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Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech

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Re: Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech

#51

Post by specialist »

pessimizer wrote: post #15
catalogia wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be good advice in general, but I don't think that works with medical data. If I get hurt and end up in a hospital, how would the surgeons decrypt my hard drive to find my medical history if I'm unconscious? Obviously I need to entrust this data to somebody. Edit: Not being a doctor, it's difficult for me to anticipate what sort of information doctors would consider relevant. Certainly there are some easy c…

I'm willing the accept the 5% extra chance of death entailed by some emergency doctor not knowing my medical history. If I have something crucial, like an allergy to medication, I guess I'd just get that tattooed somewhere obvious. In the vast majority of emergency cases for the vast majority of patients, I don't think one's medical history is going to be a significant factor in getting them out of the woods far enou…

During the mid-aughts, there was at least one serious proposal that every person would have their own private record store, which they carried around (PDFs on a thumb drive). Part of NHIN shootout. Every one had a pretty good laugh.

Repeating myself here: one way to protect patient privacy is to issue everyone globally unique identifiers. Then use translucent database techniques to hide the important.

Currently, linking records across our heterogeneous systems, with all the data quality challenges, prevents data from being encrypted (in transit or at rest).

Re: Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech

#52

Post by pasabagi »

anonymousDan wrote: post #3

As a UK taxpayer this makes me so angry. The fact this incredibly valuable (not to mention privacy sensitive) data is given away through backroom deals for a pittance without any transparency is just infuriating.

This is literally how privatization works. My dad runs a small construction firm in London, and was invited to provide the sandwiches for the opening of a new park. For that colossal buy-in, they got their company name on a plaque, as a generous funder of the park's construction. In reality, the whole thing was paid for by the state. Except the sandwiches, of course (I think another business might have paid for a bench or two).

It's a simple scheme - the party looks like they did a project on the cheap, so they look thrifty to voters. The businessman gets real tangible benefits. The politicians responsible make friends who'll open doors for them in the future.

Re: Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech

#53

Post by mtnGoat »

hackissimo123 wrote: post #34
Taek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Echoing another commenter, it's absolutely okay to be upset about things that run-of-the mill. If we didn't get upset about everyday human rights violations, we'd still have slaves.

And if we didn't get upset about everyday human rights violations, China wouldn't currently be herding people into concentration camps. Wait...

touche!

Re: Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech

#54

Post by heavenlyblue »

Semaphor wrote: post #43
heavenlyblue wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use Hacker News, you probably do hear about it often. Do German newspapers cover the news about NHS all the time?

> If you use Hacker News, you probably do hear about it often. Well, this sub-thread was about someone saying NHS is not that well known… on HN ;) > Do German newspapers cover the news about NHS all the time? I wouldn’t know, I rarely read them.

So why would you argue in a thread that is about what people think in the general case?

Re: Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech

#55

Post by _8j50 »

sneak wrote: post #47
kgraves wrote: post #13

At this point, if you work at Palantir, you should be very ashamed of yourself and please consider quitting.

I think the same should be said for the people at AWS: they run the GovCloud region hardware on which the Palantir code runs. There’s also a similar case against Microsoft.

Aws and microsoft don't write the code, they host the platform.

Re: Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech

#56

Post by gruez »

disabled wrote: post #50
creato wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand the thinking here, it's a bit sad. It seems quite likely that very useful medical advancements could be made by looking for correlations in large databases of a variety of medical data. Or correlations between health histories and genetic data. If we gained understanding that led to improved healthcare for everyone, wouldn't someone doing this kind of work be a "good guy"?

There have been reports on this site, of severe healthcare provider (as in HIPAA protected data) privacy violations, that occurred via data broker intermediaries through popular social media platforms. You know, getting a $60 FedEx package consisting of baby formula, during the month that the baby you miscarried should have been born, that almost cost you your life too. The amount of bad medical data, erroneous medic…

Companies fedex $60 worth of goods to expectant mothers? Is that a thing?

Re: Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech

#57

Post by disabled »

gruez wrote: post #56
disabled wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been reports on this site, of severe healthcare provider (as in HIPAA protected data) privacy violations, that occurred via data broker intermediaries through popular social media platforms. You know, getting a $60 FedEx package consisting of baby formula, during the month that the baby you miscarried should have been born, that almost cost you your life too. The amount of bad medical data, erroneous medic…

Companies fedex $60 worth of goods to expectant mothers? Is that a thing?

There are actually multiple people on here, who had wives who miscarried, who got a $60 promotional FedEx package of Enfamil (baby formula) on what was the exact expected date of their miscarried baby.

So, it was not like it was hard to figure out that it was from medical data, and especially in one case, where they did not even know that they were pregnant when the miscarriage happened!

You can find this stuff easily by using variants of code words from the post I made, to find the details that you want to learn about.

However, this is the user who did incredible investigation work. (There are far more thoughtful posts over this incident if you just search for things like "USER" AND "Baby/Infant Formula": https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

You will find extremely insightful information if you further modify select key words in the search. It really is eye opening.

Also, the Financial Times always had pretty impressive investigative work on data privacy, and not in an apocalyptic or fleeting sense. It is just incredibly well researched, and somehow, I have never been disappointed by their coverage.

Re: Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech

#58

Post by 616c »

throwawaypal wrote: post #18
anonymousDan wrote: post #3

As a UK taxpayer this makes me so angry. The fact this incredibly valuable (not to mention privacy sensitive) data is given away through backroom deals for a pittance without any transparency is just infuriating.

If things like this upset you, you are seriously naive about the operations of your government. As a former Palantir employee, I can say with some confidence that the govt and private company's make efforts to ensure these things remain secret..

Then be a hero and stop using a throwaway maybe? If you are embarrassed or maybe ashamed of your former association with Palantir, don't bring it up or don't get caught working there or both.

I work on similar public healthcare projects where our website mentions the contracts, down to the division. I tell people in meetings I don't do things I wouldn't stand by on public record.

Own it.

Re: Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech

#59

Post by Semaphor »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #54
Semaphor wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you use Hacker News, you probably do hear about it often. Well, this sub-thread was about someone saying NHS is not that well known… on HN ;) > Do German newspapers cover the news about NHS all the time? I wouldn’t know, I rarely read them.

So why would you argue in a thread that is about what people think in the general case?

Ìn the general case of having country specific things in the title, but not the name of the country.

Re: Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech

#60

Post by r7ueehhrhrh »

disabled wrote: post #50
creato wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand the thinking here, it's a bit sad. It seems quite likely that very useful medical advancements could be made by looking for correlations in large databases of a variety of medical data. Or correlations between health histories and genetic data. If we gained understanding that led to improved healthcare for everyone, wouldn't someone doing this kind of work be a "good guy"?

There have been reports on this site, of severe healthcare provider (as in HIPAA protected data) privacy violations, that occurred via data broker intermediaries through popular social media platforms. You know, getting a $60 FedEx package consisting of baby formula, during the month that the baby you miscarried should have been born, that almost cost you your life too. The amount of bad medical data, erroneous medic…

This seems really uncompelling. So what, we pass on potentially saving lives because some people are getting mail that makes them sad? Because a trans person might get mail that targets their sex? None of the potential harm seems as bad as dying or even physical (unlike dying).
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