Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 184 posts

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

#141

Post by fixermark »

yapcguy wrote: post #109
boomzilla wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just crazy. According to the article, this "big data" fits in 27 DVDs, which is roughly 1-2 TB of data. Do you really need Big Query or whatever for this?

50 x 50GB blu-ray discs, for over 2TB of storage, only costs $126 at Amazon. A 2TB portable USB drive costs $100. But no, let's just upload everything to Google Drive.

I would assume it's not about storage; it's about processing.

The bold byline of BigQuery (https://developers.google.com/bigquery/) is "Analyze terabytes of data in seconds."

Store the data locally? Easily. Set up the necessary back-end infrastructure to sift, twist, and churn the data efficiently? Now you're talking hiring some people to set up an infrastructure for that... Or you could upload it to Google and use their infrastructure.

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

#142

Post by fixermark »

easyfrag wrote: post #104
morgante wrote: post #82

I don't understand why the data being on "Google servers" is generating such outrage. Google almost certainly has superior security to this "PA Consulting" or even the government itself.

I don't think Americans get how distrustful other nations are of American-based cloud providers. It is not a matter of Google's or any other providers' behaviour but of the US Government (warrant-less searches and the like). This lack of trust predates the current NSA-Snowden affair and goes back to the Patriot Act (IMHO). Of course I can't speak for all nations or industries (or even companies) but in my part of the…

As an American, I'll be a little surprised if that mistrust runs deeply in Britain, given how closely the Snowden disclosures revealed GCHQ and the NSA to be working. If the NSA had a vested interest in getting health records on a British citizen, I doubt it'd be difficult to get the British government to send them over. You know, to fight terrorism.

Of course, people aren't strictly rational actors, so I suppose one could hold the cognitive dissonance that one's private data is safer from the NSA physically stored in Europe than it is in the US.

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

#143

Post by sentenza »

collyw wrote: post #84
sentenza wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you still work in that field? If so, you're probably one of the few people that IMO actually should have some access to that data. Maybe you'll get lucky and the data will become a researcher free-for-all, like the Enron emails did. (Not likely, though.)

No we are discussing all the security implications before we even get close to collecting the data.

I am happy to hear that. From my experience, some inroads have been made in universities regarding the ethics of research projects. Security of the computer systems used to store and handle tha data, on the other hand, is way to often still not considered.

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

#144

Post by lotsofmangos »

baldfat wrote: post #130
Silhouette wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what "appropriate approval" was that, exactly? In general, exporting personal data outside of the EEA requires the explicit notification of the data subject under UK data protection law (among other consequences of the first Principle[1]). Moreover, the rules for even processing sensitive personal information, which includes health-related information, are significantly stronger than the general case. They should…

The statement from the offending party is that there was no individual identifying data. So what law?

People were able to identify individuals on the earthware map produced from this data that was publicly online.

It doesn't really matter what the offending party says, if it is demonstrably untrue.

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

#145

Post by pbhjpbhj »

icebraining wrote: post #32
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…

But it was a government contractor who uploaded and queried the data (PA), they just used Google's platform. Frankly, this seems as related to Google as Nokia would be if someone used one of their cellphones to detonate an explosive. They're just the database provider.

It's not relevant that it's Google. The pertinent information [to me] is that it's not a certified host for this confidential data; that the data has been sent outside of the UK; and to a lesser extent [for me] that the data is by virtue of the host it's been sent to legally and undetectably accessible by a foreign government.

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

#146

Post by dhoulb »

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.

Rarr, scary database, rarrr.

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

#147

Post by DerpDerpDerp »

ataggart wrote: post #110
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.

Taking a sentient human being and throwing them in a cage is a profoundly violent act. I find it troubling that you guys so casually reach for it as a punitive tool, particularly when the subject has neither committed physical violence nor poses such a threat to others. Surely you clever people can think of forms of punishment/deterrence less destructive to both the individual and society as a whole.

Poor record keeping is essentially providing blackmail material on thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or occasionally millions of people.

We put blackmailers in to jail, and we should put people who provide enough sensitive material to blackmail an entire city in to jail as well.

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

#148

Post by twic »

suprgeek wrote: post #128

All that is now needed is to cross reference it with the ridiculously extensive CCTV footage that the Govt. in Britain has collected & continues to collect everyday. Perfect Surveillance at a granularity that was not possible before.

No no no - perfect healthcare at a granularity that was not possible before! Plays much better with the voters!

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

#149

Post by dangerlibrary »

fixermark wrote: post #140
Pxtl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a law stating that those DVDs be encrypted... I mean, the key might be in a text file on the DVD, but there are plenty of regs surrounding the transportation of patient data.

That's true; they may be secured in that fashion (does anybody know what NHS policy is?) I was thinking "secure" in the sense of "Physically inside a datacenter with privileged access" as opposed to "Physically on 27 DVDs that are... Hm.... Where are those DVDs... Hey Bob, did you have the DVDs last? Shoot, I know I put those DVDs around here somewhere..."

Having worked with sensitive data on physical media - you couldn't be more mistaken about how carefully it is monitored and handled.

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

#150

Post by dhoulb »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #25
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is anonymised Not meaningfully, no. A UK postcode covers 20 households or less. If you have that plus gender and date of birth (as seems to be the case here), you almost always have a unique individual.

NHS number, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender. Is about as anonymous as wearing a different hat.

NHS number is clearly ridiculous.

But, I can see why all the other data are statistically relevant in analysis.

Postcode, so you can track viral outbreak etc with a fair degree of locational accuracy.

Date of birth, so you could analyse if people born in certain seasons had higher incidences of various diseases. (You could probably drop the day and just have month, but there could be cases where there were more hospital deaths for babies born on a Monday, etc).

Gender and ethnicity are obvious.

Post reply on HN