privacy
-
Is selling our medical data to insurers a crime – or not? By Jane Fae
As more revelations emerge about the sale of our hospital data to the insurance industry, misleading claims that a massive expansion in data collection is totally safe, are failing to convince. Continue reading
-
New Snowden Documents Show that Governments Are “Attempting To Control, Infiltrate, Manipulate, and Warp Online Discourse”
The alternative media has documented for 5 years that the government uses disinformation and disruption (and here) on the web to discredit activists and manipulate public opinion, just like it smears traditional television and print reporters who question the government too acutely. Continue reading
-
medConfidential Bulletin, 21st February 2014
As you will by now be aware, on Tuesday afternoon the Director of Patients and Information at NHS England, Tim Kelsey, announced a second 6 month delay to the uploading of data from GP practices across England. The first delay to uploads last September was only achieved after medConfidential had alerted the Information Commissioner’s Office… Continue reading
-
NHS IT boss Kelsey wrongly claims care.data leaflet sent to 100% of homes By Jane Fae
Confidence in NHS England’s commitment to transparency and openness received another blow this morning as a full and frank explanation of yesterday’s events by NHS IT Director Tim Kelsey made two more inaccurate and misleading statements about the care.data leafleting process. Continue reading
-
NHS England delays share of personal data By Jane Fae
As criticism of the controversial care.data scheme reached a crescendo last night, and with at least two possible legal challenges now under way, NHS England finally gave in to critics, announcing a further six month pause to the project – and yet more money to be spent on publicity campaigns. Continue reading
-
Top Brit docs wade into GP data grab row, demand ‘urgent’ NHS England talks By Kelly Fiveash
Pressure is mounting on NHS England to stall its incoming data grab of GP-stored medical records, after another health body said that the government needed to improve public awareness of the controversial scheme. Continue reading
-
GPs slam NHS England for poor publicity of data grab plan By Kelly Fiveash
The Tory-led government has failed to make a good case for its plans to share GP medical records with information that is already stored by NHS England, the Royal College of General Practitioners warned on Wednesday. Continue reading
-
UK: ACT NOW to protect your medical confidentiality
Sometime in January 2014 you may have received a leaflet via junk mail, entitled ‘Better information means better care‘ (2MB PDF file). It may not be clear from the leaflet that a significant change in what is done with your medical records is about to happen. Continue reading
-
How safe are your medical records?
At Liberty we’ve reacted with significant concern over NHS England’s new plans for a ‘care.data’ database. This could see your private medical records – including highly sensitive data – shared on a single database. Continue reading
-
Hunt seeks to shed his duty to keep our medical data safe By Benedict Cooper
Last week in a public committee session of the Care Bill, MPs grilled Conservative ministers within the Department of Health over the dangers of the “unintended consequences” of changes to the way data is handled which could, they said, lead to private providers and insurance companies gaining access to confidential records. Continue reading
-
UK national health records database to have ‘backdoors’ for police, govt?
While care.data will not store the names of the patients, it will include National Health System numbers, dates of birth, postcodes, ethnicity and sex, in addition to health condition and prescribed drugs. The goal is to sell access to the data to university researchers, health insurance companies and other parties, which can make use of… Continue reading
-
Care.data questions mount – just who’ll get our medical data? By Jane Fae
Official attempts to inform patients about what will happen to their data when the new care.data database is implemented are inadequate and, on the latest evidence, seriously misleading. In August of last year, the Information Commissioner warned GPs they’d likely breach Data Protection Act if they allowed their patient data to be uploaded to care.data… Continue reading
-
Police State UK: GCHQ secret unit uses DDOS attack tactics against Anonymous – Snowden leak
British intelligence has its own hacker subdivision that uses questionable practices for hunting down enemies of the state, reveals a new leak from Edward Snowden. GCHQ is fighting Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivists with DDoS attacks and malware. Continue reading
-
‘Maybe we haven’t been clear enough about med records opt-out’, admits NHS data boss By Kelly Fiveash
NHS data chief Tim Kelsey admitted today that the health service had failed to adequately inform patients about how they can opt out of having their GP medical records shared throughout England. Continue reading
-
Spy Agencies Work On Psychologically Profiling Everyone
Newly-released documents from Edward Snowden show that the NSA and other spy agencies are tracking people’s psychological and lifestyle traits such as sexual preference, extroversion-versus-introversion, and whether people are leaders or followers. Continue reading
-
NHS: GP surgeries MUST DO BETTER on data handling, says ICO By Kelly Fiveash
A number of GP surgeries in England allowed their employees to have unrestricted internet access – thereby increasing the risk of data being leaked, hacked and targeted by viruses, Britain’s information watchdog warned today. Continue reading
-
Sleepwalking into an information grab by private health? By Jane Fae
NHS England has still not done enough to inform patients of the privacy-busting implications of the new ‘care.data’ scheme, former home secretary David Davies tells openDemocracy. One of the most ambitious privacy-busting information grabs of the new century looks set to resume shortly. Following a minor reverse last year, the way is once more being… Continue reading
-
Why you should be pissed off about Care.data By Alice
From the Spring, medical information about you which was previously only kept to help understand you as an individual – information from consultations, notes on prescriptions – will be uploaded to a central database to become one of the world’s most complete health databases. Our records are being connected to make them stronger. Continue reading
-
American and British Spy Agencies Have INTENTIONALLY Weakened Security for Many Decades
Norway’s largest newspaper (Aftenposten) reports today that British spies pressured the developers of cellphone standards in the 1980s to intentionally weaken the cellphone’s encryption. In other words, hackers can break into cellphone calls much more easily because the British spies intentionally made the encryption 1,000 times weaker than it otherwise would have been. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 