9 ms·

Google was recently handed the confidential medical data of 1.6 million patients treated at a London hospital (Royal Free), for use by Deep Mind, in breach of t

Google was recently handed the confidential medical data of 1.6 million patients treated at a London hospital (Royal Free), for use by Deep Mind, in breach of the Data Protection Act: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/03/google-deepmind-16m-patient-royal-free-deal-data-protection-act https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/03/google-de...

hirundo 7y ago
I hope they find a way to properly anonymize the data and move forward. A minimum price to charge would be to make the results public. Even better would be a way for the public to analyse that data via Deep Mind, like an observatory telescope with public access time. There is likely life saving data to be found here. It would be a shame for privacy concerns to prevent studying it.
- EasyTiger_ 7y ago
  Interesting how you're glossing over the fact this violated the Data Protection Act.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Even if they did there have been many, many HN stories of data being deanonymised absurdly easily, and health data tends to unique very quickly indeed. How many females in a (county|country|postcode} born on 5 March 1942 are there with a kidney problem? Particularly in the UK where a postcode, even the locality selector (the first half, e.g. M50, NW11) is more precise than many US zipcodes that can cover many square miles. A full UK postcode narrows it down to within the street - a dozen or two houses usually. What if there is associated medical data like medications or chronic conditions - diabetes, arthritis etc? To make it suitable for study a) keep it within the NHS or relevant health authority - perhaps allowing an airgapped DeepMind server to come in process locally and afterwards get wiped or shredded, or b) remove all personal data including gender, dates, associated medical info of any type - i.e. render it almost useless for study. Oh and c) imprison all the management who agreed to share this data without patient consent and in breach of DPA, and require Google to remove all trace under audit.
  - mda 7y ago
    Who said that proper anonymisation doesn't remove exact birthdates and fine granular location? Proper anonymisation techniques are much harder to attack.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Anonymisation after it's all gone to Google is rather moot, don't you think? Besides in this particular case they rode roughshod over both DPA and our entire structure of medical ethics and sent across entirely non-anonymised data. "proper anonymisation" is a set of goalposts that keep moving - it's like password length or bcrypt work factor. What's enough today won't be enough with CPU, or in a year or three, or perhaps a suitably fancy AI from the world's largest data hog. Proper anonymisation likely requires all associated data - any dates, blood group, medications, chronic conditions etc removing, hence mention of making it so bland as to be almost useless for study.
      - mda 7y ago
        Heh you go on an on about an imaginary weak anonimisation technique then say all is moot and again go on and on about pure speculation, It is you who is moving goal posts.
  - GhostVII 7y ago
    There are mathematical ways you can guaruntee different levels of anonymity though without removing all identifiers. Ex. you can increase age and location buckets until for every unique set of identifiers, you have a good distribution of attributes.
    - zwaps 7y ago
      And yet, you know this will not happen, because it wont yield the best and most profitable model for Google. Google will do what they have always done, ignore privacy, train models on full data, apologize later ans delete data when no longer needed. You dont know this, but people at Google are Gangsters and bullies They dont give a hoot about laws in Europe, about privacy or any of that. They think they are right and that everyone else is wrong. See the guy above who said this is for the collective good, even though everyone who knows even a little bit stats and machine learning knows full well that these sort of sensitive data will lead to unimaginable grief for outlier patients. In particular, because Google cares about money, and not the collective good! Everyone should be outraged, it is the only rational reponse.
roddux 7y ago
I'm actually still so struck how literally nobody seems to give a shit or even know that this happened. It's really sad.
- nesky 7y ago
  Why are you surprised? I can count on 1 hand the amount of people I know personally who care about data privacy or anything remotely close to the idea of data privacy. However, I do agree, it's really sad.
  - DataWorker 7y ago
    Do those people use a credit card or cell phone? I think many people care, but not enough to stop participating in society, or even enough to stop posting on their favorite web forums. Modernity demands compromise; we abide.
- chongli 7y ago
  I’m surprised that people are still surprised by this, but then I’ve gotten pretty cynical at this point. This phenomenon goes way deeper than people not caring about privacy. It underlies everything from the bystander effect [1], to the Nuremberg defence [2], and everything in between. People just don’t want to organize, generally speaking. The people who do usually end up as part of the elite. The rest are just focused on their individual lives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    You could argue that it's not that people don't want to organize, it's that they can't, because of structural reasons. Scott Alexander wrote a lot of words going deep into this problem: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.
    - 7y ago
taway9021090210 7y ago
Google DeepMind's acquisition of Hark (https://www.businessinsider.com/google-deepmind-sets-up-healthcare-team-acquires-hark-and-builds-new-app-2016-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-deepmind-sets-up-heal...) Was apparently to get the team that could get this sweeping level of data: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-deepmind-sets-up-healthcare-team-acquires-hark-and-builds-new-app-2016-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-deepmind-sets-up-heal... The Hark team (https://www.harkapp.co.uk https://www.harkapp.co.uk) brought huge influence in the NHS and at the national level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ara_Darzi,_Baron_Darzi_of_Denham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ara_Darzi,_Baron_Darzi_of_Denh...
NowThenGoodBad 7y ago
Serious question: is it the same law that requires websites to give a cookie pop up? Because I let users know I'm not going to spam them with that shit at those that enacted that law can go to hell for every site I visit having it. It's a good thing but really annoying. There has to be a better, more interesting way.
- L0stRegulator 7y ago
  They are different but well related 'laws'. The 'Cookie Law' is the 2011 ePrivacy Directive. it will be replaced by the ePrivacy Regulation (eventually). https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/ https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/ The modern privacy law is GDPR, which came in in 2018. Pre-dating that were the somewhat country-specific interpretations of the 1995 Data Protection Directive.
- privateSFacct 7y ago
  Agreed - especially on mobile a full page thing I have to click through to accept the cookies?? If I didn't want cookies I'd just block them and see how web worked - this should be browser setting, not a required click through on every website. Your browser controls your cookies - use that, clear them, do whatever you want.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

hirundo 7y ago

I hope they find a way to properly anonymize the data and move forward. A minimum price to charge would be to make the results public. Even better would be a way for the public to analyse that data via Deep Mind, like an observatory telescope with public access time. There is likely life saving data to be found here. It would be a shame for privacy concerns to prevent studying it.

EasyTiger_ 7y ago
Interesting how you're glossing over the fact this violated the Data Protection Act.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Even if they did there have been many, many HN stories of data being deanonymised absurdly easily, and health data tends to unique very quickly indeed. How many females in a (county|country|postcode} born on 5 March 1942 are there with a kidney problem? Particularly in the UK where a postcode, even the locality selector (the first half, e.g. M50, NW11) is more precise than many US zipcodes that can cover many square miles. A full UK postcode narrows it down to within the street - a dozen or two houses usually. What if there is associated medical data like medications or chronic conditions - diabetes, arthritis etc? To make it suitable for study a) keep it within the NHS or relevant health authority - perhaps allowing an airgapped DeepMind server to come in process locally and afterwards get wiped or shredded, or b) remove all personal data including gender, dates, associated medical info of any type - i.e. render it almost useless for study. Oh and c) imprison all the management who agreed to share this data without patient consent and in breach of DPA, and require Google to remove all trace under audit.
- mda 7y ago
  Who said that proper anonymisation doesn't remove exact birthdates and fine granular location? Proper anonymisation techniques are much harder to attack.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Anonymisation after it's all gone to Google is rather moot, don't you think? Besides in this particular case they rode roughshod over both DPA and our entire structure of medical ethics and sent across entirely non-anonymised data. "proper anonymisation" is a set of goalposts that keep moving - it's like password length or bcrypt work factor. What's enough today won't be enough with CPU, or in a year or three, or perhaps a suitably fancy AI from the world's largest data hog. Proper anonymisation likely requires all associated data - any dates, blood group, medications, chronic conditions etc removing, hence mention of making it so bland as to be almost useless for study.
    - mda 7y ago
      Heh you go on an on about an imaginary weak anonimisation technique then say all is moot and again go on and on about pure speculation, It is you who is moving goal posts.
- GhostVII 7y ago
  There are mathematical ways you can guaruntee different levels of anonymity though without removing all identifiers. Ex. you can increase age and location buckets until for every unique set of identifiers, you have a good distribution of attributes.
  - zwaps 7y ago
    And yet, you know this will not happen, because it wont yield the best and most profitable model for Google. Google will do what they have always done, ignore privacy, train models on full data, apologize later ans delete data when no longer needed. You dont know this, but people at Google are Gangsters and bullies They dont give a hoot about laws in Europe, about privacy or any of that. They think they are right and that everyone else is wrong. See the guy above who said this is for the collective good, even though everyone who knows even a little bit stats and machine learning knows full well that these sort of sensitive data will lead to unimaginable grief for outlier patients. In particular, because Google cares about money, and not the collective good! Everyone should be outraged, it is the only rational reponse.

roddux 7y ago

I'm actually still so struck how literally nobody seems to give a shit or even know that this happened. It's really sad.

nesky 7y ago
Why are you surprised? I can count on 1 hand the amount of people I know personally who care about data privacy or anything remotely close to the idea of data privacy. However, I do agree, it's really sad.
- DataWorker 7y ago
  Do those people use a credit card or cell phone? I think many people care, but not enough to stop participating in society, or even enough to stop posting on their favorite web forums. Modernity demands compromise; we abide.
chongli 7y ago
I’m surprised that people are still surprised by this, but then I’ve gotten pretty cynical at this point. This phenomenon goes way deeper than people not caring about privacy. It underlies everything from the bystander effect [1], to the Nuremberg defence [2], and everything in between. People just don’t want to organize, generally speaking. The people who do usually end up as part of the elite. The rest are just focused on their individual lives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  You could argue that it's not that people don't want to organize, it's that they can't, because of structural reasons. Scott Alexander wrote a lot of words going deep into this problem: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.
  - 7y ago

taway9021090210 7y ago

Google DeepMind's acquisition of Hark (https://www.businessinsider.com/google-deepmind-sets-up-healthcare-team-acquires-hark-and-builds-new-app-2016-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-deepmind-sets-up-heal...) Was apparently to get the team that could get this sweeping level of data: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-deepmind-sets-up-healthcare-team-acquires-hark-and-builds-new-app-2016-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-deepmind-sets-up-heal... The Hark team (https://www.harkapp.co.uk https://www.harkapp.co.uk) brought huge influence in the NHS and at the national level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ara_Darzi,_Baron_Darzi_of_Denham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ara_Darzi,_Baron_Darzi_of_Denh...

NowThenGoodBad 7y ago

Serious question: is it the same law that requires websites to give a cookie pop up? Because I let users know I'm not going to spam them with that shit at those that enacted that law can go to hell for every site I visit having it. It's a good thing but really annoying. There has to be a better, more interesting way.

L0stRegulator 7y ago
They are different but well related 'laws'. The 'Cookie Law' is the 2011 ePrivacy Directive. it will be replaced by the ePrivacy Regulation (eventually). https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/ https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/ The modern privacy law is GDPR, which came in in 2018. Pre-dating that were the somewhat country-specific interpretations of the 1995 Data Protection Directive.
privateSFacct 7y ago
Agreed - especially on mobile a full page thing I have to click through to accept the cookies?? If I didn't want cookies I'd just block them and see how web worked - this should be browser setting, not a required click through on every website. Your browser controls your cookies - use that, clear them, do whatever you want.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]