Data mining – UK Govt is selling your Medical records to insurance companies

I'm not saying you shouldn't read it, you're misinterpreting what I'm saying and going off topic. Read all you like, just don't take it all as gospel.

 

Well AFAIK i didn't take it as gospel, if i had i would still be arguing that the police have a backdoor to medical records, in fact after discussing the article here i soon came to the conclusion that it was inaccurate.

Perhaps if i have misinterpreting what you have said you could clarify it for me.

And far from going off topic AFAIK we are still discussing the care.plan scheme and that it lacks transparency and oversight, something that was covered in the article that you offhandedly discarded because you didn't happen to like the headline.

 

Not intent with just selling our pseudonymized medical records, it seems HMRC wants to sell our pseudonymized tax records to third party's as well now.

HMRC to sell taxpayers' financial data
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/18/hmrc-to-sell-taxpayers-data

 

Anything to make a quick buck it seems as if they don't shaft the tax payers enough, should be illegal.

 

And we all know how good HMRC are when it comes to data protection, what with them losing 25 million peoples personal details in 2007

 

Thank god I'm not registered with any doctor. This is England though they can get away with anything because no one will do anything about it except complain. When it comes to voting how much of the public actually vote so it does not help moaning about it.
There is also a point who the hell do you vote for as they are all corrupt as each other

 

I haven't seen a doctor for about 10 years now. Probably should mosey on over there at some point before they start fingering my bumhole in a few years' time...

 

Lol

 

Do something about it

It's a slow burner - it was around a thousand names last week, but if don't people sign or forward a petition they're sleepwalking into a country where everything about them is available to the lowest bidder, and don't deserve the right to complain after the fact.

 

Done, thanks for the linky.

 

It'd be nice if when someone created these sorts of petitions they could tone the hyperbole down just a little...

 

Probably directly proportional to the level of general apathy.

This is a golden age for government - elected with record low turn outs, and able to pass almost anything they want, because nobody gives a sh!t until it's too late.

 

That may be true, but the hyperbole is not going to help it get taken seriously if it ever does get presented to the Government.

 

Partition filled in, plus rep for Spreadie

 

Not wanting to start an argument, but what part do you see as hyperbole ?
To me it seems the dangers are very real

 

Just received this information from the partition


Last Friday the news came out that HMRC wants to sell access to your tax records.

This would mean long-term information about how much you earn, where you work and where you live being bought up by companies like banks, insurance companies, credit rating agencies and advertisers.

HMRC's plans would mean information about how much you earn, where you work and where you live being bought up by companies like banks, insurance companies, credit rating agencies and advertisers.

The Government says the data will be anonymised. But they said the same thing about the NHS' Care.data scheme which let commercial researchers buy access to "anonymised" medical records that included your NHS number, date of birth, postcode, gender and ethnicity. That's more than enough to re-identify individuals using other publicly-available data.

Public outcry about selling off medical data without consent meant the Government put those plans on hold. But they haven't learnt their lesson and they're planning to do the same thing again with tax data.

The Government now has a track record of wanting to sell off our personal data without our consent. We have no choice about providing the state with our tax data so the Government should ask us for our explicit consent before selling access to our sensitive information.

 

Unless they have something to back this up then this is hyperbole. And if they do then it should be made clear in the petition. It doesn't even have to be in the petition as a whole, it's easier enough to link to a page showing where 'anonymised' data is routinely being released in a non-anonymised form or can be used to identify people.

This is simply wrong. You don't need consent to process personal data, and the ICO go as far as recommending that consent is not exclusively relied upon as a condition for processing. The fact that consent is listed first in the conditions for processing doesn't give it any greater weight.

While technically correct, you can say the same about pretty much every organisation that holds information. Information is valuable and when you have a gaping hole in the budget you're going to want to sell things. The statement doesn't add anything of value to the petition.

Why? Information sharing takes place on a daily basis and it's not dangerous or morally wrong. Yes, safeguards need to taken but where those safeguards are in place why is data sharing/selling dangerous or morally wrong?

Again, consent isn't required and it's really not the case that we always have a right to decide what happens with private information about us. We have the right to be told what will happen, and in some cases we do have the right to decide it's not used in that manner, but there's plenty of occasions when we have no choice in our information being used in certain ways.

I don't suppose they have provided a source for where they have found out what is included in the plans for data sharing? Because afaik the HMRC had released any specific details of their 'plan', and the only available details at the moment were that the Government is looking to remove legal restrictions to allow the sale of some aggregated, anonymised data.


I'm not saying that isn't any danger in sharing data but if you're going to create a petition about it then it should set out the real concerns that need addressing instead of being filled with statements that sound good but are either wrong or add nothing of value.

 

No source but doesn't make it false, I have no doubt the government would do it and I would prefer my private information to be kept private.

Yes I know peoples information is sold for all kinds of things like it or not but I would prefer to try to limit it as much as possible.

 

To be fair, banks, insurance companies and credit rating agencies already know this when you are their customer.

 

I can't find it ATM but I'm pretty sure i read about a girl in America that used pseudonymised data to reidentify people using some other easily accessible data. I will try to dig up the link when i get time.

Maybe i have read it wrong but the ICO Data Protection Act says the following...

Forgive me if i missed something I'm rushing this

But don't both HMRC and our medical records come with a level of confidentiality, wont selling our records cause a break down of that trust ?

Because we can choose whether to share our data with other organisations by not doing business with them, thats not the case with medical care or tax records.

Going on what the ICO says about data protection and confidentiality, if it is personal data then they do have to seek consent. It's one of the reasons they are going to use pseudonymized data, as it gets around the data protection act because its not classed as personal data if it has been pseudonymized.