promethea.incorporated

thetransintransgenic:

hpgross:

thetransintransgenic:

privacyandtechnology:

Article by Hal Hodson (New Scientist).

From the article:

“It’s no secret that Google has broad ambitions in healthcare. But a document obtained by New Scientist reveals that the tech giant’s collaboration with the UK’s National Health Service goes far beyond what has been publicly announced. The document – a data-sharing agreement between Google-owned artificial intelligence company DeepMind and the Royal Free NHS Trust – gives the clearest picture yet of what the company is doing and what sensitive data it now has access to. The agreement gives DeepMind access to a wide range of healthcare data on the 1.6 million patients who pass through three London hospitals run by the Royal Free NHS Trust – Barnet, Chase Farm and the Royal Free – each year. This will include information about people who are HIV-positive, for instance, as well as details of drug overdoses and abortions. The agreement also includes access to patient data from the last five years.”

Read more: Full text.

*BANGS POTS AND PANS TOGETHER SHOUTING DOWN THE HALL*

HAVE FULL FAITH IN OUR SELF-DECLARED SILICON-POWERED GOD-EMPERORS! BOW AND OFFER THE APPRORIATE SACRIFICES OF DATA AN TRUST! THERE IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUTWORRY ABOUTWORRY ABOUTWORRY ABOUT———

Being entirely pithy, if there is a statement that “Humans have a lot of data about X” it is likely true that “Google has a lot of data about X that you might not have expected it to have!”

Yes. But:

“… a data-sharing agreement between Google-owned artificial intelligence company DeepMind and the Royal Free NHS Trust …”

This is them getting HANDED THAT DATA by a governmental agency.

---

And yes I’m overreacting: (From the article itself:)

The agreement clearly states that Google cannot use the data in any other part of its business. The data itself will be stored in the UK by a third party contracted by Google, not in DeepMind’s offices. DeepMind is also obliged to delete its copy of the data when the agreement expires at the end of September 2017.

But on the other hand:

This is the first we’ve heard of DeepMind getting access to historical medical records, says Sam Smith, who runs health data privacy group MedConfidential.

There was no PUBLIC INPUT here, the is no even LIP SERVICE being paid to INFORMED CONSENT – the people whom this will be done to were first informed in GOOGLE’S PRESS-RELEASE BLOG POST. 

Who could’ve guessed having a big monstrosity that can just decide to sell your data to some third party with basically no real consent whatsoever involved would lead into people’s data being sold to third parties just like that with absolutely no recourse?

Am I talking about Google or the State? What do you mean “or”?

In a fair world we could so sue the State for all this shit it pulls off and it would be bankrupt before the end of the first year…