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NHS England patient data 'uploaded to Google servers', Tory MP says
- pja 13y agoIt's worse than that: Ben Goldacre is reporting ( https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440475049880195073 https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440475049880195073 ) that the data was made publicly available. This is beyond parody.
- arethuza 13y agoTo add insult to injury they were probably getting paid vast amounts of taxpayers' money to be this incompetent.
- chillax 13y agoanother update: "No individuals directly named records online. But a massive breach of the most basic information security policies to prevent jigsaw." https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440488463008550912 https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440488463008550912
- flurpitude 13y agoWe're going to need something longer than a tweet to explain what he's actually talking about.
- sentenza 13y agoI'd also assume the worst, even if there are no patient names out. There are too many examples of de-anonymization of purposefully anonymized data out there to warrant any belief that missing real world names alone should constitute much of a privacy blanket.
- vidarh 13y agoThe dataset in question supposedly contains date of birth, gender and post code. For my family, that uniquely identifies every member, given the size of UK post codes.
- Silhouette 13y agoIf that means full postcodes, then that information will easily be sufficient to identify every member of the UK population, aside from outliers like twins or the occasional statistical fluke.
- Sniperfish 13y agorecent (20m): "I’m sorry to say I’m also now aware of more @HSCIC stories breaking shortly. What a mess. They need to come clean asap, clean stables." "Wait for details on story i’ve been tweeting today: twitter is first draft. Story is: small number rule breach, I believe, which is bad." https://twitter.com/bengoldacre https://twitter.com/bengoldacre
- pja 13y agoIt transpires that the publicly downloadable data was a mock dataset. How it took them 24 hours to work that out I've no idea, but I imagine there's a lot of headless chicken impressions going on behind the scenes at the moment. https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440576479248662528 https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440576479248662528 It's still the case that real NHS data was uploaded to Google's servers.
- lern_too_spel 13y agoIt's beyond parody because it's just plain false. Par for the course for The Guardian over the last few months. http://www.earthware.co.uk/default.aspx http://www.earthware.co.uk/default.aspx
- pja 13y agoIt had nothing to do with the Guardian. What on earth are you talking about?
- lern_too_spel 13y agoBen Goldacre writes for The Guardian. What else would I be talking about?
- timthorn 13y agoThe report in question (linked in the article) provides "exceptional" evidence for the performance of Cloud technology by comparing a Google BigQuery search against an on-premises SQL Server query. So, cloud is good because map-reduce performs better than relational databases...
- omh 13y agoNot even that - they say "We uploaded it into a traditional Microsoft SQL database on a 1TB drive". So it sounds like they were just using a single spindle. Purchasing an SSD for that SQL Server would probably have given comparable performance benefits.
- vidarh 13y agoIt's small enough you can get servers that can hold it in memory....
- sailfast 13y agoThe report also indicates that appropriate government approvals were obtained and that they protected the healthcare data appropriately. Might they have been using an appropriately secured Google cloud tool? I understand that this still doesn't tell you the country in which the data resides, but that's a lot different than posting data on the open internet or an unsecured cloud instance.
- collyw 13y agoThis sounds all too like the project I am collaborating on. It will be moderately big data (a few terabytes at most). The guys developing it just now are on their third NoSQL database - Elasticsearch. Them: "Look at how fast it is" Me: "You only have 3GB of data in it" Them: "Its so fast to develop, just connect Angular straight to Elasticsearch" Me: "Absolutely no concern given to security" Them: "The previous project used an SQL database and ended up having so many table" Me: "So it was probably properly designed"
- thirsteh 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- swombat 13y agoSurely PA Consulting should immediately be sued out of existence. This kind of behaviour must be considered beyond negligent, practically criminal. I would strongly support throwing anyone involved in this into jail for a long time as a deterrent against future criminals. This is just unbelievable.
- stuaxo 13y agoI would strongly encourage everybody to contact the Information Commisioners Office, as this must be a breach of data protection ? https://ico.org.uk/Global/contact_us https://ico.org.uk/Global/contact_us If anybody has details about how this may be a breach of the data protection act exactly, then please post below.
- Raffers 13y agoIt's one of the main points of the DPA - Not transferred outside the UK without adequate protection https://www.gov.uk/data-protection/the-data-protection-act https://www.gov.uk/data-protection/the-data-protection-act Although that is more speculation than anything, as we don't have any knowledge if the information was encrypted or not, or any other safe guards in place. But the fact it took them nearly 2 weeks to upload 129.6GB or 229.5GB (Article states DVD's nothing else) I wouldn't be surprised if there were none in place.
- lotsofmangos 13y agoGiven it is now run by the ex head of Barclays Bank and is the second largest recipient of government contracts in the UK, I wouldn't hold your breath.
- touristtam 13y agoSurely the people in power should have paid more attention to this before handing the data to a private third party. Those who ignored the problem before it emerged should not be allowed near position of decision for public office. Rant apart, this seriously raise the question of do we not need to have an alternative (maybe a pan European subsidized, not for profit organization) to Skynet (sorry I meant Google)?
- samwillis 13y agoPA has a history of not looking after UK Government data very well, they famously left a USB stick on a train with alot of confidential data on it.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7575989.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7575989.stm
- swombat 13y agoLeaving a USB stick on a train is one thing. Spending weeks to upload 27 DVDs' worth of confidential health data to Google servers is quite another! One is negligent. The other is, imho, criminal.
- kabdib 13y ago27 DVDs = not a lot of data. What were they doing, transcoding through paper tape?
- nly 13y ago> The data set was so large it took up 27 DVDs and took a couple of weeks to upload. 27 * 8 GiB (DVD-9) / 2 weeks = ~1.5 Mbps. Yep, that's British broadband bought from the lowest bidder.
- srj 13y agoI think it's tough to say. There's considerable overhead to packeted traffic. Also it sounds like they had a simple setup so there would be a delay in exchanging the DVDs after each one finishes. Uploads probably finished over the weekend with nobody there to start the next one too.
- OscarCunningham 13y agoSneakernet would have been faster...
- pbhjpbhj 13y agoThey're probably not allowed to take the data out of the building for security purposes ...
- mathnode 13y agoThat's nearly 4.5TB if it was gzipped plain-text.
- Crito 13y agoSooo... not a lot of data. That's kabdib's point. This isn't the 90s or something, a couple of terabytes is no longer "big data".
- k-mcgrady 13y agoWhy does the government repeatedly hire incompetent people?? They pay crazy amounts of money for it too. I hope there is a very public investigation into this. We are losing privacy every day now and this is one area of our lives that needs to remain private at all costs. There is very little I can see to gain and lots to lose from losing privacy in health. Especially in a public system like the NHS.
- bananas 13y agoBecause they're all part of the old boys network. No other reason.
- collyw 13y agoSad but seems to be true.
- cjrp 13y agoThe government doesn't hire them, it contracts the work out to consulting firms... who in turn hire incompetent people.
- easyfrag 13y agoI think there's 2 reasons: Often times the services are contracted out and those contracts are often subject to "lowest bid wins" rules. It is very difficult to judge a quality like competence especially when there's differing interpretations of purchasing legislation involved. The other reason is that it is often difficult to fire people in the public sector. I believe it to be due to the impact of unions, which will protect even the most egregious offender out of principle. This builds a culture around being hard to get rid of people, even if it is a non-union position the HR process of dismissal is often the same. For example public bodies often have a lot of employee supports (Employee Assistance programs,etc) and before you dismiss anyone you must allow them to avail of these supports.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- noir_lord 13y agoI've very carefully opted out of every single program that the NHS has created for digital records going back years. Whether that has done any good I have no idea but I do have signed letters from all relevant organisations (Doctors surgery) saying that I've opted out. This does have legal battle written all over it.
- crb 13y agoThis is the data in question: http://www.hscic.gov.uk/hes http://www.hscic.gov.uk/hes It is anonymised [1], publicly licensable data. Here are a list of users and uses. [2] [1] "We apply a strict statistical disclosure control in accordance with the HES protocol, to all published HES data. This suppresses small numbers to stop people identifying themselves and others, to ensure that patient confidentiality is maintained." [2] http://www.hscic.gov.uk/media/10495/Users-and-uses-of-HES/pdf/HES_Users_and_Uses.pdf http://www.hscic.gov.uk/media/10495/Users-and-uses-of-HES/pd...
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago> It is anonymised Not meaningfully, no. A UK postcode covers 20 households or less. If you have that plus gender and date of birth (as seems to be the case here), you almost always have a unique individual.
- lotsofmangos 13y agoNHS number, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender. Is about as anonymous as wearing a different hat.
- dhoulb 13y agoNHS number is clearly ridiculous. But, I can see why all the other data are statistically relevant in analysis. Postcode, so you can track viral outbreak etc with a fair degree of locational accuracy. Date of birth, so you could analyse if people born in certain seasons had higher incidences of various diseases. (You could probably drop the day and just have month, but there could be cases where there were more hospital deaths for babies born on a Monday, etc). Gender and ethnicity are obvious.
- andygates 13y agoA hash of the NHS number would give a UID without compromising the person's details. Providing a UID that is one-way linked would allow HSCIC to go to the actual data if a care situation warranted it. I'd argue that the first half of the postcode and month of birth are ample for outside-HSCIC use. Monday-deaths is the kind of thing that's done internally anyway.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- shocks 13y agoI shall be writing to my local MP about this, I'd encourage anyone else to do the same!
- collyw 13y agoI agree its the right thing to do, but I have very little faith in it making a difference.
- bananas 13y agoThis. Boilerplate reply and a permanent filing in the cylindrical filing cabinet awaits. If you're lucky, they'll use it to lean on whilst writing a cheque to the guy who just installed a duck house in their pond at your expense...
- shocks 13y agoFunny. I've written to several of my local MPs and always received a direct response regarding the issues I have raised. How many times have you received boilerplate replies?
- bananas 13y agoThree times now to three different MPs. Gave up then. Glad you got something more.
- shocks 13y agoI'm actually sorry to hear that. What topics were you contacting them about, if you don't mind my asking? I wrote about private issues, copyright and digital rights issues, and various local council issues (fences and paths). I got a good response every time. It would be cool to compile a list of responsive and unresponsive MPs…
- bananas 13y ago
- nly 13y agoGood. Imo, the fearmongering here is actually quite irrational. Google have more credibility (and money) to lose from a high publicity hack than government contractors who already act with impunity. If they'd invested in their own own map-reduce deployment we'd only be hearing another story about government contractors wasted millions of £ in taxpayers money on Big Brother data analysis. > The extracted information will contain a person's NHS number, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender. Big woop? Your NHS# isn't used outside of the NHS or for anything of concern to most people, and your postcode (and address) is held on the unedited electoral roll by hundreds of organisations. Most people don't even opt-out of the edited register accessible for a small fee on 192.com Why aren't us Brits worried about our credit histories and county court judgements being recorded and held by Equifax, an American company? What specifically are people actually afraid of with regard to this data set sitting on Googles servers? I just don't get the regular public outcry about NHS data.
- icebraining 13y agoBut it was a government contractor who uploaded and queried the data (PA), they just used Google's platform. Frankly, this seems as related to Google as Nokia would be if someone used one of their cellphones to detonate an explosive. They're just the database provider.
- Sniperfish 13y agoThe Google relevance is server location, if outside of UK and if outside EU various data protection laws at each level would appear to have been breached.
- packetslave 13y agoYes, but putting "Google" in the headline is more likely to get clicks.
- pbhjpbhj 13y agoIt's not relevant that it's Google. The pertinent information [to me] is that it's not a certified host for this confidential data; that the data has been sent outside of the UK; and to a lesser extent [for me] that the data is by virtue of the host it's been sent to legally and undetectably accessible by a foreign government.
- clienthunter 13y agoGovernment privacy breaches are one of the things I despise most about current Western society. I am - day in, day out - one of those guys calling for ministerial blood. However I have long thought that proper open access to health data could be as revolutionary as, say, antibiotics. The government can do whatever the hell they like with my data - on the condition that anyone else can too. Can you imagine what insights could be gained with canonical graph schemas for individual (but (pseudo|a)nonymised) health records and a bit of statistics/ML? I think it would change the world, but it will never happen unless people like us get our hands on it. No amount of management consultants will innovate on the same scale as the tech community; saving lives through Github and AWS sounds like the only thing I'd do with my weekend. On a side note, I think the same argument could be applied to a great many public services. I recently emailed my doctor a letter from one of my private doctors in PDF format for addition to my records. Can you guess what happened next? Yep, he printed it out and gave it to a secretary to scan it back in, because the Java app that manages this stuff has very tightly controlled boundaries. Shortly after that I overstayed on a trip to a different part of the UK and desperately needed a top-up of my meds. The solution? Print a prescription and mail it to the pharmacy by next-day post, because Scottish NHS and English NHS computers are incapable of communicating with each other. How long would it be after going open source before all this BS is obliterated? I'm thinking months.
- buro9 13y ago> The government can do whatever the hell they like with my data - on the condition that anyone else can too. Wonderful. Now consider how a potential employer might use your data: Have you ever seen a GP for stress or mental health issues? Oh, maybe we are dis-inclined to hire you. Suffer from back pain? Well that's one of the most given reasons for needing time off from work, which means you are a liability and we won't hire you. Or even a business looking for partners: Of these two evenly matched companies, this one over here has a CEO that has seen his Dr for stress and has had heart attacks in the past... he can't take the pressure and will be taking it easy when we need aggressive, let's go with the other one. That's before you even touch what insurance companies will do, or whether schools will look into the mental health of little Timothy's family before determining whether to let the child into the school, or what retirement facilities might be available to you at what cost when you're 75+. Once out in the open, this data is free for everyone to use. And it's going to be hard to then restrict how it is used by trying to bolt one gate after another.
- apoz 13y agoIt took weeks to upload? Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes...
- collyw 13y agoWe were shipping hard disks between the States and Spain. Unfortunately Spanish customs can make the delay unreasonably large (especially when someone put the value of the drive at $100).
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago>(especially when someone put the value of the drive at $100) // Is that wrong? I see a Seagate Baracuda 3TB on Amazon at $110. Do you mean it should have included the data value or that they inflated the price or what?
- collyw 13y agoYes, but the drive wasn't what had the value (it was second hand). It got sent back afterwards. It was publicly funded research data, to be processed and uploaded to the Genome Browser at UCSC. Had someone just put zero on it I think it would have gone a lot more smoothly.
- revelation 13y agoI trust Google more than I do "PA Consulting". Which begs the question, how did we get here? Who in their right mind sends out 27 DVDs with probably unencrypted, highly sensitive medical data? Even if the recipient is trustworthy, the transport isn't. This data needs to be on a locked away government server that answers queries by 3rd party by throwing away half of the data and randomizing the remainder.
- fixermark 13y agoBasically. An alternative headline for this story could be "Contractor moves sensitive data from insecure, non-audited medium to secure, audited medium."
- skrebbel 13y agoThat would be "Contractor moves sensitive data from insecure, non-audited medium to secure, audited medium monitored by a foreign spy agency"
- fixermark 13y agoCorrect. I disregarded the nationality issue in assuming that GCHQ having "NHS, please pass me your data because terrorists" access to the health records is equivalent to the NSA having "[GAG ORDER] Google, a secret court has ordered you..." access to the health records, given how closely those agencies seem to be working together based on the Snowden disclosures. Others may place differing weights and values on their cloak-and-dagger outfit of choice. ;)
- danielweber 13y agoSending things in the post may be the acceptable method of sending sensitive data. I'm guessing that the UK prosecutes people who mess with the post the same way that the US prosecutes people who mess with the mail. EDIT I'm not sure what I'm talking about. Was the complaint about "27 DVDs" just the amount of data or the method?
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- binarymax 13y agoOnce the data enters the US, it is subject to HIPAA. PA is criminally liable.
- angersock 13y agoSo, that's an interesting question, right? If it's UK data, from the UK .gov, being stored to a server whose hardware is in the US, to be worked on by a UK consultancy, should it actually be subject to HIPAA? Jurisdiction in the Internet is tricky business.
- adamrneary 13y agoThe shame of all of this noise is that resources going into medical research today ends up getting spent on data security and building expensive, custom solutions that avoid using servers of a certain type or location in the name of privacy. Sure, it would be more secure to conduct medical research without using computers at all, but what about all those people dying of nasty diseases? If I had 6 months to live, I probably wouldn't mind these "criminals" trying to find me a cure. Instead, we have a deafening din of screaming about data privacy and little or no mention of the benefits of the medical research itself. If people could calm down a little bit about Big Brother, these guys could spend more time doing their jobs, helping sick people.
- anon1385 13y agoMedical data is a great tool but the problem is that these stories are poisoning public good will. There is no point telling people to calm down when they have just learned that records of every meeting they ever had with their doctor were available on the public internet and identifiable to anybody who knows their address and DOB. That is something that people rightly get upset about. Additionally, it's not like these events are all just accidents or incompetence. The UK government made a policy decision to sell medical records to insurance companies[1]. Also, is it really true that release to the insurance industry is unacceptable to the HSCIC? Its own information governance assessment from August says that access to individual patients records can "enable insurance companies to accurately calculate actuarial risk so as to offer fair premiums to its [sic] customers. Such outcomes are an important aim of Open Data, an important government policy initiative."[2] [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/nhs/10659147/Patient-records-should-not-have-been-sold-NHS-admits.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/nhs/10659147/Patient-recor... [2] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/28/care-data-is-in-chaos http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/28/care-da...
- timthorn 13y agoNot underplaying at all - your point is spot on - but this data only relates to hospital attendances and not GP interactions. Currently GP interactions are not available in the database, and that's the point of care.data.
- kleiba 13y ago"Nonsense! We never uploaded any data to Google servers, we just put it in the cloud!"
- nickbauman 13y agoDon't the British have something like HIPAA in the US? If so PA Consulting would have had to follow those rules when using Google's infrastructure. Google's infrastructure passes many security levels and has just about every security certification (up to but _not_ including ITAR). There's nothing inherently insecure about doing this as long as they follow the rules. What are the rules about this over there?
- morgante 13y agoI don't understand why the data being on "Google servers" is generating such outrage. Google almost certainly has superior security to this "PA Consulting" or even the government itself.
- anon1385 13y agoThe same government that had completely penetrated Google's network for years without them realising?
- sangnoir 13y agoI'm pretty sure "the government" in GP's context referred to the UK government, not the US.
- anon1385 13y agoIt was the UK Government (GCHQ) that was breaking into Google's networks.
- dhoulb 13y agoGCHQ has done some appalling stuff, but the Google network penetration was done by the NSA.
- Shooti 13y agoYou're both right, its a collaboration between the two: >For the MUSCULAR project, the GCHQ directs all intake into a “buffer” that can hold three to five days of traffic before recycling storage space. From the buffer, custom-built NSA tools unpack and decode the special data formats that the two companies use inside their clouds. Then the data are sent through a series of filters to “select” information the NSA wants and “defeat” what it does not. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-in...
- higherpurpose 13y agoThe risk of a "privacy disaster of unprecedented proportions" for NHS data was predicted by Glyn Moody just 3 weeks ago on TechDirt: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140207/09552726132/uk-police-companies-will-have-access-to-database-all-englands-medical-records.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140207/09552726132/uk-pol...
- UVB-76 13y agoOfficial statement: http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/3948/Statement-Use-of-data-by-PA-consulting http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/3948/Statement-Use-of-data-b...
- calbear81 13y ago> The data set was so large it took up 27 DVDs and took a couple of weeks to upload. Really? 27 DVDs worth of data is only about 127GB of data and it tooks weeks to upload? I'm on a standard Comcast cable line and I could probably upload that in a few days at most.
- suprgeek 13y agoAll that is now needed is to cross reference it with the ridiculously extensive CCTV footage that the Govt. in Britain has collected & continues to collect everyday. Perfect Surveillance at a granularity that was not possible before.
- UVB-76 13y agoA second scandal is now emerging out of this, as digital mapping firm Earthware are accused of posting HES data in Google maps form on its website for all to see. [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/new-nhs-scandal-as-digital-mapping-firm-earthware-is-alleged-to-have-of-posted-hospital-records-in-google-maps-form-possibly-allowing-the-identification-of-patients-9166633.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/... [2] http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/3947/Statement-Use-of-data-by-Earthware-UK http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/3947/Statement-Use-of-data-b...
- linlea 13y agoEarthware's statement claims that they used mock data HES Data Map Statement 3 March 2014 18:55 GMT. Earthware was contacted this morning by the HSCIC regarding a demo online map we had created to demonstrate how HES data might be displayed in a mapping environment.Earthware immediately withdrew this map from our website upon request from the HSCIC. Earthware would like to clarify the following: The map displayed mock data held by a third party who provided this data to Earthware via a web API. We do not hold nor have we ever held HES data on our servers. No patient identifiable data was ever displayed on the map. Earthware are confident that we have not breached any legal or regulatory rules regarding the licencing or publication of HES data. We will continue to co-operate fully with the HSCIC if required. http://www.earthware.co.uk/ http://www.earthware.co.uk/
- bostik 13y agoInterestingly enough, the company behind this cluster#### has previous and proven record of similar behaviour.[1][2] Sure, it takes conscious effort to upload multiple DVD's worth of data, which already rules out accidents - but because this is not an isolated incident, I wouldn't rule out corporate policy of willful neglect either. "Fined and fired" is not a sufficient deterrent. 1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/11/pa_consulting_home_office_plea/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/11/pa_consulting_home_o... 2: http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ne9297 http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ne9297
- blueskin_ 13y agoFor fuck's sake. I opted out of 'care.data' (what a stupid name), and now I find out my data was breached anyway? I wonder if leaked people can start a class action lawsuit.