What the... UK Police And Companies Will Have Access To Database Of All England'

[Gryzor]

Totally off-topic, of course, but I'd like the take of our UK comforumites...


From https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140207/09552726132/uk-police-companies-will-have-access-to-database-all-englands-medical-records.shtml :

The UK government is currently building a database called care.data that will contain all of England's medical records. It's being promoted as providing valuable information for healthcare management and medical researchers that will lead to improved treatment.


Given the extremely sensitive nature of the material that will be stored, you might have expected this to be opt-in, but instead the UK government has chosen to make it opt-out. Not only that, but the relatively sparse information about what was happening was sent in the form of a generic, unaddressed letter that differs little from the dozens of junk mail pieces received by most households each week, and failed to include any easy-to-use opt-out form.


This has fuelled suspicions that the UK government is making it hard to opt out in order to keep the numbers enrolled in the database as high as possible. More recently, good reasons why people might want to avoid the scheme have emerged. For example, it was revealed that as well as being provided to research scientists, the database could also be bought by companies:


Drug and insurance companies will from later this year be able to buy information on patients -- including mental health conditions and diseases such as cancer, as well as smoking and drinking habits -- once a single English database of medical data has been created.


Now we learn that the UK police will also have access:


The database that will store all of England's health records has a series of "backdoors" that will allow police and government bodies to access people's medical data.


As the UK MP David Davis told the Guardian:


"The idea that police will be able to request information from a central database without a warrant totally undermines a long-held belief in the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship," he said.That means that as well as the risk of a privacy disaster of unprecedented proportions if the consolidated health data is lost or stolen as a result of being passed to third parties (as has already happened with a similar but smaller database), patients may be less likely to confide in their doctors knowing that details will end up in a database sold to companies and freely available to the police. Nice work, Mr Cameron.

Have we gone completely mad?

[fano]

Welcome to the best possible world 

[gerald]

Welcome to the best possible world 

a brave new world 

[Axelay]

And the CPC was launched in 1984!

[fano]

a brave new world 

Thx , i wasn't aware about english title 

[MaV]

Hehe, fano wasn't so wrong with his phrase. Leibniz spoke of this world as the best possible, and Voltaire parodied it.

The best of all possible worlds (Leibniz):
Best of all possible worlds - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Candide (Voltaire):
Candide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The news item certainly looks like a parody of Leibniz and could be seamlessly added as another chapter to Candide.

[Bryce]

Ignoring the seriousness of it all: Sometime in the future:

Policeman on the beat: We've spotted the criminal and are giving chase.
Police Headquarters: Relax, he's got a dodgy heart and smokes heavily, he won't make it more than 500 yards.
Criminals Mobile rings: Hello, this is you're insurance company. If you keep running like that I'm afraid we're going to have to cancel your policy.

Back to the serious side: As scary as it may seem, it's even scarier when you take the UKs lack of data protection over the last years into account, they don't have to sell the data, it will be so leaky that anyone can get access. The only shimmer of hope is the fact that the UK government are so bad at ideas like this, that after spending 10 Squillion pounds on setting up the system, the next Government will audit the project and stop it immediately. So hurrah for all the software companies that will make a fortune creating a system that never gets built.

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

I remember during my studies, we had a company over the Business School to demo their CRM (Customer Retention Management) techniques to us. They showed us their software, a huge database with info on every. fucking. single. block int he UK, like the number of babies, pets, sex of the family members, possibly times they were having sex, what they ate, what they bought, where they would go on vacation, everything. All this data came from publicly traded data (like super market databases - that's why I NEVER use a discount card at super markets[nb]trade secret: the biggest super market chain in Greece reportedly makes 8% (that's right, 8%!) of its net income from trading customer info. That's crazy[/nb]- cross-referenced with the post code as the UID.


I also remember a couple of years back (or was it last year?) how the UK government wanted to sell the census data.


Regarding safety, one of the comments on TechDirt says:

A FOI request revealed that the company running this database would continue to using Windows XP after its phase out date and would not be purchasing any support from Microsoft.


If that is their security practice what hope is their for everybodies data in the database?

Let the ROFLs begin. Only, it ain't funny.

[MacDeath]

"all your (data)bases are belongs to U.S.(A) !!!"

And the CPC was launched in 1984!

Like the Mac.
Look at a modern Macs...
Big flat screen multimedia display with remote control that can't really be powered off and with camera and microphone built-in.
Those even exist that can fit hands... iPhones.


reminds me some 1984 techgizmo... telescreen ?

Amstrad was cheap resistance and freedom for the peoples... in comparison.


XboXone is like HAL as well. it watches you.




As a french minister told (approximately) :
"we should exercise total control and censor over the internet to fight those far right facist nazi scums that are committing human crime complicity by being far right facist nazi scums discussing our actions and having the stenchy nauseous smell of the 1930's worst darkest hours reminiscence... after all if china can do it why can't we ?"
seriously ? is this left minded government in democracy ?


just to contest a bit our government gets you taxed as an Homophobic antisemitist untolerant  racist far right Nazi scum who participated in crimes against humanity.
WTF ?


talk about doublespeak...
The internet freedom ministry is really the internet control&censorship ministry.



The IT Crowd - Series 2 - Episode 3: Piracy warning


When do we get an 8bit-net ?

[TFM]

The 8 bit net? We had that before, but people decided to join PC and facebook.


8Bit-Net - CPCWiki

[MacDeath]

still waiting for a ready to use card+software solution...

[TFM]

Ask R. Palmer

[Gryzor]

Off-topic, much?

[MacDeath]

GX4000 cartridges are always in topic !!! Always.


Internet/network solution for CPC/PLUS are too always on topic.

[zeropolis79]

I remember during my studies, we had a company over the Business School to demo their CRM (Customer Retention Management) techniques to us. They showed us their software, a huge database with info on every. fucking. single. block int he UK, like the number of babies, pets, sex of the family members, possibly times they were having sex, what they ate, what they bought, where they would go on vacation, everything. All this data came from publicly traded data (like super market databases - that's why I NEVER use a discount card at super markets[nb]trade secret: the biggest super market chain in Greece reportedly makes 8% (that's right, 8%!) of its net income from trading customer info. That's crazy[/nb]- cross-referenced with the post code as the UID.


I also remember a couple of years back (or was it last year?) how the UK government wanted to sell the census data.


Regarding safety, one of the comments on TechDirt says:



Let the ROFLs begin. Only, it ain't funny.

Seriously?

[AMSDOS]

I've only heard about the rule regarding Australian's leaving UK not being able to get back to the UK, I don't know what that's about and my cousin is coming to Aust. to visit the family, but my Mum thinks she'll be able to go back to the UK just fine.

Is the Government going vile in the UK or something?