Surprising High Court ruling on privacy

[Ross Anderson]

Brian complains:

> the prospect that pharmacists, unaided, could make data anonymous 
> seems pretty remote to me.

In this case, I think they were fairly well aided. For a technical
description of the anonymity mechanisms that were used, see:

	http://www.fi.muni.cz/usr/matyas/XTR_HIJ_draft.pdf

David Swarbrick adds:

> The NHS seemed to think it wrong to allow the transfer of data.

Just to anyone other than themselves ...

> The court agreed, and asserted the right of the original owners of the
> confidence - the patients - not to have that confidence breached.

I have a copy of the judgment, Queen's Bench CO 4490/97, 28/5/99, R
and the Dept of Health ex parte Source Informatics Ltd. The argument
is overwhelmingly legal rather than technical and turns on the nature
of `authorised use' of data.

The judge ducked the issue of existing state sector abuses (where
`anonymous' means that your name and address have been replaced by
your NHS number, and your date of birth and postcode have been left on
for safety's sake) but willing to believe that the much more thorough
private sector practice exposed patients to material risk. Rather than
tackling the computer science, or looking at the broader issue of
whether a monopoly over the re-use of personal health information
should be granted to a serial abuser, he seems to have found comfort
in some old precedents which he could play off against each other.

> For a court to say that a patient's rights are to be respected seems
> straightforward enough. 

If only he'd said that ... but all the judge said was that the NHS was
entitled to recommend that any pharmacist interested in the proposal
should seek legal advice. This is maybe where the DoH were clever in
setting the case up: what judge would ever advise people against
taking legal advice?

Ross