (along with other major USA based firms) credibility flew out the window the minute E. Snowden released the NSA documents. I don't think that any corporation who has to manage sensitive information is going to trust Google or any other USA based company in the post-Snowden Era. The risks outweigh the…

What from the leaked documents tells you they lack credibility? From what I remember it was England's own GCHQ that was wiretapping the leased lines between Google data centers.

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

#56

Post by anon1385 »

adamrneary wrote: post #50

The shame of all of this noise is that resources going into medical research today ends up getting spent on data security and building expensive, custom solutions that avoid using servers of a certain type or location in the name of privacy. Sure, it would be more secure to conduct medical research without using computers at all, but what about all those people dying of nasty diseases? If I had 6 months to live, I pr…

Medical data is a great tool but the problem is that these stories are poisoning public good will. There is no point telling people to calm down when they have just learned that records of every meeting they ever had with their doctor were available on the public internet and identifiable to anybody who knows their address and DOB. That is something that people rightly get upset about.

Additionally, it's not like these events are all just accidents or incompetence. The UK government made a policy decision to sell medical records to insurance companies[1].

Also, is it really true that release to the insurance industry is unacceptable to the HSCIC? Its own information governance assessment from August says that access to individual patients records can "enable insurance companies to accurately calculate actuarial risk so as to offer fair premiums to its [sic] customers. Such outcomes are an important aim of Open Data, an important government policy initiative."[2]

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/nhs/10659147/Patient-recor...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/28/care-da...

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

#57

Post by timthorn »

anon1385 wrote: post #56
adamrneary wrote: post #50

The shame of all of this noise is that resources going into medical research today ends up getting spent on data security and building expensive, custom solutions that avoid using servers of a certain type or location in the name of privacy. Sure, it would be more secure to conduct medical research without using computers at all, but what about all those people dying of nasty diseases? If I had 6 months to live, I pr…

Medical data is a great tool but the problem is that these stories are poisoning public good will. There is no point telling people to calm down when they have just learned that records of every meeting they ever had with their doctor were available on the public internet and identifiable to anybody who knows their address and DOB. That is something that people rightly get upset about. Additionally, it's not like the…

Not underplaying at all - your point is spot on - but this data only relates to hospital attendances and not GP interactions. Currently GP interactions are not available in the database, and that's the point of care.data.

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

#58

Post by collyw »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #51
collyw wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were shipping hard disks between the States and Spain. Unfortunately Spanish customs can make the delay unreasonably large (especially when someone put the value of the drive at $100).

> (especially when someone put the value of the drive at $100) // Is that wrong? I see a Seagate Baracuda 3TB on Amazon at $110. Do you mean it should have included the data value or that they inflated the price or what?

Yes, but the drive wasn't what had the value (it was second hand). It got sent back afterwards.

It was publicly funded research data, to be processed and uploaded to the Genome Browser at UCSC. Had someone just put zero on it I think it would have gone a lot more smoothly.

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

#59

Post by Crito »

mathnode wrote: post #19
kabdib wrote: post #12

27 DVDs = not a lot of data. What were they doing, transcoding through paper tape?

That's nearly 4.5TB if it was gzipped plain-text.

Sooo... not a lot of data. That's kabdib's point.

This isn't the 90s or something, a couple of terabytes is no longer "big data".

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

#60

Post by srj »

nly wrote: post #15
kabdib wrote: post #12

27 DVDs = not a lot of data. What were they doing, transcoding through paper tape?

> The data set was so large it took up 27 DVDs and took a couple of weeks to upload. 27 * 8 GiB (DVD-9) / 2 weeks = ~1.5 Mbps. Yep, that's British broadband bought from the lowest bidder.

I think it's tough to say. There's considerable overhead to packeted traffic. Also it sounds like they had a simple setup so there would be a delay in exchanging the DVDs after each one finishes. Uploads probably finished over the weekend with nobody there to start the next one too.
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