![]() ![]() Having found a unique identifier for that person, you can then see everything else in their record. And knowing the week in which that happens, the kind of procedure he had on two dates, and his approximate age and his approximate location, you could probably find only one person with those characteristics. Goldacre said: “The classic example that appears in security engineering textbooks, for example, is that you could re-identify Tony Blair in health data, because you know, the approximate dates in which he had an abnormal heart rhythm reset while he was prime minister. Women are particularly at risk of deanonymisation, the committee heard as “childbirth is something that appears in your medical record, and it’s also something which is typically known by colleagues or people at the school gates or so on”. Once it’s leaked, it can’t be unleaked, and you have to work very carefully with it in order to do good with it, whilst minimising harms.” “But secondly, it also becomes rather dangerous. Firstly, it becomes tremendously powerful. But after it’s been refined and processed, two things happen. “When you first access small bits of it, it’s not actually very useful. Goldacre criticised the idea that “data is the new oil”, arguing that it was more like nuclear material. “You need to block people misusing data, you need to ensure that you detect it when they do, and you need to make sure that the penalties are so high that people are afraid to do it.” He said: “That’s over 30 people, working in very trusted roles, illegally accessing data outside of the purposes of their work, even in an environment where most or all of them must have known that they were subject to audit. The government should even consider prison sentences for those who do misuse sensitive data, Goldacre suggested, citing the discovery that more than 30 Metropolitan police staff were caught accessing case notes for the murder of Sarah Everard. And I suppose, because I work in this field, the risks are very salient to me.” ![]() And also because, in the past, I’ve been in the public eye from doing public engagement work, and I have friends who have had their data illegally accessed through national datasets, although not health datasets. “I did withdraw my consent,” Goldacre said, “because I know so much about how this data is used, and how people can be deanonymised. ![]()
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