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back to article Lords kick anon leukaemia stats back to Scots ICO

The House of Lords has overturned decisions of the Court of Session and the Scottish Information Commissioner and required the Commissioner to re-examine a request for access to medical statistics. The Commissioner, with the support of the Court of Session, had decided that, as a matter of fact, a set of anonymised medical …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    so

    where does this leave Phorm? Shame noone is willing to press that issue all the way to the lords.

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  2. Marvin the Martian
    Alert

    Barnardisation helps conspiracy theories!

    Given that the most common reason for demanding that kind of localized leukemia data is to try to show that proximity to high voltage power lines are their cause, then this randomization seems to destroy the data set's usefulness?

    Given the 1/r drop in potential, you'd want to know each person's distance pretty accurately.

    The entire thing is pointless, as it was a jobless statistician in the first place who came up with the idea while driving around, and that's about it.

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  3. Whitter
    Thumb Up

    The judicary vs. government ideogogs

    Ths must throw a rather large hammer into the goverment's "data-mash up" plan (a spanner that was entirely forseeable and, even without this ruling, should have selved that plan as unethical use of data before it got off the drawing board).

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    And now lets kick out Phorm

    Finally some of the powers that be are awake to the privacy issues that are creeping into our daily life.

    Phorm / Webwise DPI targeted advert interception is the worst their can be. Lets kick this company out of GB and give BT a kick up the backside for their involvement with them at the same time.

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  5. Luther Blissett

    Not over till the fat lady sings

    The good Lords may find they have not disposed the matter, and it could shortly jump back over the fence into their laps.

    The UK is presently engaged in the largest-ever known theft of DNA by fraudulent misrepresentation - UK Biobank. 500,000 samples will be collected from people who have already been pre-booked appointments by the time they are sent their invitation to participate. Only once in the 12-page associated bumf is DNA mentioned - parenthetically. That reveals samples will be stored long-term and for the purpose of replicating the DNA in future.

    Given the current states of both epidemiology and microbiology, it is probable the database and/or analyses will result in genetically targeted bio-weapons before it achieves its stated health aims. It will become the #1 target for data theft, and governments will put their best people onto it. Only a fool would give odds on its security.

    In the light of the Lords judgment, who now gets to see the data in its intended capacity - and why.

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