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

Since 2001 IIRC

EDIT: Information commissioners office Electoral register

EDIT2: They also have a lot of information on what other personal details can be used, like What is care.data?.

And if anyone wants to see the leaflet being sent out its available online (PDF warning)
http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/records/healthrecords/Documents/NHS_Door_drop_26-11-13.pdf

 

You're talking about Robertson vs City of Wakefield 2001, where Article 8 of the European Declaration of Human Rights (concerning privacy) was successfully invoked. However the law still remains that the full register is made available to credit agencies. (Trust me, I know enough about it to bring it up with my MP).

Personal information is the credit industry's product. The current status quo may seem harmless, but when you think it through it's distinctly undemocratic as it enforces the status quo - No matter who you vote for a private industry always wins, and that's a breeding ground for corruption.

 

Isn't that what I said?

How is the private industry winning in relation to electoral roll details?

 

Well, given the financial collapse which negatively impacted the lives of millions if not billions it isn't hard to imagine an Anti-Credit Party, whose cornerstone policy is reforming the current industry paradigms (there are already global movements with the same goals). All you need to do is consider the conflict of interests in that.

 

Not entirely sure how that answers the question of how private industry is winning by having the use of 'opted out' electoral details restricted solely to credit referencing by the credit reference agencies.

 

I honestly don't care, I don't pay my private health insurance and big whoop if they knew about my conjunctivitis between the ages of 3-15 and OMG HE HAD AN EAR INFECTION LAST YEAR.

Seriously, why should I care. Replies with tin foil hat answers will be ignored!

 

MP tables motion to halt care.data rollout as 2,400 patients call helpline.
http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/your-practice/practice-topics/it/mp-tables-motion-to-halt-caredata-rollout-as-2400-patients-call-helpline/20005621.article

I particularly don't like the way MP's seem to be using automatic opt-in's on increasingly more things, yet for something arguably more important like the organ donor scheme gets ignored.
Wouldn't automatically opting people into the organ donation scheme save more lives than selling our medical records?

 

The question really is, would you want them to forward information on the STDs you might catch in the future? Or the state of your mental health? Or if you've considered suicide and spoken to your doctor about it? ..............

 

To be honest this is the least of our worries.... One word.... Facebook. The biggest surveillance tool ever made.

 

Police will have 'backdoor' access to health records despite opt-out, says MP
David Davis says police would be able to approach central NHS database without a warrant as critics warn of catastrophic breach of trust.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/06/police-backdoor-access-nhs-health-records

 

Police have always had access to medical records, this doesn't change anything. It certainly isn't a 'backdoor'. Typical media scaremongering tactics. When investigating serious offences medical records are crucially important, anyone with half a brain cell would know that. Officer's can't just sit down on a computer and browse the public's medical history, quite the opposite. A rather lengthy form has to be submitted, which then goes up the ranks to be authorised and then sent over to the hospital who then have the final decision. Sometimes they are rejected and cases are hindered because of it at court. Sometimes when it's returned it can be heavily edited, and rightly so.

The news story basically says: At the moment Police need to speak to someone about getting records, but now they'll need to speak to someone else. Nice one.

 

Perhaps if you read the article you would see this isn't "media scaremongering tactics" and that it is opening a backdoor for police and government to access your medical records.

As mentioned by David Davis MP and quoted above they no longer need to go to court for a disclosure order, now all they need to do is phone the NHS information centre. No disclosure order, No warrant, No court, No judge to adjudicate if there are sound reasons to break doctor-patient confidentiality.

And far from what you say about just needing to speak to someone else, its going from a well established legal framework and having to providing supporting evidence to someone with years of experience and education in legal matters, to phoning some nobody in a call centre who probably couldn't care less who they have on the end of the phone.

 

I'm afraid you're wrong. See, I'm one of those Officer's that requests medical evidence and quite simply, there is no court, no disclosure order and no Judge. That's nonsense. You fill in a form under the data protection act and go from there.

If Police want to get access to someone's entire medical record then that's different. But that's not what this is about. Not only that, there's barely ever a need for us to have the complete history, and when there is (coroner enquiries, defendant's raising medical defences, etc) then nine times out of ten the person in question permits us to access it.

I'd also like to add that having a Judge or Magistrate to 'adjudicate' things like this is not what the public want. Trust me on that. I've seen them happily sign up some stunningly questionable warrants for all sorts of things.

 

And where does that form go ?

Because according to the Medical Protection Service you should only be able to access someones medical record, if you believe that a patient may be a victim of neglect or abuse, and that they lack capacity to consent to disclosure. You believe that it is in the wider public interest, or that it is necessary to protect the patient or someone else from the risk of death or serious harm. Or disclosure is required by law – for example, in accordance with a statutory obligation, or to comply with a court order or a disclosure notice from the NHS Counter-Fraud Service.

Even an article on the police chief magazine say at present even though police can request medical records it is striped of personal identifiers, from what i can tell the new system wont strip personal identifiers.

Now I'm not saying you are wrong, but if you are correct maybe you need to contact David Davis and all the news papers running this news story and tell them they are talking out their arse.

 

To the appropriate person in the force to authorise and then off to the NHS.

And as an example of something being in the wider public interest it says assisting the police in solving a serious crime. The police can and do request medical records without obtaining a court order or warrant beforehand, it really isn't that uncommon. And it certainly isn't prevented by any current legislation.

That article relates to the US, not the UK.

 

DOH Sorry about that.

So is David Davis out right lying? because i cant see that he has been misinformed as he is quoted as saying "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"

So its not like what he said could be misinterpreted by the papers, could it ?
Or has he done the usual MP thing and spouted off about something he shouldn't have, because what he said has been picked up by a lot of the papers and in turn will likely be believed by most people.

 

I would imagine it's the latter. It wouldn't be the first time an MP has made uninformed comments that have ended up in the press.

 

Doesn't that kind of highlight why in its present form the data.care scheme is bad idea.
If an MP who has access to a great deal more information on the subject than a pleb like me gets it wrong, what hope do other people have of knowing what is happening to their private property.

As i read in an article on the subject "An unfortunate false choice has been established, between scientific progress on one side and protection of privacy on the other."

It seems to me while the care.data scheme is a good idea, it is just another way our rights to privacy are being sacrificed in the name of scientific progress, security and an ever increasing list of reasons to share our personal data via databases and such with third party company's, with little to no oversight and transparency.

 

I can't really say much more than Krazeh, other than you seem to rely far too heavily on articles and the internet in general to dictate what must happen in real life. There's so much rubbish out there. And I did try to read the above article until I saw that it was titled 'Power to the people' then closed it. As far as I could see no one has even put their name to writing that article... But then I don't know exactly how that website works.

 

What other means would you suggest to educate myself on subjects I'm not intimately familiar with then ?

So because you didn't like the title of an article published in Nature magazine on the 16th of January, a publisher of high impact scientific and medical information in print and online. NPG publishes journals, online databases, and services across the life, physical, chemical and applied sciences and clinical medicine.
You decided it wasn't worth reading.

Personally i would prefer to educate myself and discus what is happening in real life than lead a life in ignorance by ignoring information just because i don't happen to agree with an attention grabbing headline.