Tuesday 12 July 2011

We think the ladies protest too much . . .


As we drove one of our many practice Ferraris home from ND Central this evening across the high moorland and forest covered hills of rural Northernshire we were listening to the bleatings of a poor Northernshire citizen an alleged victim of the current cause celebre in the UK the phone hackings by the Press of certain peoples’ private data.

In medicine we would call this a breach of confidentiality which is a serious charge against a doctor and yet the loudest of the little bleaters was not one of the numerous maturing lambs we drove past on our way home but one of the biggest advocates of weapons of mass disclosure in our history none other than Gordon Brown something MP, sometime unelected Prime Minister and “saviour” of the World from the destruction of his own making.

On the Radio 4 news programme this evening he said as follows and if there are any factual typographical errors in this transcription it is because we are not audio/touch typists (our press officers had gone to get a late appointment but they were delayed due to leaves on the line):

“. . . if I with all the protection and all the defenses and all of the security that a chancellor of the exchequer or a Prime minister, am is so vulnerable to unscrupulous tactics, to unlawful tactics methods that have been used in the way we have found, what about the ordinary citizen?"

Yes what about the ordinary citizen Mr Brown? It is reckoned that perhaps 4000 peoples’ mobile phones in a population of 60 million have been hacked but you were, in your ignorance and while in power, more than happy to rush through a process to allow 60 million UK residents’ personal medical records to be uploaded without their active consent on to an inherently insecure government sponsored database with at least a million plus users?

Try doing something you have never done in your life called thinking. Which network is most likely to be hacked? Which network has the most holes?

If you are outraged by the disclosure of your family’s records to a select few journalists via dubious means how do you think an “ordinary citizen” will feel when their medical records are hacked for £ 20 of smack to a receptionist dismissed for drug misuse whose smartcard has not been cancelled? That is how easy it is to hack the Summary Care Record.

That is your creation, it is flawed and useless and if you feel that the disclosure of your childrens’ medical records is a problem then perhaps you ought to start thinking instead of bleating with your political colleagues like a Northernshire lamb.

Praise be to the Party for all of their leaders’ concerns about the confidentiality of the privileged. It would seem that they are all biting the hand that feeds them but what will happen when the hand slaps back?

More importantly when will they finally realise the inherent dangers of centralization of patient’s confidential medical information?

No comments: